by Nancy Carson
She grinned impishly, intent on winding him up. ‘Well, I suppose it depends whether you have somebody ill in the family, or whether you are desperate to find a sweeper-up.’
He laughed. ‘You’ll get on well with Eunice, if that’s how you argue…Years ago Eunice would’ve championed the suffragettes’ cause, had she been old enough.’
‘So how old is she?’
‘Thirty-three. Two years younger than me.’
‘Hmm. She doesn’t look it, for all her being stuck in a wheelchair. She’s a lovely looking woman…I bet you fell head over heels for her when you first met.’
‘Yes, I did rather…But that’s another story.’
‘So you’re only the same age as Will? Fancy. And I thought you were older.’
‘She always says I look older than my years. She reckons it’s the beard.’
‘So why don’t you shave it off? I bet you’re really quite nice looking underneath all those thick, black whiskers,’ she said archly. ‘That’s all anybody can see. You’ve got nice, expressive eyes, though. I’ve always thought you’ve got nice eyes. Will’s got nice eyes, too.’
Her candour amused him and he chuckled, despite the comparison with Will. Evidently, she still had not connected them. ‘Oh? You notice such things?’
‘It’s the artist in me. I can’t help it. I notice everybody’s features. As if everybody is a potential subject.’
‘So, if I shaved off the beard you might fancy me?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘I know you didn’t. I’m just testing the water.’
She smiled to her herself. ‘In any case your hair’s too long,’ she ventured playfully.
He didn’t answer and she wondered whether she had offended him by her well-meant honesty. She wanted to apologise, but didn’t see how she could plausibly gainsay something she firmly believed. They drove on in silence for a while, through Bearwood, towards Quinton and the start of the fast new road that took you as far as Wolverhampton.
She needn’t have worried, however. How could he argue with what he knew to be the truth? He’d been told it often enough. Resolutely he stepped on the throttle pedal and the powerful car surged forward, the wind noise from the open windows increasing with the speed. Henzey wound up the window on her side to lessen the howl and the draught, leaving just a slot at the top. He turned his head and smiled reassuringly at her, taking in her slender figure beside him; the flawless, lightly tanned skin of her arms; the way her light, summer skirt tormentingly outlined the contours of her thighs as she sat. She looked so clean and fresh and he longed to touch her, to hold her to him, to feel her firm, young woman’s body against his own. He yearned to sniff her hair, her creamy skin, to experience her sweet gentle breath on his face. He’d been looking forward so much to being alone with her, dreaming of what might come of it, ever since she’d first mentioned Clara Maitland and her mother. God bless Clara Maitland. And the added bonus was that Henzey was here with the blessings of both Will and Eunice.
He drove expertly; fast. The speed was exhilarating but Henzey felt safe. She was enjoying herself, her well-being increasing with her growing awareness of his partiality for her. Yet she had no notion of the raging intensity of it. She had no idea at all how fiercely the flame within him was burning. How could she? He could hardly declare it now she was a married woman. Nor would she have expected him to anyway, as a friend and colleague of her husband. Thus, she felt no pressure; just contentment.
They left the wide, arrow-straight road at Burnt Tree and headed towards Dudley town. The limestone keep of the old castle, bathed in sunshine, came into view high on their right. As they crossed the railway bridge at the station, a cloud of dense white steam from a passing locomotive in the cutting beneath it engulfed the hoardings that advertised Palethorpe’s Sausage, Barber’s Teas and Sunlight Soap, only to disperse in the heat of the sunny afternoon. The Station Hotel reminded Henzey of Billy Witts and their first tryst on her seventeenth birthday. It seemed a lifetime ago. She smiled to herself and wound her window down again. What would Billy make of it if he could see her now in Neville Worthington’s lovely new Swallow?
‘Is it far now?’ Neville enquired.
‘Just a couple of minutes.’ They drove through the Market Place, deserted since today was early closing. She peered between the empty market trestles and the red and white awnings that rippled in the warm breeze, to take a look at George Mason’s store. Life had changed so much since she had worked there as a young girl. They passed Top Church on their left, and Henzey caught the rich, savoury smell emanating from Julia Hanson’s Brewery opposite, evoking more memories. ‘That smell always makes me feel hungry,’ she commented. ‘It reminds me of potatoes cooking.’
Then the pungent aroma of a pickled onion factory filled the air.
‘I suppose that smell reminds you of cheese sandwiches, eh?’ Neville suggested.
‘No, the pickled herrings my mother used to cook for our suppers sometimes.’
‘I’ve never had pickled herrings.’
‘You don’t know what you’ve missed. Honestly.’
‘As each day passes I realise it the more.’
‘Turn left here, Neville…now right. Here we are, Brettell Street…A bit further…Pull up here, on the right.’
Neville stopped the car and they got out. Clara was peering through the nets of her front room window awaiting their arrival. She waved, then opened the door to them.
‘I can’t believe you’re one of those little twins, Mr Worthington,’ Clara said when she and Henzey had brought each other reasonably up to date with gossip. ‘My mother can’t wait to meet you.’
‘I can’t wait to meet your mother, Mrs Maitland.’
‘It was just on the off chance that I happened to tell Henzey the story, years ago. Now, would you like a cup of tea here, or would you rather wait till we get to mother’s? It’s not far.’
‘I’m keen to meet your mother,’ Neville said. ‘We’ll wait, if it’s all the same to you, Mrs Maitland.’
‘Oh, call me Clara. Let’s not be so formal.’
So they agreed to call each other by their Christian names. They filed out and climbed into Neville’s car.
‘Ooh, I say, this is a lovely motor car,’ Clara said, settling herself in as if for a long ride.
Henzey nodded and smiled. Two minutes later they clambered out again outside a row of crumbling, old, terraced houses in a road called Angel Street; houses not unlike those the Kites lived in before they moved to the dairy house. They walked through an entry that led onto an open dirt yard with a brewhouse, overlooked by a squalid factory with rusty cast iron window frames and dozens of broken panes, then turned left to see an open door, which Clara entered.
‘Yoo-hoo! Mother?’
A voice answered.
Clara, smiling, beckoned Henzey and Neville forward, since they had held back politely until they knew Clara’s mother was aware of their presence. Now they followed Clara into the small scullery, Henzey first, then Neville. It was so much like their old house in Cromwell Street with its black leaded grate, its gales holding a black enamelled kettle that sighed over the coals. There was a similar chenille fringe hanging from the mantel shelf, a crucifix upon it, the mirror over it; an old, black, marble clock with gold painted pillars flanking the face, an elaborately decorated, japanned tea caddy and a pin-cushion. The bottom stair jutted out into the room and, adjacent to the stairs door stood the cellar door. It was home from home. Only the furniture was different – big and dark and robust, filling the room with its overbearing Victorian bulk. Hanging from a picture rail on the back wall, next to a huge dresser, was a faded old sepia toned photograph of a man, which Neville scrutinised with interest after they had all been introduced.
‘That was my father, Theophilus Newton, God rest his soul,’ Mrs Round, Clara’s mother, informed him. ‘A good man, he was.’
‘Is there any water in the kettle, Mother?’ Clara enquired.
‘I’ll put some tea in the pot then.’
But Mrs Round pointed out that it was all done, ready. Cups and saucers were already laid on a tray on the sideboard with milk and sugar, and fruit cake on a glass cake stand that was adorned with a spotless white lace doyly. ‘I like to be organised,’ she said, almost apologetically.
Neville smiled at her. ‘An admirable virtue, Mrs Round.’
‘Well years agoo I was in service, an’ I still like to observe the niceties.Specially when I get a bit o’ company. Sit yer down each.’
Charlotte Round was about sixty, Henzey imagined. She had a homely plumpness, and her eyes were bright. Her hair was grey and swept back into a bun, and you could see the hairpins sticking out of it. Her spectacles were rimless and her teeth were her own, except that a front one was missing from the top row. Gold earrings bobbed from her pierced ears. She wore a plain, navy frock and a clean pinafore, that still showed the creases from when she had ironed it.
‘I ai’ clapped eyes on yo’, young Henzey, since yo’ worked at George Mason’s. How long’s that bin?’
‘Must be five years, Mrs Round.’
‘Well, whatever they’m a-doin’ to yer, my wench, yo’m lookin’ well on it. So is this your ’usband?’
Henzey laughed and glanced at Neville. ‘No, Neville’s not my husband. He’s a friend of my husband, though.’
‘But you’m one of the twins, Clara tells me.’
‘I believe so,’ Neville replied. ‘At any rate my circumstances seem to match those of one of the twins your daughter told Henzey about. If we can establish that I am one of them, I’m keen to find out whatever I can about my mother.’
‘Well, fust of all,’ Mrs Round said, shuffling in anticipation, ‘do yer know the name o’ your mother, just to mek sure as yo’ ai’ tryin’ to kid me?’
‘Bessie Hipkiss,’ he answered without hesitation.
‘Bessie Hipkiss!’ Henzey exclaimed. ‘That’s the name I was trying to think of on Saturday night. Do you remember, Neville? So you knew it all the time and didn’t say. You crafty old devil.’
‘She was a maid in service at Wessex House, our family home,’ he went on. ‘My grandfather employed her before he died. All I know is that she and my father had a brief but er…active love affair before he announced his engagement to the woman he subsequently married, Magdalen Boulton-Hart, as she was then. Magdalen brought me up.’
Charlotte Round pressed her hands together in grateful thanks and looked up at the whitewashed ceiling, as if searching for sight of her Maker. She said, ‘Well, well, well! So you’m the one me father took back to that big house he told us about. Except as your father was already dead by then, wasn’t he? I looked after yer meself for weeks after Bessie died, yer know. Me and Mr Round was quite prepared to foster yer, but me father,’ she nodded at the photograph, ‘insisted that your real father should be forced to face his own responsibilities. It was a risk he took when he took yer back. But it paid off, lookin’ at yer now in your fine suit o’ clothes.’
‘Tell me about my mother, please, Mrs Round. What happened to her when she left Wessex House?’
‘She din’t leave of her own free will, Neville, she was kicked out. She would’ve bin an embarrassment to ’em, wun’t she, if she’d stayed? So she come directly to look for me father. I answered the door to her and I can remember it as if it was yesterday. It was bitter cold – proper brass monkey weather – windy and snowin’. New Year’s Day, it was, nineteen hundred.’
‘But why should she seek your father, Mrs Round? I don’t understand that at all. What was so special about him, as far as she was concerned?’
‘She was three or four months gone by this time and had got nowhere to live and nobody to turn to. Not a soul. By this time, yer see, her own mother an’ father was both dead and buried. My own father and mother had always bin close friends of Bessie’s mother and father, through the Methodist church, yer see. Strong Methodists, they was, all of ’em. They all ’elp one another out, if need be, Methodists. Bessie’s mother was Welsh, yer know and, ’course, a lot o’ Welsh folk am Methodists.’
‘So how was your father able to help her?’
‘Bessie was anxious as they shouldn’t put her in the work’ouse. They would’ve done in them days, yer know – not married and carryin’ a child. God, it was looked on worse than murder. She was determined to work an’ support her child when it arrived. But she needed a roof over her head. Not that she was askin’ me father to take her in. Oh, no, she wanted her independence, she made that plain. She wanted to be beholden to nobody and be a burden on nobody, God bless her. Me father owned a few old properties, as it happened, and he had an ’ouse vacant in Flood Street. It was in a vile state, though, filthy dirty. He let it to her rent free. Anyway, I took her to see it, an’ I could see as she was disappointed with it, ’cause it was in such a terrible state. Condemned, it was, to tell you the truth, but there was nothin’ else. Anyway, she took it an’ made the most of it, an’ got a job at the Midland Café in the Market Place till it was her time. She scrimped and saved and bought a few bits and pieces, and me and Mr Round gi’d her some bits an’ bobs o’ furniture of our own as we could spare.’
The kettle started to boil and Clara got up to make the tea. While it steeped, she sat down again to listen to the story.
‘Everybody was so kind, it seems,’ Neville was saying. ‘If only my own father could have contributed in some way instead of booting her out, she might be alive today.’
‘Well, that’s as maybe, my son. Summat as we’ll never know. But she tried hard, did Bessie. The biggest shock of all, though, was givin’ birth to twins. Can you imagine bein’ in the family way with no husband, an’ no money, knowin’ you’m gunn’ave a child, then havin’ two?’
‘She must have wondered what she’d done to deserve double punishment,’ Neville said.
‘Well, she accepted it quick enough. She was a worker, was Bessie. A lovely wench. After you was born she managed to get a bit of parish relief, but what little there was soon went on food and coal and clothes for yo’ babbies. I helped as much as I could – I did, honest – but Mr Round was out o’ work at the time. More often than not Bessie went without food herself so’s you two had summat in your bellies. But it was all too much for her and she suffered unmerciful. Bit by bit, she got worse. Pitiful, it was, to see her fadin’. Me father paid for the doctor to come, but he said she was consumptive. By the time you and your brother was two years old, she died – in my arms. I’ll never forget it.’
Charlotte took a handkerchief from the pocket of her pinafore and wiped a tear that was seeping from her left eye. They all remained quiet for a few moments while she relived that time with Bessie.
‘So did you and your husband look after both us babies when our mother died, Mrs Round?’ Neville asked.
‘For a time. But me father knew somebody at the chapel, who was only too glad to foster a child. The trouble was, they was poor themselves and they could only afford to take one of you. It was such a damn shame to split you up but, honestly, dear old father saw no other way round it. I bet you’d like to know what happened to your brother, wouldn’t you, Neville?’
‘Oh, I certainly would.’ It suddenly occurred to him that he might be wrong about Will Parish. He hoped he was. It would make his conscience so much easier where Henzey was concerned. ‘I most certainly would.’
‘Well, I’m sorry, my son, but after all these years I can’t even remember the name o’ the family what took him. I’ve got a feelin’ they moved out o’ Dudley, round about nineteen-twelve. Before the war at any rate. I lost track of ’em altogether.’
‘You never know, Mrs Round. He might well show up.’
‘Oh, I dearly hope he does,’ Charlotte said. ‘I’ve had the pleasure of seein’ you again after all these years. I should dearly love to see th’other
one. I can remember Bessie called him William, after Mr Gladstone. She called you Joseph, you know – after Joseph Chamberlain. She admired Joseph Chamberlain. I think she met him a time or two – at your house.’
Neville shook his head in disbelief. ‘It’s staggering to think that, if she’d lived, I’d be Joe Hipkiss and leading an altogether different life. I can’t begin to imagine it.’
‘So how come they called you Neville?’ Henzey asked.
‘After Joseph Chamberlain’s son, Neville,’ he answered. ‘Astonishing, isn’t it, that the Chamberlain family should influence my real mother and my foster mother to that extent?’
Clara got up, stirred the tea steeping in the pot and began to pour. She placed a cup and saucer in front of everyone, offered them milk and sugar, then a piece of her home baked cake. Talk of the twins was adjourned while they refreshed themselves, but was resumed afterwards. It was at about half past four that Henzey, concerned about preparing Will’s meal, suggested they should perhaps be leaving.
‘Well, yo’n gi’d me no end to think about, Neville, seein’ yer again after all these years,’ Charlotte said. ‘It’s bin such a pleasure to know yer again, lookin’ so well and so prosperous. Your mother would’ve bin ever so proud o’ yer, believe me. Any road, I hope as you’ll come and see me again, when Mr Round’s about next time. He’d love to see yer.’
‘That, I fully intend to do,’ Neville promised.
‘Well, you know where we live now. There’s no excuse to stop away.’
‘And may I say, Mrs Round – not just for myself, but on behalf of my lost twin brother as well – thanks for everything you did for our poor mother, and for us. We shall be forever in your debt.’
Charlotte waved away talk of thanks. ‘Anybody would’ve done the same, my son. We was no different to anybody else. Me and Mr Round just happened to be there.’
‘Joe Hipkiss!’ Henzey exclaimed, in gentle mockery. ‘I don’t think that name suits you at all. I do prefer Neville Worthington. It’s much grander. You could stick a Sir in front of Neville Worthington – Sir Neville Worthington. It wouldn’t have the same ring stuck in front of Joe Hipkiss.’
