The Cuckoo's Child

by Marjorie Eccles

  A faint smile touched the corners of his mouth. ‘I won’t willingly break a promise, if that’s what you mean. Goodbye, Una. Goodbye, Miss Harcourt, I hope it won’t be long before we renew our acquaintance.’

  ‘Thank you once more for rescuing me.’

  ‘Rescue?’ Una Beaumont’s finely drawn brows rose.

  ‘From the attentions of Sim. I hope his welcome won’t lead her to think we’re all so uncouth.’

  ‘Oh, he’s a fraud, aren’t you, Sim?’ She bent to fondle the dog and he fawned on her. Laura kept her distance.

  Tom Illingworth raised his hand in salute and swung away, disappearing along a half-hidden footpath which sloped away from the house. Some kindling energy departed with him, leaving Laura feeling oddly as though she had been deserted. She wished that he had felt able to accept the invitation to step inside, despite the undercurrents implied in that exchange with the young woman who stood next to her. His easy presence might have bridged the awkwardness which she already felt for some reason lay between her and Una Beaumont.

  Following her, Laura stepped into a wide, flagged hall, low-ceilinged and panelled, where a broad oak uncarpeted staircase rose, at the foot of which her bags rested. To one side was an enormous stone fireplace with the same coat of arms carved into the beam above it – this time painted in fading colours, but with the white rose of Yorkshire still distinguishable at its heart. The hall was distinctly chilly: the great fireplace was empty and somewhere towards the back of the hall a window was open, from which came strong gusts of the fresh moorland breeze. Yet everything spoke of solid, old-fashioned comfort. The heavy furniture, built to last, was polished and cared for, almost aggressively so. A shining copper vase of fresh daffodils sat on a black oak table gleaming with years of beeswax and housemaids’ elbow-grease, and the stone-flagged floor likewise had a polish that threatened life and limb to the unwary. The large space, as dusk approached, was already lit by several oil lamps. Unseen, a clock with a sweet chime rang out half past four.

  ‘I’ll get Jessie Thwaite to take you to your room, Miss Harcourt. Come down when you’re ready, Grandfather is waiting for you in his study. Oh, here she is.’ A tall, well-made young woman with a fresh complexion, wearing a plain cap and apron, had appeared from the back premises. ‘This is Miss Harcourt, Jessie.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, miss.’ Jessie’s smile was warm and ready. ‘I’ll show you upstairs.’ So saying, she slung one of Laura’s bags on to her shoulder, picked up the other two and set off at a nimble pace, footsteps tapping briskly on the oak stairs.

  ‘Grandfather’s room is there,’ Una Beaumont said, indicating a door to one side of the hall. ‘We eat at six.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Laura hastened to follow the fast-departing Jessie up the staircase, on to a landing which stretched unequal arms out either side and overlooked the draughty hall.

  The maid was pushing open with her shoulder the farthest door on the shortest, right-hand side. ‘Here we are then.’ She deposited the luggage at the foot of the bed and gave Laura an appraising look. ‘You’ll be wanting a cup of tea now, never mind waiting till six,’ she announced forthrightly. ‘Sit you down by the fire and make yourself comfortable, and I’ll bring some up.’

  ‘That would be nice, if it’s convenient—’

  ‘Nay, it’s no bother.’ Jessie hesitated, then said surprisingly, ‘Likely Miss Una forgot what a long journey you’ve had. She’s a bit preoccupied like, just now.’ She nodded and departed with a whisk of skirts, leaving Laura alone in the big room.

  Like the hall, it was low-ceilinged and black beamed, with a long, low casement window, near which stood a marble wash stand, and was otherwise furnished with shining red Victorian mahogany, glowing like the hide of the chestnut mare which drew the carriage to take George Imrie to his bank every morning. A big, high bed was piled with spotless white pillows, and the brass of the bedstead glittered. There was a smell of lavender, furniture wax, lamp oil and the keen, peaty air that was, like the draught downstairs, billowing the curtains into the room and counteracting any warming effect the bright fire burning in the stone grate might have had. Laura closed it immediately, recognizing that she was going to have to learn to be as appreciative of fresh air as the people who lived up here evidently were. For a moment, she caught her breath at the sight of the ruined wing, projecting out to the back, as well as to the front, and here only a few feet away, casting a shadow over her room, and with an involuntary shiver, she turned her back. And for a moment, she was taken by a tremendous and very unexpected pang of homesickness.

  Fortunately for her composure, at that moment Jessie came back with a tray balanced on one arm and hot water in a copper can in the other hand. Breezing into the room like another draught of fresh air, she allowed Laura to take the can from her, although its weight seemed to have caused her no trouble. ‘The water’s hot. You might like to have a bit of a freshen up before you go down to see the master, I thought.’ She set the tray down on a small table by the fire and poured strong tea into a cup. There was buttered toast as well.

  ‘Thank you, that was a kind thought. I’ll be down in a few minutes.’

  ‘Take your time. It won’t hurt Ainsley Beaumont to wait for once.’ The blunt comment did not appear to convey any disrespect for her master, it seemed merely a statement of fact. Jessie had a bright, intelligent face and a crooked smile that was very attractive. She bent and put a few more coals on the fire from the scuttle, drew the curtains, and before going out, she added, ‘I’ll see you in the morning, then, Miss Harcourt. I’m off home now.’

  ‘You don’t live in, then?’

  ‘Not just now. My Dad’s poorly and there’s nobody else to look after him. I live with him down in Wainthorpe.’

  ‘That’s a long walk.’

  ‘Nay, it’s but ten minutes if you take the gainest road, this side. Goodnight.’

  ‘So, the lady librarian has arrived,’ said Gideon. ‘What is she like?’

  His sister shrugged her slim shoulders. ‘Very . . . Londonish.’

  ‘Pretty?’

  ‘Tom Illingworth seemed to think so. He met her on the way here.’

  Gideon threw her a sharp look, but she was bending over the chair by the fire in which their mother slept, covered by a Paisley shawl, her head askew against the woolwork antimacassar. Amelia’s strong face was relaxed and unaware, her eyelids closed over those dark eyes which could at times flash such formidable fire. One ought not to look at people when they are asleep, they are too vulnerable, Una thought, turning away. Her glance fell on an opened chocolate box standing on the table. She picked it up, inspected the inside and then deliberately threw both box and its remaining contents into the fire, where it hissed, crackled and threw blue flames up the chimney.

  Gideon raised his eyebrows. ‘Tut-tut.’

  ‘Dr Widdop has warned her time and again about eating so many. He’s told her how bad chocolate is for her.’ Debilitating headaches were the bane of Amelia Beaumont’s life, and she was also putting on too much weight. Una sighed with impatience, then gently adjusted their sleeping mother’s shawl.

  ‘Better than brandy.’

  ‘Gideon! She hasn’t—?’

  ‘No, just joking, joking, Una. But she might if you take away her chocs. Poor old Ma, even she has to let herself go sometimes. You’ll be for it when she finds you’ve thrown her sweeties away.’ He lit a cigarette, picked up an ashtray and threw one leg over the arm of his chair.

  Una gave him a severe glance. ‘What are you doing home so early? You are an idiot, Grandpa will be furious.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of the mill today,’ her brother replied shortly. ‘He knows I don’t do it often, so don’t lecture.’

  It was hard being a twin sometimes. Especially when your other half was the one you sometimes didn’t exactly care for. Gideon felt that he did not – at the moment at any rate – care for his sister, or not very much. Sense of humour gone missing. Her lips tight and her
forehead creased. Forever tap-tap-tapping on that damned typewriting machine. Disappearing for meetings with those hordes of women who were taking the West Riding by storm; those termagants from Huddersfield, Leeds and Halifax, some of them even marching over the hills from the Lancashire boundary, from as far as Manchester, agitating for votes for women. Stirring up the mill girls as well as teachers, shop assistants, housewives, any woman who would listen to their rubbish. Una would be losing her looks altogether if she didn’t watch it and that would be a pity. They were the best asset she had, though she would never admit it.

  Gideon was not vain enough to equate that thought with his own good looks. He was a charming and easy-going, normally good-natured, though just now rather discountenanced, young man. Slim and lithe, with thickly-lashed eyes like his sister and a boyish lick of hair, a darker blonde than hers, there was nevertheless a masculine strength in the firm chin line and breadth of shoulder. They were indeed a handsome couple. Even their names were paired, in a sense; their mother, ever with an eye on the main chance, having taken a notion when they were born that it would be expedient to christen her first-born after their titled great-grandfather, Sir Gideon Staincliffe Tyas. From which it followed that Gideon’s twin should be called after his wife, Lady Tyas, despite her name being Fortunia, though the child had somehow cleverly contrived to get herself known as Una from the moment she could speak.

  ‘Well, Grandpa’s come home early, too, to see Miss Harcourt, so you’d better keep out of his way,’ she said sharply. Gideon shrugged. He, and his grandfather, knew how hard he worked.

  Ainsley Beaumont had no son to follow him in his business, since his only child, Theo, the twins’ father, had died when they were little more than babies, but Gideon had never been left in any doubt that his future was expected to lie in running the Cross Ings Mill. Since that was what he had always expected – and wanted, too – he had seen no reason for not starting work at the mill straight after leaving his North Yorkshire boarding school, where he had done well academically, as well as excelling in games.

  But five years later he was restless, somehow the life and enthusiasm had gone out of it. And he was astute enough to know that his present disaffection lay mainly in the deterioration of his normally good relations with his grandfather.

  Cross Ings Mill was by far the biggest in Wainthorpe; Beaumont’s were respected the length and breadth of the Neller valley, and the business prospered. But how long would this state of affairs continue if Ainsley refused to step forward into the new century? Everything was still done in the old and, to Ainsley, trusted way: he ran the mill himself, scorning to employ a manager, his finger on the pulse of everything. Gideon was fed up with the fact that his grandfather would not listen to him, or let him have his head enough, as he felt was his right. Horns clashed, tempers were lost, daily it seemed.

  ‘Take it easy, lad, you’ll get nowt out of Ainsley Beaumont that road,’ advised Whiteley Hirst, who’d been his grandfather’s mainstay, his office manager, bookkeeper and much more for longer than Gideon could remember. ‘I’ve had to keep t’band in t’nick long enough to know that,’ he added broadly. Yes, Whiteley had always been adept at keeping things running smoothly. ‘He’ll come round all in good time.’

  In due course. When he, Gideon, would take over from Ainsley and run the mill. All in good time. He was sick of the phrase. He was young, eager and hot-blooded, and patience had never been a virtue of his.

  His grandfather was a man who gave out energy and power to a sometimes frightening degree. The sheer force of his personality had always dominated not only the workforce at the mill, but everyone here at Farr Clough. Yet despite his overbearing attitudes, his quick temper, he had never been an unreasonable employer; sins were forgiven if not entirely forgotten. Lately, though, even Gideon had been afraid of him at times. What was the old devil up to? Stamping around the mill and everywhere else, finding fault with this, that and the next thing, demanding unjustifiable changes. Quarrelling with everyone if they didn’t immediately jump to his commands – even with Tom Illingworth. Yes, what about that row with Tom yesterday? Tom, of all people! Which had escalated to include Gideon himself – and Whiteley Hirst.

  There was something profoundly wrong, and Gideon didn’t like it. Was Grandpa becoming non compos mentis? It worried him because he was extremely fond of the old man who had been all but father to him, and Cross Ings was, after all, the most important part of both their lives, and he was damned if he knew what to do about it.

  And what – what in God’s name was he doing, bringing this girl from London to catalogue a roomful of dry, dusty books that neither he nor anyone else in living memory had ever touched?

  In his first words to her, Ainsley Beaumont supplied Laura with the reason why he had walked away from the scene of the attack upon her by his dog. ‘Put yourself directly in front of me when you speak, if you please,’ he said to her without preamble when she presented herself to him. ‘I’m going deaf as a post in my old age. It’s no use you shouting, there’s not a thing I can hear, but I manage well enough at lip-reading.’

  He shook her hand firmly and told her to sit down, and then, regarding her with a steady look, said nothing more for a long time. Whether he had been entirely unaware of what had taken place out there on the moor or not, it was impossible to say. If he had, he was making no effort to apologize.

  He had been, and still was for that matter, a handsome, if heavily built man, unsmiling, short-necked, with a dark, strong-willed face, blue-jowled and with an obstinate cleft chin. Though his close-cut hair was plentifully sprinkled with grey, his thick eyebrows were still fierce and dark, and from under them his shrewd eyes regarded Laura steadily for what seemed like a very long time. She did not find the regard comfortable, but she did not flinch.

  ‘So,’ he said at last, ‘you are Miss Laura Harcourt.’ As with many deaf people, his voice was pitched low. A pleasant voice, though his vowels, his turn of phrase, remained uncompromisingly northern. ‘Well, well, and what makes you want to come here? I hear you’re one of these over-educated young women we hear so much about nowadays.’

  ‘I have just completed a three year course at the Royal Holloway College, if that’s what you mean,’ Laura replied coolly.

  ‘Overqualified to sort out a few books, aren’t you?’

  ‘It makes a change until I get my bearings. I’m not quite sure what I want to do in the way of work, yet.’

  ‘Aye, that’s it nowadays, isn’t it? Work, as if looking after a man and a family wasn’t work enough! I suppose you think you’re entitled to the vote, as well, like our Una? No, don’t answer that . . . it seems we never do get the better of you young women, going down that road, and I don’t mean us to get off on the wrong foot.’ He allowed himself a slight smile. Laura, not to be drawn, swallowed a retort and said nothing. ‘You’ll soon get used to me, Miss Harcourt. Don’t take offence.’ After a moment he added, ‘So, what did Mr Carfax tell you?’

  ‘Nothing more than you need your books cataloguing, and the fees you’ve offered.’ Which had not, she reflected, been exactly generous, and might have affected her decision, had she been in need of something better paid, and not least had she known what sort of employer she was to have.

  He made no reply, his hands on the silver knob of his stick. Driven at last by a scrutiny she did not intend to allow to become unnerving, Laura said, ‘Perhaps it would be as well, Mr Beaumont, if you gave me some idea of exactly what you need me to do here.’

  ‘Books, as you said, that’s the long and short of it. There’s a lot of ‘em, mind, but seeing as you’re a bit of a bluestocking, sorting ‘em out shouldn’t worry you.’

  ‘What does your library consist of?’

  ‘My library?’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Well, I reckon it has to be mine on account of I own it, but I’ve never opened a book out of it yet, or out of anywhere else much,’ he said, not without pride. ‘Huddersfield Examiner and The Leeds Mercury are fgood enou
gh for me.’

  ‘Forgive my asking, then, but why do you need them cataloguing?’

  ‘They came with the house when I bought it, lock, stock and barrel, twenty-odd year back, from my wife’s father. They’ve never been touched since. Happen it’s time they were seen to.’

  An explanation which left much to be desired, Laura thought. ‘Are there many?’

  ‘A few hundreds? A thousand or two? I can’t rightly say. I’ve never counted. Not all that many, I shouldn’t think.’

  ‘In that case, since I don’t like time hanging on my hands, I dare say I shall soon be finished.’

  ‘Take your time. There’s nowt got with rush and kick.’ As if it suddenly occurred to him he might have been less than welcoming, he added gruffly, ‘If I said little in my letters to Mr Carfax, Miss Harcourt, it’s because there’s little to tell. I shan’t bother you much, I’m mostly down at the mill, and we’re not a big household – there’s only my grandchildren, the twins, and their mother. You’ll be treated as one of the family while you’re here.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ve already met your granddaughter.’

  ‘She’s got some funny ideas just now, Una has, but she’s a good lass, at heart, I suppose.’ He added abruptly, ‘But there’s one more thing. My daughter-in-law, Amelia, Mrs Beaumont – their mother, that is. You might consider her a bit – funny in her ways, like.’

  There was a pause. The fire collapsed in a flurry of rosy ash.

  ‘You mean she’s mad?’

  He gave another short bark of laughter as he leaned forward to pick up the poker and rearrange the coals. ‘You’re a young woman after my own heart, Laura Harcourt, you speak your mind. No, she’s not mad. Saner than most, I reckon, except she likes her own way a sight too much and isn’t slow to say so. But I mustn’t grumble. I’m nearly seventy and she’s taken a lot off my shoulders since my son died . . . she’s run this house for nigh on twenty year, so I reckon we can all put up with a bit of stick. But take no notice of what she says, if you can, and don’t let her frighten you away.’