‘You’ve no choice,’ he told her brusquely. ‘It’s either this or live on the streets.’
‘But it’s a hovel, George.’
‘Don’t fuss,’ he said. ‘There are pie shops just round the corner so you’ll not go hungry, and they do a good ale at the Pig and Whistle, which you’ll be able to find easy enough, so Mrs Grimshawe says, and there’s a baker’s, and a butcher’s and you’ve got your things. You’ll mek out.’
She was tired and hungry and her coat was soaking wet and her hat was wrecked and her back ached and her feet were sore and she didn’t want to make out. ‘I can’t stay here,’ she said.
‘Like I said, you’ve no choice,’ George said. ‘I’ve not got the money for owt else. You’ll just have to make do wi’ this till I can find a job and start making money again. You’ll be fine here with Mrs Grimshawe. She comes from Leeds.’ And he kissed her forehead, once and perfunctorily, and left her.
She sat on the bed and cried for a very long time. But there was nobody to hear her and nobody to take any notice of her, so in the end she dried her eyes as well as she could on her damp sleeve, took off her coat and hung it on a nail that was sticking out of the door, and unpacked her bag. Almost the first things she found were the pen, ink and paper he’d told her to pack that morning. That’s it, she thought. I’ll write to my boys. They’ll look after me. And she sat down at her nasty cheap table and began to write.
‘My dear George, You will be shocked to know that I am living in a very small room in a dreadful place called Burton Street, which is somewhere near Euston Station. Please, please come and visit me. Your father has gone abroad and for the life of me I don’t know what to do or where to turn.’
Two days later the sun was shining and Shelton House was heady with the scent of roses because it was Mary’s wedding day and her bouquet lay ready for her on the dining room table. The guests had been arriving all morning and the excitement was increasing with every arrival. Milly and Felix had brought Audrey and her two nursery maids with them because Milly said she didn’t think young Albert could be trusted not to disgrace himself, which he duly did, being suddenly sick all over his pretty new dress so that he had to be carried away upstairs to be cleaned up and changed, while his mother sighed. Sarah Jane was being angelic and looking extremely pretty in her blue bridesmaid’s gown with a chaplet of rosebuds on her fair hair. She was very conscious of being part of an occasion and stood between the two other bridesmaids, who were school friends of Mary’s and had been commissioned to look after her, holding their hands and watching the comings and goings, owl-eyed.
What with friends and family and neighbours, there were so many people come to wish the young pair well that they made a noticeable procession as they all set off together for the church, laughing and chatting through the crowded streets, as passers-by waved and nodded at them and the church bells rang above their heads. Jane felt quite dizzy with the success of it all.
And then there they were, gathered in the cool and quiet of the church and there was the vicar waiting for them and Toby and Nat in their fine clothes standing before the altar rail and they were barely settled in their pews before Nathaniel and Mary were walking down the aisle towards them with the three bridesmaids behind them, Mary looking more beautiful than Jane had ever seen her, in her white dress with its fashionable bell-shaped skirt – the Queen was right, white was the perfect colour for a bride – and Nathaniel even more proud than he’d been at Milly’s wedding. And the congregation hushed as Mary handed her bouquet to Sarah-Jane and the age-old ceremony began. ‘Dearly beloved …’
‘I’ve never been as happy as this in the whole of my life,’ Jane said, as she and Nathaniel were walking back to the house at the head of their guests.
‘Not even at our wedding?’ he teased. ‘I thought that was rather good myself.’
‘This is different,’ she said and when he pretended to look crestfallen, ‘that was just us. This is our entire family, every single one of them and all our friends and neighbours. This is simply perfect.’
‘That I will allow,’ he said. ‘So it is.’ And he led the way into the house.
But there is a price to pay for perfection. Later that afternoon when the newlyweds had been driven off to the station, dappled with rose petals, and the guests had made their farewells and drifted away group by group and even Nat had left them to go off with his friends from the newspaper, she and Nathaniel were suddenly alone in a house that felt decidedly empty and lonely.
‘I shall miss them,’ Jane said. ‘It’s going to be odd in this house without them.’
‘Get your bonnet on,’ Nathaniel told her, ‘and we will go for one of our walks. I could do with some fresh air after all that crush.’
They followed the familiar pathways under the familiar sun, arm in arm, and for the first mile they talked about the wedding, reliving its moments and enjoying them all over again. Then Nathaniel surprised her by saying he had a bit of news he thought she would enjoy. ‘Time for a breather, I think,’ he said. ‘Under that oak tree would be the perfect place.’
They sat together on the grassy knoll beneath the tree and Jane took off her bonnet, closed her eyes and raised her face towards the sun like a country girl. ‘So what is it, this news of yours?’ she said. She wasn’t particularly interested. News was trivial after such a wedding.
‘Have you read the newspaper today?’
No, she hadn’t. ‘Newspapers were the last thing I were thinking about this morning.’
‘Then I will tell you,’ he said. ‘Mr Hudson has gone into exile.’
She opened her eyes at once. ‘Left the country, do ’ee mean?’
‘Left the country,’ he told her. ‘There are too many creditors after him and if he stays here, he’s like to be arrested and sent to debtors’ prison.’
She was delighted. ‘Well, good riddance,’ she said. ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish.’
He thought for a minute before he spoke again and then he said, ‘You really do hate him, don’t you?’
‘Aye,’ she said easily. ‘I do.’
‘I think I’ve always know it,’ he told her, ‘but I’ve never really understood why it should be. There must be a reason for a passion as strong as that.’
‘Aye,’ she said again, ‘there is. I’ve known him a long time.’ And then she spent a minute thinking. ‘Happen I should tell you a story.’
‘A fairy story on a wedding day,’ he said. ‘What could be better?’
‘No,’ she told him seriously. ‘This is no fairy story. I only wish it were. This is true.’ She paused again, only briefly this time, for he was looking at her so lovingly. ‘When he were nobbut a lad,’ she said, ‘the great Mr Hudson fathered a child. He were just a village lad in those days and village lads were expected to stand by the babies they fathered and marry the girl and make an honest woman of her. But that wouldn’t do for the great Mr Hudson. Oh no. He was above taking responsibility. Responsibility was for other people. He was all for himself, even then. Me, me, me, all the time. That was the great Mr Hudson. So he paid a bastardy fee and walked away from the village and left the girl to bring up her baby on her own. Which were mortal hard work.’
He finished the story for her. ‘But the child grew up into a fine young woman, did she not, and now she is Lady Fitzwilliam and has four fine children of her own.’
It should have been a shock that he knew but in an odd way it was what she expected. ‘How long have ’ee known?’
‘For about three minutes. Possibly less.’
That made her smile.
‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ he asked, and his voice was gentle and loving.
‘It wasn’t the sort of thing I could tell anybody. Folk are uncommon cruel to a mother wi’ no wedding ring on her finger. I thought you would think less of me if I told you.’
‘Less of you?’
‘Aye,’ she admitted.
‘Oh my dear girl,’ he said. ‘You were quite,
quite wrong. I would have thought more of you, not less. I would have loved you even more than I already did. As I do now.’
She was close to tears. ‘Truly?’
‘Truly,’ he said and stood up, brushing the twigs and dead leaves from his trousers. ‘Time for us to go on with our walk, I think.’
She wiped her eyes, put on her bonnet and held out her hands so that he could lift her to her feet. ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘You’re right. ’Tis time for us to go on.’
By the Same Author
Girl on the Orlop Deck
Copyright
© Beryl Kingston 2011
First published in Great Britain 2011
This edition 2012
ISBN 978 0 7198 0744 2(epub)
ISBN 978 0 7198 0745 9 (mobi)
ISBN 978 0 7198 0746 6 (pdf)
ISBN 978 0 7090 9095 3 (print)
Robert Hale Limited
Clerkenwell House
Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.halebooks.com
The right of Beryl Kingston to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Off the Rails Page 36
