Consequences

by Nancy Carson

  He arrived back at Badger House – all was in darkness. By the light of the three-quarter moon and its frosty halo, he went round the back, left his bike in the empty, unused stable, and tried the back door. It was locked. He had no back door key so he walked round to the front, felt in his pocket for his front door key, and found it. It turned in the lock, he turned the handle, but the door would not open.

  It was bolted – from the inside.

  Marigold had locked him out.

  He rapped hard on the cast iron door knocker, sorry that he would, of necessity, be waking the entire household. He waited – it seemed an age –hammering on it repeatedly.

  No glimmer of a lamp appeared in the fanlight, but eventually he heard the bolts slide across. The door opened. In the dimness of night, Marigold appeared like a ghost in her white nightdress. But she turned away without a word, hurrying back to regain the stairs in the darkness, as if to escape him.

  He found her hand, pulling her back. ‘You locked me out!’

  ‘Let go of me,’ she hissed.

  With a strength derived from her pique, she wrenched herself away from him and ran up the stairs.

  He followed her. To him, such hostility seemed unwarranted, certainly unexpected, and he did not know how to react.

  She reached their bedroom before him and tried to shut the door before he could reach it. He managed, however, to place himself between the door and the doorjamb just in time. Using his greater strength he shoved the door open. Marigold gave up the struggle, and slumped onto the rumpled bed in a sulking, breathless defeat.

  ‘What’s got into you?’ he rasped. ‘You locked me out.’

  No reply.

  The fire in their bedroom was alight but Marigold had damped it down for the night with heaps of slack. Still wearing his overcoat and cap he felt around the mantelpiece and found a spill, which he lit from the still glowing coals beneath. Using the spill, he lit the oil lamp and took it to where she was lying so he could see her face.

  ‘What’s got into you?’ he asked again, calmly. Her eyes were puffy from crying, and tears glistened in the yellow light of the lamp.

  ‘Leave me be,’ she retorted passionately.

  He put his hand gently on her shoulder as a sign of his affection.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ she hissed, and rolled away from him to the other side of the bed.

  ‘All right, if you don’t want me to touch you, I won’t,’ he replied evenly. He took the lamp to the other side of the bed and knelt before her again. At once, she rolled back to her former position. He sighed with frustration.

  ‘Aren’t you going to speak to me?’ he whispered.

  Again, no reply.

  ‘Don’t you want to know how my chat with Aurelia went?’

  ‘Chat?…I can imagine your chat,’ she seethed, with acid contempt, needing to air her bitterness.

  ‘You can’t imagine at all,’ he responded, irked.

  ‘Oh yes, I can, Algie Stokes.’ She raised her head and looked at him, hot resentment obvious in her eyes and her facial expression. ‘The only way you could stop her marrying Clarence Froggatt was by promising to divorce me and then marry her yourself.’

  ‘My God!’ he exclaimed with astonishment. This was a repeat of Marigold’s behaviour when she scarpered, not to be seen again for months, because she was suffering from the misguided notion that he was seeing Harriet Meese behind her back. He had believed she had matured beyond that.

  ‘Is that what you really believe?’

  ‘I do know, Algie, how much she’s meant to you in the past. I do know you were lovers.’

  ‘I acknowledge it, my flower, but to think that I’d give up you and my children for her…That’s hurtful.’

  They fell silent and he started to undress, aware that the truth of his words would have some impact. He began to see with greater clarity the reason for this sudden and unexpected ferocity in her attitude towards his visit to Aurelia that night. Of course – it was perfectly understandable, yet irrational. Her puffy eyes, her tears and her bitterness bore testimony to how much she must have felt threatened in his deciding to make the visit. What scenarios she must have imagined to get so worked up. He had to reassure her for the sake of his marriage, which suddenly seemed precariously balanced.

  He put on his nightshirt, pulled back the sheets and blankets on his side of the bed, and lay beside her, but careful not to touch her. She was quiet now, and made no movement to shift away from him.

  ‘Listen, Marigold,’ he said in little more than a whisper, ‘I know you didn’t want me to suddenly hare off to see Aurelia tonight, but I had to. Something within me said I must, and I’m glad I did. We talked – she told me things I hadn’t considered before. Now she’s got my blessing, and we’re going to be witnesses at her wedding, you and me.’

  Marigold turned her head round to face him with an earnest expression. ‘You mean it? You only talked?’

  ‘Course we only talked. What else d’you think we did?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Algie,’ she sighed, and he saw tears glisten in her eyes again. ‘I thought…Oh, I don’t know what I thought…I was being stupid…again.’

  He put his arm around her and gave her a hug. ‘Like you were about Harriet you mean?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘So tell me what Aurelia said that made you change your mind.’

  ‘More or less the same as what you said,’ he admitted. ‘That it was best for everybody. I realise we’d all be better off. I can see that now. She in particular will be better off, won’t she? I can’t begrudge her that. It’s no life for a woman like Aurelia living in that pokey hole, dependent on what little I could give her.’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you?’

  ‘Yes, you did, but maybe I needed to hear it from her. Anyway, Clarence wants us to be friends again. He’s prepared to take on Christina, although I’ll still pay for her keep. I won’t be beholden to him over Christina. I just hope he’s good to her and treats her as his own. After all, it’s not the child’s fault that I’m her father. I’d hate to think he’d be unkind to her just because of that.’

  ‘I don’t think he’d ever be unkind to her, Algie.’

  ‘No, I don’t think he would – she’s just a child. Anyway, we’re even invited to his house for dinner after the wedding.’

  ‘Honest? We’re going? Just the two of us?’

  ‘Just the two of us. You’d like to go, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I would now – if everything’s going to be all right between you two. I’m dying to see inside his house.’

  ‘Well, so am I.’

  ‘So you and him will be friends again.’

  ‘Well, at least we must try not to be enemies.’

  * * *

  On the evening before the wedding, Clarence Froggatt, accompanied by his newly employed nanny, Joyce Till, took his new brougham to collect Benjie and Christina from Aurelia’s house. The Larches was their destination. Aurelia handed Christina to Joyce to hold during the ride, and Benjie was instructed to sit beside her, which he did, excited at the prospect of sleeping at Uncle Clarence’s big house. At The Larches they would spend not only that night, but every ensuing night, until such time as they were old enough to flee Clarence’s beautifully appointed nest to set up their own.

  ‘I shall see you tomorrow at midday, my darling,’ he said to Aurelia as they were about to leave, accompanied also by all the trappings of children’s evening attire and items for their general welfare. ‘Don’t be late. Jones will be here with the brougham at about half past eleven.’

  Jones was the recently employed footman who drove the carriage.

  ‘I won’t be,’ Aurelia reassured him with a devastating smile. ‘Don’t forget to have Marigold collected first thing to help me get ready. She’ll make sure I’m not late.’

  ‘Jones will fetch her at nine in the morning. That should give you plenty of time.’

  ‘Thank you, Clarence. I know she appreciates it.
After all, she’ll have her own things with her that she’ll want to wear for the wedding.’

  He put his arms around her and drew her to him. ‘Till tomorrow then,’ he said softly, and kissed her tentatively on the cheek, as if he had no right yet to bestow a full-blown kiss on her lips. ‘I’ll see you at the registry office at noon. You’ll be my wife at last.’ He mounted the brougham, sat beside Benjie, closed the door and waved, as Jones drove them away.

  Aurelia’s eyes misted with tears as she watched them go in the darkness. It would be the last time her two children would see this tiny house that had been an expedient but spartan abode for the past few months. It had certainly been an experience; one she could have done without, but the children would be too young to remember it as they grew up. She had been used to living in some style married to Benjamin, where money always seemed available, and where it came from was never a concern. Servants had been at her beck and call, and although she had never taken that privileged existence for granted, she had appreciated it. Subsequently, living the life of an unmarried mother, a divorced woman and a social outcast in relative poverty had opened her eyes to some of life’s grimmer realities. Further, she realised that if Algie had failed to be honourable, she and her children would now be in the workhouse. Thank God for Algie.

  So she walked back up the entry and into the house. As she closed the door behind her, the oil lamp’s flame danced in the draught as it stood on the table. She picked it up and it lit her ascent up the narrow, twisting staircase. In her bedroom, she laid out the clothes she would wear tomorrow for her wedding, and wept again. But this time she cried the tears of a woman about to be safely delivered from society’s condemnation and her own anguish. The overshadowing cloud that had loomed over her for so long was magically set to clear away, and the sunshine of tomorrow would finally chase off all the fears and anxieties which, for long months, she had been nurturing, not just for herself but for her children too.

  * * *

  That same evening, leaving Aurelia’s children to the conscientious care of Joyce Till, Clarence Froggatt asked Jones to tack up his two-wheeled gig. Once readied, but a little apprehensive, he drove himself to Badger House. He pulled up outside the house, clambered down and rapped on the front door knocker. Clara answered, holding up an oil lamp.

  ‘Good evening, Mrs…er…Osborne. Remember me?’

  Clara gasped. ‘Goodness! It’s Clarence, isn’t it?’

  ‘As ever was, Mrs Osborne.’ She discerned an amiable smile.

  In the days he courted Kate she found that she liked him. ‘Well, Clarence, this is a surprise and no two ways. What can I say? Except as I was that sorry to hear of young Harriet’s passing away. It must have been so hard for you. Such a lovely, decent girl, I always thought.’

  ‘She was, Mrs Osborne, and it’s been a very difficult time.’ He shivered and rubbed his gloved hands together.

  ‘And you have a son.’

  ‘I do, and he’s well, Mrs Osborne.’

  ‘So what can I do for you, Clarence?’

  ‘I’ve called to see Algie, if he’s in.’

  Clara was all too familiar with Algie’s enmity towards Clarence lately, so decided she would not invite him in. ‘Let me go and tell him, Clarence. Best if I send him out to you,’ she said apologetically.

  ‘Very well, Mrs Osborne, thank you.’ So he waited outside in the cold, his breath rising like steam.

  Carrying the same oil lamp, Algie appeared, unsmiling, but for effect. The visit was unexpected, but he had already guessed its purpose, and he appreciated the gesture, acknowledging that it would have taken a certain boldness on Clarence’s part.

  ‘Hello, Algie,’ Clarence greeted with no sign of rancour. ‘I’ve come to take you out for a drink. We need to talk. It’s time we forgot our differences.’

  For a second, Algie was stumped for a suitable reply, then simply said, ‘Wait there. I’ll get my hat and coat.’

  Clarence smiled to himself and approached the gig. He had not known what to expect from Algie, and was thankful that his approach had been so readily accepted. Within half a minute Algie joined him, wrapped in a warm coat, scarf and hat.

  ‘It’s damned cold tonight, Algie,’ he remarked conversationally. ‘Think there’ll be a frost?’

  ‘Sure to be.’

  ‘Look, I hope you don’t mind my calling on you—’

  ‘It was a good thought, Clarence – in the circumstances,’ Algie replied, interrupting him. ‘And timely. As you say, we need to put our quarrels behind us, you and me.’

  ‘We need a decent hostelry with a roaring fire, eh, so we can talk?’

  ‘How about the Court House?’

  ‘Yes, the Court House. Ideal. It’s no distance.’ Clarence flicked the reins and the horse moved forward.

  For a few minutes they remained unspeaking, still uncomfortable with each other, both keeping the meat of what each wanted to say to the other until they were settled with a tankard of ale apiece. It was Algie who spoke first, feeling the need to break the awkward pause.

  ‘Clarence, let me say first off how sorry I was that Harriet passed away. I can understand what a terrible time it was for you. I was fond of Harriet as you know. Such a decent, level-headed girl.’

  ‘Thank you, Algie.’

  ‘So how is your son doing?’

  ‘George? Thank you, he’s thriving, I’m happy to say. And from tonight he has the company of a new brother and sister – Aurelia’s children. I collected them earlier.’

  No mention of Christina being his daughter too, Algie thought, but decided it was hardly appropriate to say as much yet.

  ‘I imagine you’re looking forward to a new life with Aurelia and her children.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘From what I’ve gleaned about your past relationship, I reckon you must have been made for each other. Pity you missed out first time around, eh? Yet I don’t suppose it’ll be that simple with a ready-made family to start off with, which you wouldn’t have bargained for five or six years ago.’

  ‘You’re not trying to put me off, are you, Algie, at the eleventh hour?’

  Algie smiled to himself as the horse trotted on in the darkness with only the carriage lamps to light the way; just a day or two ago he would have moved heaven and earth to try and prevent the marriage.

  ‘I wouldn’t dream, Clarence. After what you’ve both been through…’

  They had reached the Court House. Clarence drew the gig to a halt outside and they stepped down. In the saloon bar, smoke was drifting in skeins, lit by candles that flickered as the movement of air from the opened door wafted over.

  ‘What’s your fancy, Algie?’

  ‘A pint of India pale, please.’

  Algie headed towards a cast iron table close to the coal fire that was burning brightly in the grate, and sat down. Half a dozen or so locals were present, some standing at the bar, others randomly seated, one with a dog at his feet, so there was a hum of several conversations.

  Clarence walked over with the drinks, the frothy head from each dripping on the floor. He placed them on the table and sat down opposite Algie.

  ‘So…here we are…’

  ‘Here we are,’ Algie repeated. He raised his tankard. ‘Cheers!’

  Clarence smiled. ‘Cheers, Algie.’ He took a swig.

  ‘I suppose Aurelia has told you I was dead set against you marrying her when I first heard of it.’

  ‘So she said…To be honest with you, Algie, I can well understand it. I appreciate you must have thought a lot of her.’

  ‘I still think a lot of her, Clarence. But I felt I had an axe to grind with you besides, over the way you arranged for my eviction from the factory premises we occupied. I still do, if you want to know the truth.’ There…it was out. Get that on the table first. Algie supped his beer, awaiting Clarence’s response.

  ‘How is the bicycle manufacturing business?’

  ‘Thriving, thank you,’ Algie answer
ed. ‘Despite your efforts.’

  ‘Look, I understand perfectly your resentment, Algie. And my objective, my motive, was totally wrong.’

  ‘Is that an apology?’

  ‘I suppose it is, yes. I’d like to explain…I had inherited some money – you might have heard – and I decided that rather than rent a house for Harriet and me, I would buy a piece of land and have one built. I bought a plot with the initial intention of building my house there. I only found out later that your business was located on it. But Harriet had no intention of living there. She wanted to live in Kingswinford, surrounded by open fields, away from the filth and smoke of industry. Hence my buying the plot and building the house in Stream Road. Then, when I became aware of your liaison with Aurelia, to say I felt bitter about it would be putting it mildly. So I saw that plot of land as a means of getting even with you. I wanted to cause you some grief. I could have let you remain there, of course, and pay the rent to me, but I was bent on hurting you.’

  ‘Well, you did and no two ways. It cost me a heap of money.’

  ‘As I said, I was in the wrong. I do apologise. And if you still need money, Algie, I’m willing to help. If it’ll make things straight between us.’

  ‘No, I don’t want your money, Clarence, although it’s decent of you to offer. I’m already in hock to the bank.’

  ‘I wasn’t considering it a loan. More in reparation.’

  Algie smiled and took another quaff of ale. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’

  ‘Never more so.’

  ‘No, Clarence. I appreciate the gesture, but I succeed or fail by my own efforts. Anyway, I accept your apology. It’s sufficient – thank you. I understand…’ He finished off his beer in one draught, and added, ‘I would very likely have done the same if our roles had been reversed. You’ve been man enough to admit what I suspected in the first place. Let it be a bygone. The business is over it now.’

  ‘Shall we shake on it then?’

  Algie offered his hand and they shook, with smiling faces. The tension between them instantly eased, which was a relief to both men, each welcoming the return of some long-lost geniality.