by Valerie Wood
‘Tha can’t be any worse than our Betsy,’ George remarked, ‘she’s worst cook I’ve ever known. Doesn’t tha want thy porridge, Tom?’
Tom moved his dish out of George’s reach and started to eat. ‘I’ll take you through to my father when I’ve finished this, Jenny, and we’ll see what he wants. He doesn’t eat much, but we try to persuade him if we can. Then I’ll help him up.’
‘Oh, I’ve been in already, sir,’ she said quickly. ‘Mr Foster heard me moving about and called to me. He’s had porridge and a boiled egg and a slice of bread, so he’s set up ’till dinner time.’
Tom and George glanced at each other. Their father wasn’t usually in the best of moods in a morning, especially if he had had a painful night, and it was all they could do, as a rule, to persuade him to eat a morsel of bread.
‘I have to ride into Hull.’ Tom finished his porridge. ‘I, er, have some business to attend to. Is there anything I can get for you?’
‘Is tha going to look for our Betsy, Tom?’ George interrupted. ‘She should have been back by now.’
Tom sighed and pushed back his chair. ‘Thank you, Jenny. That was good.’ Outwardly he was polite but inwardly seething at his brother’s lack of reticence in front of the girl. He leaned towards him and whispered, ‘I’ll put a bit and bridle on your tongue before you’re much older, just see if I don’t.’
‘Oh, Master Tom! I nearly forgot.’ Jenny turned from the sink. ‘First post has come. I left ’letter on your fayther’s bed. He said he’d wait for you to go in and read it.’
‘How are you this morning, Da?’ Tom picked up the envelope and turned it over. It was good quality paper, with a C embossed in the corner.
‘Not so bad,’ his voice was low and he spoke with effort, ‘though I haven’t slept much ’cos of worrying over our Betsy. Then I got to thinking about Mark and wondering where he is! They’ve got wanderlust, those two, and no mistake.’
He threw back the bed coverings. ‘Yon young woman is a cheerful little soul, isn’t she? She’ll have us all eating out of her hand if we don’t watch her.’ He frowned his beetling eyebrows as he watched Tom’s eyes scanning the letter. ‘What’s up? Is it trouble?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Tom held the letter loosely in his hand. ‘It’s from Betsy. She says she’s staying with friends in Hull for a few days, maybe a week.’ He glanced at the letter again. ‘She says she’s sorry she wasn’t able to get back home. She missed her lift because of the crush of people in Hull and bumped into some friends who invited her to stay with them.’
‘Friends! What friends does she have in Hull? Who does she mean?’ His father barked out the questions and then grimaced as Tom helped him out of the bed and into his chair.
‘I don’t know.’ Tom shook his head. He was ready and dressed to ride into Hull. Should he still go, and where would he start looking?
‘Who does she know that we don’t? Could she mean Gilbert’s wife?’
‘She would surely have mentioned them by name, if that’s who she is with.’ Tom deliberated. There seemed no sense in going on a wild-goose chase if Betsy was enjoying herself with friends. She wouldn’t be pleased to see him and be returned home; even if he knew where to find her.
‘I’ll ride over to see Sammi again and ask her what she thinks, and then leave it at that. No sense in worrying. Her letter is very cheerful. She must be all right, Da. She just doesn’t consider anybody else, that’s the trouble with Betsy.’
Once more he arrived at the door of Garston Hall, but this time he was shown in to see Aunt Ellen, who was in her sitting-room with an opened letter on the table in front of her.
He greeted her with the query that he hoped her visit to the Wolds was a pleasant one, and she nodded, regarding him intently, and said that it was. ‘I hope your correspondence was good news, Aunt, for ours was rather perplexing.’
As he was telling her about Betsy’s letter, Sammi came into the room and listened as he finished his explanation.
‘I’m worried, Tom,’ Sammi said softly. ‘I can’t think who Betsy will be with; and I really don’t understand her behaviour.’ A small frown appeared between her brows. ‘I acknowledge that she has not been well lately, and felt the need to get away, but even so!’
‘What kind of illness does she have?’ her mother asked. ‘Perhaps she should see the doctor?’
‘She says she’s all right now,’ Tom said. ‘She was nauseous and tired; Da’s accident upset her, but now she seems much better. She wouldn’t have gone jaunting into Hull, would she, if she was not well.’
‘I’ll speak to her when she returns and try to find out what is troubling her.’ Ellen glanced up at him. ‘Did she walk out with Luke Reedbarrow, Tom? Your father said that she might.’
He shook his head. ‘No. I don’t think anything will come of that. And he obviously doesn’t know where she is, either, for he has asked several times where she is.’
‘If you wait for me, Tom,’ Sammi said, ‘I’ll come back with you.’
Tom and her mother both looked at her. ‘Why? Where are you going?’ her mother asked.
Sammi glanced from one to the other. ‘I shall go and stay at Tillington until Betsy comes home. Jenny won’t be able to manage alone.’
‘No!’
The exclamation burst from both Tom’s lips and his aunt’s, and a significant observation from one and an eloquent appealing glance from the other, left both in no doubt that they were of one and the same mind.
‘You are no longer a child!’ Ellen faced her fractious daughter after Tom had left. ‘You are a young woman and cannot stay alone in a household of men. It just won’t do!’
‘But they are my cousins!’ Sammi’s response was irritable. ‘At least Uncle Thomas is Pa’s cousin, so it’s almost the same thing.’
‘It’s not the same at all, and even if it were, you still couldn’t go. You have your reputation to think of. Besides,’ her mother turned to her desk and picked up the opened letter, ‘I wanted to talk to you about something. Two things!’
Sammi waited impatiently whilst her mother dithered. It was so ridiculous that she wasn’t allowed to go to Tillington. But even Tom didn’t want her to go. Surely he didn’t have such old-fashioned ideas? An image came drifting into her mind, but as it was about to take shape, her mother spoke briskly and, Sammi thought, rather too heartily.
‘Do you remember my friend Rebecca Hartscombe, Sammi? They live up near Pickering. We stayed with her five or six years ago.’
‘Yes.’ Sammi only half listened, busy with thoughts of when Tom had kept her company on the night Victoria was ill. He was so kind and caring, the least I can do is go and help him. She touched her cheek and remembered the sensation of his flannel shirt against her face as she leaned against him. I was so tired and worried, and he was such a comfort. The hazy vision flickered back again. I must have fallen asleep for I don’t even remember going to bed; only waking up as Martha pulled off my skirt and stockings – and she was such a cross-patch.
Her mother’s voice drifted back. ‘And so she said she would be delighted if you and Victoria would go and stay again. I told her that Victoria was not well enough to travel at the moment, but I was sure that you would like to go. Cecily and Edgar would be so pleased if you would.’
‘Edgar?’ She blinked and cringed. ‘You don’t mean her horrible son?’
‘Sammi! How rude!’
‘I’m sorry, Mama. But he was such a cringing, sneaking toad. I couldn’t endure him. I remember him coming back from school and completely ruining our holiday. We were having such a nice time until then.’
‘Why, how strange,’ her mother said lightly. ‘And he has such good memories of you. He said he couldn’t wait to meet you again.’
‘Mama!’ Sammi stared at her mother. ‘Mama! You weren’t – you haven’t been …’ Her face paled. ‘You’re not trying to marry me to him? You wouldn’t?’
‘Of course we wouldn’t, Sammi. Don’t be so silly.’
Her mother rose and crossed to where Sammi was sitting bolt upright in the chair. ‘But it’s time you went out and about and met some more young people. You won’t ever meet a marriage partner until you do.’ A doubt crept into her mother’s eyes. ‘We only want you to meet other young men so that you have a choice.’
‘A choice?’ Sammi whispered. ‘But I didn’t ever want to choose! I just wanted something magical to happen and then I would know that it was right.’
Her mother patted her hand. ‘Perhaps it will, my darling. But sometimes Fate needs a helping hand to push us in the right direction.’ She sighed and then looked down at the letter in her hand. ‘But that wasn’t all I wanted to talk to you about. This is from Aunt Mildred. She has had a change of heart over Adam: she says that she will accept responsibility for his well-being and will write to James and tell him.’
Sammi stared. ‘So Gilbert hasn’t told her?’ she whispered.
‘Seemingly not.’ Her mother looked at the letter again and began to read. ‘“If I am doing this for anyone,” she says, “then I am doing it for Isaac. He was a good, kind, caring man and this is what he would have wanted.” She says, strangely, that she has many things on her conscience and this is a way of repaying.’
She handed the letter to Sammi. ‘You may read it; she asks if we will call for a discussion, though she stresses that she will take personal financial responsibility. And she has heard of someone in Beverley who wants a child.’
She saw the disbelief on Sammi’s face. ‘I don’t understand it any more than you, but she says she realizes that she was too hasty. It was the shock, I suppose,’ she added. ‘But she says she will accept that he is James’s child.’
39
James put on his coat and looked around the small room for the last time. ‘Farewell,’ he murmured. ‘I haven’t been here long enough to say that I’ll miss you. There are other things, other people, that I will miss more. The river glinting every morning, the companionship of my fellow artists. I cannot call them my peers, for I am not yet their equal; not William Morris or Burne-Jones, or Batsford, but one day, one day I will be.’ He locked the door behind him and put the key through the letter box, and strolled across to the river bank. And Mariabella; how I will miss you most of all. My darling, my loved one. My sister! He stifled a sob. How can I bear it? If we should ever meet again we must pretend that there was never ever anything between us. I am finished for ever with love, he declared. I shall throw all my passion into my painting. Never again will I love another woman.
He searched in his pocket for a handkerchief and felt alongside it the envelope with the letter inside that had come this morning. He noisily blew his nose and proceeded towards Batsford’s studio where he would wish him good-bye.
His mother’s letter had come in the same post as the letter from the lawyer with a copy of his father’s will. Both had surprised him. His father had been more than generous towards him, leaving an inheritance, payable when he was twenty-one, and an annuity, which would enable him to live comfortably, though not luxuriously, until then.
There were no shares in the company left to him, and he was relieved about that, for he had no business inclination. Gilbert, on the other hand, had been left all of his father’s shares but only a small legacy. But the surprise was that, as well as providing for his wife and daughter, Isaac Rayner had also left money to be invested in a trust fund ‘for the child known as Adam Foster Rayner, at present in the care of Sarah Maria Foster Rayner’. The instructions were that the child would inherit at twenty-one, but if it was found that he was not a son of the Rayner family, then the fund should be halved.
And he is not mine, James denied as he walked briskly along. And I thought that Father believed me! Yet he still left the child an inheritance! What a kind, generous man he was. Like Sammi, she is the same, and how cruel I was that day. She was so hurt when I told her that she must do what she would with the child, for he was no concern of mine. And now my mother is changing! I don’t understand! She says in her letter that she will now accept him. I must write again, he thought vaguely, and try to explain.
He stopped and put down his bag and, taking the letter from his pocket, read it once more.
‘Try to forgive me, James. Passion is a fearful emotion and one which, one day perhaps, you will experience; but by accepting this child and caring for him, perhaps in some way I can make amends. If you see Massimo again, tell him that I have no regrets; not for loving him, or for choosing to stay with Isaac.’
He folded up the letter and returned it to his pocket. It had been written in reply to one he had sent her when he had learned the truth about his parentage; and in the days of indecision following Romanelli’s plea for him to return with him to Italy, he had in his misery and anger poured out a torrent of abuse, berating her for betraying his father and destroying his own life, and had posted the letter before sanity finally prevailed and he saw opportunity in front of him.
He regretted it now; he felt shame and remorse, and vowed that he would write again and tell her. I will write and tell her that I love her, that I have always loved her, in spite of pretending to myself that I didn’t. It is what we all want. The reassurance that we are loved.
He wiped his eyes and walked across to Batsford’s studio. He opened the door cautiously, expecting him to be working, but only Miss Gregory was there, idly flicking through a magazine. She was wearing a loose, Grecian-style muslin dress with a blue sash, her hair was loose around her shoulders, and once more he was struck by her resemblance to Sammi.
‘I’m leaving,’ he announced. ‘I was hoping to see Batsford before I go. I’m going to Italy to study.’
‘I know.’ She rose to her feet which he saw were bare. Bare and small, with pale pink toe-nails. ‘Batsford told me. He said he will meet you later at Romanelli’s rooms.’
‘Good-bye then,’ he said nervously, as his departure and new life loomed nearer. ‘We don’t seem to have got to know each other very well, but wish me luck!’
‘Oh, I do.’ She came towards him and brushed away a breadcrumb from her mouth. He smiled. He had never known a woman eat as much as she did. Yet she had such a lovely body, curvaceous hips, a small waist and full, round breasts.
‘I’m sorry that you are going,’ she said softly and took hold of his hand. ‘Is your lover going too?’
‘My lover?’ He felt a flush creep up his neck.
‘You said that you were in love.’ She gave a slight smile. ‘You said that you could only look at other women in the aesthetic sense.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s finished. All over. That’s one of the reasons why I am going away – to forget her.’
She raised her eyebrows and looked at him with her head on one side. ‘That’s a pity. Could you not forget about her here?’
He swallowed. Why was it that he felt more embarrassed with her fully dressed and so close to him, than he ever did when she was posing naked? Perhaps it was because he knew that she always expected him to take advantage of her, in spite of his protestations that he never would.
‘Romanelli has offered me the opportunity to study in Florence,’ he said. ‘Batsford says that it would be foolish to refuse his offer.’
‘Well, don’t forget us, will you? And come and see us if you come back to London.’
‘I will,’ he promised. ‘And thank you for sitting for me. You are – really beautiful, you know.’ He gazed at her. ‘One day I will paint you. I have the sketch already, and then perhaps we both will become famous.’
She still had hold of his hand and she squeezed it gently. ‘You’re not a bad sort of fellow. Come here. Give us a kiss, just this once, just to set you on your way.’
She put her face up to him and he kissed her gently on her mouth. Her lips were full and soft and he closed his eyes. He had vowed never to kiss another woman after Mariabella, but when he opened his eyes he saw her fresh young skin, a bloom on her cheeks and a brightness in her eyes, and realized with a quickeni
ng of his pulses that he might well change his mind.
‘Off you go then, Mr Rayner,’ she said softly, ‘and don’t tell anyone, for I don’t give away my kisses lightly.’
He put his arms around her and gave her a hug. ‘I won’t, Miss Gregory. And thank you, thank you so much.’
He walked away, down the riverside towards the city, and then turned back for one more glimpse of the tall terraced houses of Cheyne Walk and the vista of Battersea Bridge, whose ancient leaning structure was etched against the skyline. The tide was running strong and the surging river rushed and broke against its wooden piers.
Coal-carrying tugs and barges, iron frigates, ocean-going cutters, ferry boats and the new English clippers, built in the London Docks, filled the waterway. What was once the main highway of London and was still the shimmering commercial lifeline, was throbbing and heaving with craft, their sails creaking and sighing atop the tall masts, the paddle wheels gyrating in the churning water and the steam-propelled engines clanking and hissing; and as James watched the scene, he thought tenderly of his father, who used to take him down to the Humber bank at Hessle near his home, or take him to watch the great whaling ships leaving the harbour on their long voyage to the Arctic.
An idea started to form in his mind. I will paint the river, he determined. I will capture it in all its dark brooding glory. It will be filled with triumphant billowing sails as the whaling ships return to port.
He became filled with enthusiasm. He felt joy flooding through him once more as he anticipated the prospect in front of him. ‘I will paint the river,’ he declared out loud. ‘But not the Thames. I will paint the Humber, and I will dedicate it in memory of my father.’
40
Billy and Doctors Fleming and Sheppard stood outside the cellars. Billy and Doctor Sheppard both gulped in air, while Doctor Fleming lit a cigar. Doctor Sheppard had asked his uncle to come back with them the following day to confirm that the disease was cholera, which he did unhesitatingly.
