The Factory Girl

by Nancy Carson

  ‘But you weren’t with Will then, I remember.’

  ‘No, I didn’t know Will then. I was with my young man at the time – Billy Witts…It’s all right, we can mention him.’ She laughed again with mild embarrassment and glanced at Will. ‘Will knows all about him.’

  ‘Of course, Billy Witts. Whatever happened to him, I wonder?’ Eunice said.

  ‘Oh, he married somebody else and started a family.’

  ‘So I believe,’ Neville remarked scornfully. ‘The Crash all but bankrupted him, we heard, eh, Eunice? But he’s a big noise in a foundry business now, I understand. Still – enough of him, eh? Look. Please sit down. Make yourselves at home.’

  Henzey smoothed her black satin dress against her bottom and thighs as she sat down, facing Eunice. Neville noticed how the dress accentuated every curve of her body.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he stammered, reluctantly dragging his eyes away from his guest. ‘I, er…I haven’t asked you yet what you’d like to drink.’

  He’d been in Henzey’s company less than five minutes and already he felt himself trembling. That same potent desire he’d known six years earlier was already stirring inexorably within him once more. She’d barely aged, except that after six long years and marriage, she had evolved into much more of a woman; a much more sophisticated woman; an even more desirable woman. With a sensation in his chest that felt as if he’d downed a jug full of ice cold water, he took the extra glasses that were standing in the middle of the table and poured dry sherry which he handed to his guests. Conversation dwindled meanwhile to how pleasant the weather had been lately, what a fine show of lupins and foxgloves there was this year, and look how the lawn was yellowing despite frequent watering by the gardener.

  Henzey sipped her drink and her eyes met Eunice’s.

  ‘How long have you and Will been married, Henzey?’

  ‘Just over two years, Mrs Worthington. We married in April thirty-three. Just after my twenty-first birthday.’

  ‘Oh, please call me Eunice. I’d like to think of us as friends, even after all this time. I must confess I somehow did not expect Will to arrive with such a young wife. I mean no offence, Will, but Neville had led me to expect a man of about thirty-five.’

  ‘That is my age, Eunice. Henzey’s my second wife, though. My first wife passed away.’

  ‘Oh, I say. How jolly clumsy of me. Do forgive me. Of course, I had no idea.’

  ‘Well, of course you didn’t,’ Will agreed. ‘It was some years ago. You weren’t to know.’

  ‘That’s awful. How did she die? Do you mind talking about it?’

  ‘Not at all. She died in childbirth. It would have been our first child.’

  ‘But how utterly tragic. Did you lose the child as well?’

  Will nodded.

  ‘That must have knocked you for six, old man,’ Neville commented.

  Will tasted his sherry and put his glass on the table. ‘Oh, at the time, yes. And for a long time afterwards, I can tell you. I’d more or less resigned myself to being a widower for the rest of my days. Till I met Henzey…’

  ‘So how did you two meet?’ Eunice wanted to know.

  Will and Henzey explained together, each filling in snippets that the other failed to impart. Eunice and Neville listened with interest. By the time they’d finished their story, Eunice received a signal to say that dinner was ready.

  ‘I didn’t realise you were such a celebrated artist, Henzey,’ Neville said, seizing the opportunity to flatter her again. ‘Perhaps I should commission you to do portraits of Eunice and myself.’

  Henzey smiled. ‘I’d be glad to, if only I could find the time. Being a housewife and working for a living keeps me ever so busy.’

  ‘I can well imagine,’ Eunice said. ‘It surprises me that they don’t apply a marriage bar at Lucas’s, you know. Do many married women work there nowadays?’

  ‘Quite a few,’ Henzey replied. ‘If you work well, they look after you. Nobody suggested I should give up my job when I got married. In fact, I’m being made up to supervisor soon.’

  Neville said, ‘Well, congratulations. I’m certain you deserve it, too. But times are changing, don’t you think? I see no good reason for firms nowadays to bar married women, like some still do, especially now the economy seems to be picking up at long last. Hell, we’ve had over five years of depression now. It’s enough for anybody…’

  Eunice intervened. She had no wish for her guests to be bored by one of Neville’s dissertations on the state of the economy. ‘Well, I hope you’re all hungry. Cook’s done us rather proud this evening.’

  ‘I can smell it,’ Will said. ‘It smells wonderful.’

  ‘Then shall we go in?’

  Neville went to the back of Eunice’s wheelchair and wheeled her up the ramp that gave easy access to the French window, leaving their glasses on the table outside for the maid to clear away. Neville settled her in front of the table before gallantly seating Henzey opposite her.

  The dining room was spacious, oak panelled, with another gallery of oil paintings hanging on the walls. An elaborate crystal chandelier that had been converted to electricity hung ethereally over the table. The table was not large, but it was immaculately laid with silver cutlery and fine cut crystal glassware. Another maid hovered, ready to serve.

  The first course was smoked salmon, served with a dry white wine that Neville informed them was a Sancerre. Conversation remained light; about the wine, about some of the pictures in the room, and the house. While they waited for their main course they discussed graver issues: the apprehension they all felt about Germany’s increasing naval power and the implications, following the resignation of Ramsay MacDonald, of Stanley Baldwin once more becoming Prime Minister of the all-party National Government.

  A main course of roast duck followed and it was the first time Henzey had tasted duck, although she didn’t wish to let it be known. She privately decided that it was delicious and thoroughly enjoyed it, while Neville and Will led the conversation.

  ‘Tell us about yourself, Will,’ Neville said after sipping the fine 1929 Beaune he’d chosen from his cellar, to accompany the main course.

  ‘Oh, there’s not much to tell,’ Will answered modestly. ‘You know about my first wife’s death and my meeting Henzey.’

  ‘Then tell us about your early life, your childhood, your upbringing.’

  ‘I was brought up in very modest circumstances, Neville. My mother and father were very religious…and very strict with it. We were quite poor, I recall, but that was unimportant to us at the time. We all seemed to manage well enough. My father was a hammer driver in a forge making hand tools and, as long as he owed nobody money, he was content. He never drank, nor swore either. I can’t say I’m religious, though. It didn’t rub off on me.’ He smiled and resumed eating.

  ‘Do you have any brothers or sisters, Will?’ Eunice asked.

  ‘Mmm,’ he nodded, and swallowed. ‘A sister, Sophie, and a brother called Samuel. Both quite a bit older than me. I think Sophie was ten when I arrived, and Sam was twelve.’

  ‘That seems quite a gap,’ Neville commented.

  ‘I suppose it would be normally,’ Henzey said. ‘Tell them, Will, that Sophie and Sam are not your real brother and sister.’

  Neville and Eunice glanced at each other.

  Will sipped his wine, then placed his glass back on the table. ‘Yes, that’s true. I was a fostered child, you see.’

  ‘I say,’ Neville exclaimed, with another brief but triumphal glance at Eunice. ‘And do you know who your real parents were?’

  ‘Not really. I like to imagine they were a married couple and that they both died – but who knows? I once toyed with the idea of trying to find out but, when I thought about it more deeply, I decided against it. I imagined that if I asked any questions it would upset my foster parents, and I wouldn’t have done that for the world. They loved me dearly and I loved them. They gave me their name, they sacrificed their own worldly comforts so
that I could have a decent education. They gave me everything I had. Why appear to be discontent by digging for information about my real mother and father?’

  ‘And are your foster parents still alive?’ It was Eunice who enquired.

  ‘Oh, yes. They’re not so active in their religious fervour these days but they’re both still very much alive.’

  ‘And you see them regularly?’

  ‘Of course. They’re not neglected. Far from it. We visit them regularly…’ Will made a show of looking around him. ‘I imagine that my upbringing was drastically different from yours, Neville, if this house is anything to go by?’

  Ironically, it would have been a perfect cue to ease Will into the certain knowledge that he was Neville’s own long-lost twin brother. It was the reason he had been invited to dinner. It was the one thing that had consumed Neville lately. To be reunited with his brother after so many years, after so long wondering who and where he was, had been a latent priority. And now, finally, they had met.

  But Neville had not reckoned on his brother’s wife being Henzey Kite. Seeing her again, being close to her, close enough to touch her and smell her perfume, had rekindled that ardent desire for her which had tormented him before. He could not help it. In 1929 he had fallen in love with her at first sight, and would have been prepared to give up everything just to be with her. Nothing would have held him back. Not even Eunice’s wealth. Things had changed since, however. Nowadays he called the tune. By virtue of her incapacity Eunice was totally reliant on him now.

  Neville had believed he would never see Henzey again, although visions of her with that cad Billy Witts plagued him intolerably for more than a year afterwards. She was gone, lost forever, and thoughts of her diminished with the years. Yet, unbelievably, here she was some six years later, sitting opposite him at his own table, smiling radiantly at him, waiting for him to tell his life story; but accompanied by her husband who, damn it, was the twin brother he’d longed to know. She was the most beautiful, most desirable creature he’d ever had the good fortune to meet and he wanted her more now than he had in 1929. She might be married. She might have been caught. It did not mean she had been secured.

  Neville’s desire created a huge dilemma, though. How could he now offer Will Parish all that he’d so graciously planned, when his most basic instinct was to take his wife? Given half a chance he knew he would steal her from him, sleep with her, make love to her with the utmost conviction, without sparing so much as a thought for Will. He would be prepared to make a cuckold of his own brother. How could he have been prepared to give him so much with one hand and now, suddenly, contrive to rob him of so much more with the other? To do so would make him the biggest hypocrite who ever drew breath.

  Best to offer Will nothing. Best to even forget him.

  He glanced at Henzey again. Her bright, blue eyes were still sparkling at him with anticipation over her crystal goblet.

  ‘We’re still waiting,’ she said familiarly and sipped her wine.

  ‘Yes, we’re still waiting,’ Eunice confirmed. ‘Tell our guests about how you were similarly dropped into the bosom of the Worthington household.’

  Damn Eunice!

  He shot her a glare. She’d practically given it all way. Deliberately, no doubt, for she would have guessed already about the turmoil building up inside him. Already she would have recognised his rejuvenated longing for this girl. Already she would have realised the struggle that was raging between his noblest and his basest instincts, for she knew him well. He took some wine to stall giving an answer and called the maid to pour more for his guests. He needed a few more seconds to think. If he must reveal this aspect of his life which he would now prefer to keep quiet, then he would give away as little as possible. Certainly, he no longer wished it known that he had a twin brother. Not now.

  The maid finished pouring the wine and left them. The other three around the table were all looking at him, waiting for him to speak. At last, he did.

  ‘Surprisingly, like you, Will, my mother was not who she seemed to be, though my father was. I’ll explain…It appears that my father was partial to seducing the more attractive maids of the household, and some who were not, I daresay…’

  ‘A common enough pastime among the gentry,’ Will remarked, smiling.

  ‘Indeed, but one that had a direct bearing on me, Will. My real mother, you see, was one such maid…That makes me illegitimate, if you hadn’t already worked it out. She died, apparently, when I was still very small, and the head of a modest family who had befriended her returned me here, apparently with the intention of challenging my father to accept responsibility for me. It so transpires, however, that my over-sexed father had died by this time in the Boer War, leaving a young, childless and very attractive widow, who was happy to accept me and bring me up as her own.’ He sipped his wine again. ‘So you see, Will, our beginnings were not so different. That I was reared in wealth doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve lived a more fulfilled life, that I’ve been more fortunate than yourself.’ He glanced at Henzey, a knowing glance, and she believed she perceived his meaning, remembering what he had insinuated years ago about his flawed marriage. ‘Some things cannot be measured in monetary value.’

  ‘But tell them about the twin,’ Eunice urged.

  Neville sighed, and could have murdered his invalid wife there and then. ‘Yes,’ he reluctantly confessed, ‘it seems I had a twin brother. But goodness only knows what happened to him.’ His eyes met Eunice’s with an expression that defied her to gainsay it.

  ‘You’ve no idea who he was?’ Henzey asked.

  ‘Pos…’ But Eunice was immediately cut off by Neville nudging her sharply under the table.

  ‘No idea at all, Henzey. No idea at all.’

  ‘It’s a great shame,’ Eunice commented, going along with Neville’s change of tack; but grudgingly, because she was certain she could perceive Henzey as the cause of it. ‘It’s a great shame because whoever he turned out to be, I’m certain that Neville would be more than willing to share with him the Worthington family’s good fortune in some way or other.’ She looked first at Neville, then at Will and recognised the resemblance in their eyes that had so far eluded Henzey.

  Henzey laid her knife and fork on her dinner plate and leaned back in her seat. ‘You know, I’ve heard your story before, Neville,’ she said with resignation. ‘A friend of mine I used to work with told me the story years ago. A maid – her mother’s friend actually – worked at some well-to-do house in Birmingham, and she was put in the family way by the owner’s son. She had twins, but she died two years later from consumption. Somebody took one of the babies and looked after him, but they couldn’t afford to keep the other as well. They were very poor, you see. So my friend’s grandfather took this other baby to this well-to-do house so that the real father could take the responsibility of looking after it. I bet it’s you she was talking about, Neville. I bet any money it’s you…Fancy that.’

  ‘Whose grandfather?’ Eunice asked, trying to assimilate the story. ‘Whose grandfather delivered the child to this house you mention?’

  ‘My friend’s grandfather,’ she answered excitedly. ‘It was my friend’s mother who was a friend of…d’you know, I nearly had her name then…the girl who had the twins.’

  Neville could have provided Henzey with his real mother’s name but thought better of it. It could provide confirmation of the truth of the story at some later date.

  ‘That’s uncannily interesting,’ he said. ‘And more than a coincidence, it seems to me, Henzey. Where did this maid who had the twins go to live when she left this well-to-do house, as you call it?’

  ‘Oh, somewhere in Dudley, I think.’

  ‘And it was your friend’s mother who knew her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is she still alive – your friend’s mother?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  Neville’s nobler instincts were emerging again. Often he had wondered about his real mother. He knew very
little about her and was anxious to know more. ‘Could you put me in touch with her, d’you think?’

  ‘Clara…that’s my friend…works in George Mason’s in Dudley Market Place. She has Wednesday afternoons off. I could telephone her from work for you, if you like, and she could probably take you to her mother’s one Wednesday afternoon.’

  ‘Oh, I’d like to do that, Henzey, if you could arrange it. I’d love to talk to her. The old lady, whoever she is, must have some information about my mother. Perhaps even a photograph.’

  ‘She might know something about your twin brother, as well.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. My twin brother. Who knows what information she might have stored in her memories?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can arrange, Neville.’

  ‘I’d appreciate it very much.’

  There was a lull in the conversation while everybody finished their course. As the plates were cleared away, the topic changed and Eunice began asking Henzey about her own family. Henzey held their attention until pudding was served, during which time Neville and Will became engrossed in their own discussion about their mutual project at Lucas’s.

  Eventually coffee was served, followed by brandies, and the four decided to go out into the garden once again before darkness robbed the sun of its reddening glow. Eunice was keen to show Henzey the flowers and shrubs she conscientiously tended herself from her wheelchair throughout the summer. She asked Henzey to take over pushing her across the lawn towards the flowerbeds while they split away from Will and Neville. A paper aeroplane floated past Henzey, prompting her to look up, and a cheeky boyish face grinned down at her from an upstairs window.

  Henzey picked it up. ‘Oh, is this yours?’ she called pleasantly.

  The boy nodded.

  ‘Frederic!’ his mother chided. ‘We have guests.’ Then to Henzey: ‘One’s son.’ And back to Frederic: ‘Please don’t litter the garden, dear.’

  ‘May we come down and fetch it?’ the child asked.