by Valerie Wood
Her father’s cousin Thomas and his three sons Tom, Mark and George would be working hard in the heart of the mill, harnessing the power of the wind which drove three pairs of millstones to grind the raw grain. She thought of them running nimbly up and down the steep and narrow access ladders to the five floors, while their sister Betsy would perhaps be indoors, going about the womanly tasks which she had reluctantly undertaken four years ago at the age of fourteen, when the housekeeper, who had looked after them all since their mother’s death, had also died.
The pair of greys pulling the carriage turned instinctively down the winding road towards her home village of Monkston, even before Johnson gave the signal. Sammi was thankful that the weather was dry, for the old road often became a quagmire after rain, when the potholes and ridges made by the wheels of carriages and carts filled with rainwater and mud, and made it almost impassable.
She looked up at the high banks on either side of the narrow road: yellowhammers were nesting in the hedgerow, and early bluebells were emitting their glorious heady perfume. Sammi pulled down the window and then picked up the baby. ‘Look,’ she said, holding him up, ‘Your first flowers. If you’d been a girl we could have named you Flora.’ The baby puckered up his mouth and started to cry. ‘Well, that sounds healthy enough.’ Sammi rocked him. ‘I was beginning to get quite worried about you. But you’re not a girl,’ she mused. ‘So what name shall you be given, I wonder?’ She felt a small chill as the thought struck her that her parents would be angry with her for bringing him home, but she brushed it aside and refused to think about it.
Her home, Garston Hall, was nearly a hundred years old and had been built on the site of an old castle. It was designed to follow the Gothic architecture so admired at the time, and was embellished with round towers, turrets and battlements, and in the autumn its south face was covered in red creeper. To the east, by the round tower, a cascade of winter jasmine straggled and tumbled over the stone walls, and facing north, a glossy-leaved ivy battled against the elements. It was also very close to the sea, with only an orchard and rose walk between it and the house, and a fifty-foot drop over the cliffs to the sands below.
Her mother was waiting at the door, fully dressed in her warm cloak and hood. She came out as the carriage approached, the wind catching hold of her skirts and whipping away the shawl which she had draped around her shoulders.
‘I’ll get it.’ Sammi jumped from the carriage and chased after the fluttering shawl.
‘Leave it. Leave it, Sammi!’ Her mother called after her. ‘I must go. You are so late. I particularly told Johnson that I wanted you home early. You are too bad!’
‘I’m sorry, Mama.’ Sammi kissed her mother. ‘Johnson did say. It’s all my fault. Well, not completely. I—’
‘Oh, hush now, Sammi. I must drive into Tillington. Richard has taken the gig, otherwise I would have borrowed that rather than this great lumbering thing. I’m sorry, Johnson. You’re going to have to go back into Tillington again.’
Johnson touched his top hat and murmured something and glanced at Sammi.
‘Mama! Before you go! I have something to tell you.’
‘Not now, Sammi. I have a call to make and I’m already late.’
Johnson opened the carriage door, his eyes averted to the sky.
‘Victoria has gone to bed with a headache, she’s not well, so don’t disturb her, there’s a dear. There’s cold meat in the larder if you’re hungry. Help yourself. Don’t bother Cook if she’s busy.’
Sammi waited with baited breath as her mother put her foot on the step.
‘What’s this? You’ve left something. Sammi!’
The baby stirred as an icy blast from the open door filled the carriage, and he opened his mouth and wailed. Hunger and thirst cramped his stomach and he screwed up his face and screeched.
‘Sammi! For heaven’s sake. What’s this?’
‘It’s a baby, Mama.’
‘I can see it’s a baby, foolish girl! But what’s it doing in our carriage?’
Ellen Rayner leaned in and lifted him out. ‘Whose child is it? Is it hungry? Why, it’s such a young baby!’ She looked at her daughter in alarm, her large blue eyes widening. ‘Sammi! You have some explaining to do.’
‘Can we go inside, Mama? He’s cold and hungry. I’ll need to warm some milk.’
‘Milk!’ Sammi’s mother swept inside with the child in her arms. ‘He needs the breast, not warm milk! Where’s his mother?’
Sammi cast a glance at Johnson waiting resignedly by the carriage. He raised his eyebrows at her as she closed the door. ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed. ‘’Fraid you’re going to have to wait again.’
* * *
Cook hovered with a basin of warm milk, and the two kitchen maids gaped open-mouthed as Sammi’s mother sat on a kitchen stool and spooned the milk into the baby’s lips from a tiny silver teaspoon. Martha, the elderly housekeeper, had gone off to delve into her linen cupboard to find something more suitable to wrap around the baby.
‘These are clean sheets,’ Sammi explained, but Martha only humphed in displeasure.
‘They’re onny fit for rags, these bits; not suitable for a new bairn, and he wants summat warm, especially for round here.’
‘He won’t be staying,’ Ellen Rayner said matter-of-factly. ‘So don’t anyone get too excited. As soon as I find out where this daughter of mine found him, he’s going back where he belongs.’
‘Mama. Can I explain?’ Sammi sank down onto a chaise longue in the drawing-room, and watched as her mother deftly unwrapped the child and dressed him in a sweet-smelling cotton carrying gown, the bodice tucked and threaded with ribbon.
‘This was Richard’s and then Billy’s,’ she said, ignoring Sammi’s question. ‘And then we got new ones for you and Victoria. I can’t think where Martha has been hiding it all this time.’ She wrapped him in a square of white blanket which Martha had cut from a larger one, and fitting the child comfortably into the crook of her arm, she turned a resigned face to her daughter. ‘Yes, Sammi,’ she said calmly, settling herself back into her chair. She had removed her cloak and undone the broad ribbons on her capulet hood which covered her fair, smooth chignon. ‘I think you had better start at the beginning.’
She sat listening, without questioning, until Sammi had finished, then she looked down at the contented sleeping baby. ‘And you are telling me that James is the father of this child?’
Sammi shook her head. ‘No. What I said was, that the woman claimed that he belonged to James.’
‘That boy?’ She removed the blanket from the baby’s head and gently fingered the pale pulsating down. ‘And his mother, was she dark or fair, do you know?’
Again Sammi shook her head. ‘James can’t really remember, but he said that Gilbert said she was dark.’
‘I see!’ Her mother pursed her lips. ‘And what did his mother have to say about all of this? Mildred would be delighted to be presented with a grandson no doubt?’
‘She’s furious with James, Mama, and says that he must go away so that no-one finds out; and Anne is being beastly towards him and refuses to speak to him,’ she added heatedly. ‘I don’t think he’s totally convinced that it is his child, but he is so confused.’
‘Well, quite rightly everyone will be shocked and angry; and it could be his child, Sammi, though I have to say I am very surprised,’ her mother mused. ‘But we only see our friends and family as we believe them to be. Everyone shows a different face for different people or circumstances, and the cousin James that we perceive might well be cast in a different mould.’ She rose to her feet and reached to press the bell on the wall. They heard its faint ringing in the kitchen. ‘But you still haven’t explained why you brought him here. He can’t stay here, you know that?’ She instinctively rocked him. ‘He will have to go back to Anlaby. He’s their responsibility, whether they like it or not.’
‘They’ll send him to a charity home.’ Sammi started to weep. ‘They’re awful places. I’v
e been. I went with James. The children have to work in the kitchens; they can’t play and there’s no-one to love them. Please, Mama. Please don’t send him there.’
‘He’s not a puppy or kitten, Sammi, that we can put in a box in the stables,’ her mother said sharply, ‘and I see that you’ve brought Sam back too. Wouldn’t Mildred let James keep him either?’
Sammi wiped her eyes and took a deep shuddering breath. ‘James said that if he had to go away, he wouldn’t be able to look after him, so I said I’d bring him back here until he could.’
A frown wrinkled her mother’s smooth forehead. ‘So Mildred really means James to go?’
‘She means it.’ Sammi gave her nose a huge blow on a handkerchief. ‘He was going off to York to see his drawing master, to ask if he could recommend what he should do.’ She cast a beseeching look at her mother. ‘Mrs Bishop in Tillington has just had another child, she always says she has enough milk for a houseful of babies. I thought we could ask her if she would nurse him? I’ll pay her out of my allowance, just until James finds a position, and then he’ll pay me back. He promised he would!’
‘You little minx! I can read you like a book. You’ve been planning this all the way home, haven’t you? This is what you had in mind the whole time!’ Ellen turned to the housemaid who had knocked and entered. ‘Ask Johnson to bring the carriage round again, please.’ She stood deliberating for a moment after the maid had left the room, and then pulled a cynical face. ‘I just hope you didn’t speak to your Aunt Mildred and Cousin Anne of Mrs Bishop and her ample milk supply. How very shocked they would be!’
Mrs Bishop was pleased to nurse the baby. ‘Bless thee, Mrs Rayner,’ she said, ‘tha’s saved my life. This little lass of mine is a right poor feeder; try as I might she won’t tek ’milk and I’m fair beside myself to be rid of it.’
Ellen Rayner hastily stood up and indicated to Sammi, who was hovering over Mrs Bishop’s large white breasts as the baby hungrily searched for her nipple, that they should go. We’re known to be liberal, I know, she thought, but this, I think, has gone far enough. ‘It won’t be for long, Mrs Bishop. The baby won’t be staying; he’s not our responsibility – but if you could nurse him until other arrangements are made?’
‘It’s not wise to give him more than one nurse, ma-am,’ Mrs Bishop settled back in her chair. ‘It unsettles ’em. Still, it’s up to thee, I’m onny ’milk nurse.’
Sammi sat beside her mother in the carriage and looked anxiously at her as Ellen put her head against the lace headrest and said quietly, ‘You know that your father will be angry with you?’
Sammi gave a little shrug and pressed her lips together. ‘He doesn’t stay cross for long, Mama. His humour soon returns.’ She knew that her father’s temper, as fiery as his greying red hair had once been, could always be turned to laughter and her advantage.
‘Not this time.’ Her mother gazed frankly at Sammi. ‘This time you’ve really gone too far. This latest escapade is just not acceptable.’
Her father was angry. Very angry indeed. But not just with her. He was angry with his brother Isaac, his sister-in-law Mildred, and with James for allowing Sammi to bring the child out to Garston Hall.
Sammi stood in front of him in the drawing-room with her eyes lowered and her hands behind her back as he spoke in bitter tones of his family shedding their responsibilities onto someone else.
‘Uncle Isaac and Aunt Mildred don’t actually know that he is here, Pa,’ she ventured when he finally paused for breath. ‘Uncle Isaac told James to find somewhere that would take him, and Aunt Mildred wouldn’t discuss it. Only James and Gilbert know he is here.’
‘So why did you bring him here?’ he roared, and she flinched.
‘I couldn’t bear to leave him,’ she whispered. ‘If he belongs to our family, he deserves more than those dreadful places.’
‘So James has been playing in the dirt and we’re left to pick up the pieces!’
‘William! William! That’s enough,’ Ellen chided her husband. ‘We don’t know what happened. The child’s mother is dead. There are things here that we might never know of, nor wish to know.’
‘Ring the bell, Ellen,’ he commanded, ‘and ask them to tell Johnson to bring the carriage round.’
‘But where are you going? Supper will be ready.’ Ellen gazed up at her husband in some alarm.
‘I’m going to drive to Anlaby to see my brother and his precious wife, and find out just what is going on!’
She placed her hand on his arm to stay him. ‘Not tonight, William, it’s late. Wait until tomorrow. Don’t go when you’re feeling angry. You’ll say something that you’ll be sorry for. You know how Mildred always irritates you. Have supper and we’ll talk about it, and then – and then, in the morning, perhaps I could go instead?’
He looked down at her. ‘You’re trying to twist me around your finger, Ellen. And as for you, young woman,’ he turned to Sammi and shook a finger at her, ‘this time you have gone too far. No. I mean it. Don’t smile at me like that, you’re as bad as your mother. We cannot keep this child. We have problems enough of our own, without taking on other people’s, even if they are family. Like it or not, he has to go back.’
Ellen dropped Sammi off at the mill house the next morning as she had requested, and told her that she would collect her later in the day when she returned from her visit to Mildred.
That lady isn’t going to be pleased to see me without an arrangement, she thought grimly as the carriage rocked along the Hull road. She and Mildred had very little in common, save that they had married two brothers. Poor Isaac, she mused. We all thought that Mildred would be good for him; she seemed loving and kind, and he needed someone strong to give him a push. But we didn’t realize what a tartar she would turn out to be.
She wasn’t looking forward to this confrontation. For no doubt, that is what it will be, she pondered. And the whole atmosphere in that house makes me feel creepy.
Being a farmer’s daughter brought up on the Wolds, and marrying William who farmed on the plain of Holderness at the edge of the sea, she was used to open spaces and an abundance of brisk fresh air, and Garston Hall, which had been her well-loved home for nearly twenty-five years, since William’s parents had welcomed her as a young bride, with its spacious rooms and muslin drapes enhancing rather than obscuring the view of the garden and cliffs below, suited her very well.
Mildred was a banker’s daughter who had been brought up in a town house. She had an aversion to draughts, and kept her windows draped with nets and laces and heavy hangings to keep them out, but excluding also any natural light, so that the rooms were gloomy and dark even during the day.
It was noon before Ellen left the suburbs of Hull and the horses began their swift trot towards Anlaby. Such a pretty village. She echoed unconsciously Sammi’s thoughts from the previous day as they passed the grand mansions and large country houses which had been built, some on the common land where once sheep had grazed.
But she sighed and a sadness descended on her as she observed the progress and development of the land, here to the sheltered west of Hull. Not a sadness such as Sammi had experienced in her concern for the child, nor even for Victoria, her youngest daughter who was so frail, and certainly not for her merry son, Billy; but for her husband William. For William and her eldest son Richard, who were losing their livelihood, day by day, week by week, as the sea took its toll on the land which they all loved.
* * *
‘Please be seated, Ellen, and I’ll ring for refreshment. You are very fortunate to find me at home. I was expected at Mrs Beadle’s of Hessle this afternoon, but she has just this half hour ago sent a message to say that she is unwell and cannot receive me.’ Mildred fussed and prattled, plumping up cushions, straightening the numerous pictures on the walls, rearranging the bric-a-brac and ornaments which decorated the tables and what-not, and moving infinitesimally the glass dome which held an arrangement of waxed flowers to the exact centre of the table.
Ellen waited patiently. Mildred always went through this ritual whenever she called, even when she was expected. ‘Well, Mildred,’ she said, as her sister-in-law finally ceased her flutterings and sat down opposite her, ‘you have no doubt been expecting me?’
‘Why no!’ A pale flush suffused Mildred’s thin neck above her narrow white collar. Her hair, coiled in a low chignon, was covered by a crocheted net, and she patted it nervously. ‘As I just said, I was expected at …’ Her voice trailed away as Ellen looked directly into her eyes.
‘But you knew I would be coming sooner or later?’ Ellen persisted. ‘Surely, neither you nor Isaac expected William or me to accept the situation as it stands?’
‘I really don’t know what you are talking about, Ellen.’ Mildred’s round and once-pretty face shuttered, and she primped her lips firmly.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mildred.’ Ellen spoke impatiently. ‘Of course you know what I’m talking about. Don’t pretend. I’m referring to James and his child, the child that Sammi has brought home to us because you refuse to acknowledge it.’
‘The woman was lying!’ Mildred’s voice became shrill and she rose to her feet. ‘It has nothing whatever to do with us. We are a respectable family. The very idea is totally abhorrent.’
‘Then why are you sending James away?’ Ellen spoke more quietly, she wanted this matter settling as quickly as possible and she had obviously touched a raw nerve with Mildred’s sensibilities. ‘Why can’t he stay, find the woman and give the child back? Explain – if there really has been a mistake?’
‘James is going away to avoid embarrassment, and I don’t wish to discuss it any further. As far as I am concerned the incident is closed.’ Mildred sat down again breathing heavily, the ruches on her bodice rising and falling rhythmically.
‘The incident! The incident!’ This time Ellen rose from her chair, her passions aroused. ‘You can’t call a child an incident! You can call what leads up to its conception an incident if that is how you see it, but we are talking about a human life.’
