A Mother's Love (22 page)

Matthew had become quite wrapped up in the garden at the rear of the house. It was rather narrow, overshadowed by other houses and a few straggly plane trees, but when they had moved in, he’d seen its potential for recreation purposes. Winters were now something to enjoy as he sat in the long dark evenings studying seed and rose catalogues. Spring found him digging and planting furiously; summer evenings were busy with weeding, tidying, and generally enjoying the fruits of his labours.

This summer Jamie was just about toddling – wobbling and gripping his mother’s hand as she came to inspect what Matthew was doing. Sara was his constant help, trying to assist in plucking out weeds, but more usually uprooting a treasured annual on the verge of flowering. He had found one way, however, of preventing that – a tiny plot of her own in one corner of the garden.

He smiled this evening as he covertly watched her planting sticks, solemnly digging a hole for them with the toy metal fork and spade he’d bought for her on her last birthday, hoping she’d share in his new hobby, which, by the look of things, she was showing every sign of doing.

‘Should she be doing that?’ Harriet’s voice was sharp as she sat Jamie in his wickerwork bassinet at the end of the garden to enjoy the last of the sun’s rays over the rooftops.

Matthew looked up and smiled indulgently. ‘Keeps her out of the way.’

‘And gets dirt all over the path. Look at the mess she’s making.’

‘I’ll sweep it up later.’ He surveyed the soil strewn across the narrow flagstones, then returned to his task as Harriet walked back towards the house. He had hardly bent to it when a shriek of pain from the bassinet made him spring upright again. But already Harriet was down the garden and now he saw what the trouble was.

Sara’s little spade had caught on something, a stone or a root. But in her effort to free it, the spade had suddenly released itself and soil had flown up in the air, most of it landing in the bassinet. Worse, a small portion had caught Jamie in the face, and he was now furiously rubbing his eyes, getting even more soil in them.

Before Matthew could reach them, Harriet was there, grabbing at Sara rather than her baby. She raised her free hand and struck the girl’s face, the dark cringing head, again and again, her shriek demented.

‘You wicked, wicked little fiend! You did that on purpose! Always wanting to hurt him, you wicked … I hate you. I wish you were dead!’

Before Matthew knew what was happening, she’d grabbed up the small metal spade, raising it in blind fury above the child.

Matthew saw its descend, the small dark head too transfixed with fear to duck out of the way.

Still too far away to stop the downward sweep, Matthew launched himself bodily at Sara and collided with her, pushing her aside with the impetus. The spade landed squarely across the back of his neck and he went down like a felled ox.

Harriet’s scream echoed across the gardens.

‘Matthew! Oh, dear God, Matthew!’ Dropping the spade, she threw herself down beside him and tried to turn him and lift his head. Blood from the nape of his neck streaked her hands, her cream summer blouse. The sight heightened her cries, combining them into one hysterical howl.

In his bassinet Jamie wailed, still trying to dig the smarting out of his eyes. Nearby, Sara lay on the path gasping, too winded to cry, too frightened by what had happened to move.

From the neighbouring house voices called. ‘What is it? What’s happened? Is someone hurt?’ Harriet responded.

‘Help! Oh, God, someone, help! I’ve killed him. Oh, Matthew – not again! Not you!’

Two people were beside her, helping her up. She tried to fight them. ‘I’ve killed him … Like I did before. I’m a murderer. Let me go!’ But the man held her firm while the woman bent to examine the prone bleeding figure.

It moved. It groaned, lifted itself on its arms, while its would-be helper started back. Twisting round painfully, it sat up.

One hand clasped to the back of his neck, Matthew stared up at his neighbours. He seldom saw them under normal circumstances. He knew their name to be Billington, but that was all.

Seeing that he was all right, the woman went to retrieve Jamie from his bassinet, cuddling him in one arm and wiping the dirt from his eyes with the aid of a hankie and a little spittle, it being an emergency. The man had helped Sara up, who now stood crying feebly. Harriet, released by her captors, threw herself on Matthew, almost knocking him back down again.

‘You’re not dead! Oh, Matthew … If I was to’ve killed you I … I’m glad I killed him, but …’ She stopped herself, but Matthew hadn’t seemed to hear.

Instead, a brief laugh shook him, apparently seeing the funny side of it as he moved his head to survey the scene, but the movement made him wince and he brought his head up sharply.

Harriet was all repentance. ‘Does it hurt? Oh, my love, I never meant to do anything terrible. I could have killed you.’

Any amusement he had felt dissipated as the wound began to throb. He brought his hand away, looked for a moment at the blood on it, then his sleeve soaked in it. Switching his gaze up to Harriet, his eyes were now devoid of all humour.

‘If this is what a toy spade could do to me, what might it have done to a four-year-old? You could have killed her, Harriet. What got into you? How could you contemplate harming her like that?’

‘Is there anything we can do?’ Mr Billington was bending over them. Matthew met the anxious regard sharply, then moderating it with an effort, gave an appropriate smile of gratitude.

‘No thanks. But it was kind of you to come running so swiftly. It might have been an emergency. Thank heavens it wasn’t. Even so, I appreciate it.’

‘Well, if you think everything is all right.’ He began to retreat, hopeful of not being expected to contribute anything further.

‘Yes, perfectly, thank you.’

‘Good.’ The baby having more or less stopped crying, his wife laid it back in the bassinet and followed him.

With Harriet’s help, Matthew got himself to his feet and took a deep breath to steady himself. Feeling more stable, he shrugged off her efforts. Before his harsh, disbelieving stare, Harriet wilted.

‘Don’t look at me like that, Matthew. Anyone’d think I
meant
to hurt you.’

‘You
meant
to hurt her.’ He reached out and took the child gently by the arm, drawing her against him in a protective gesture. ‘What in God’s name got into you? There was hatred in your eyes as you raised that thing. No two ways to say otherwise. Why should …’

He stopped, at a loss to explain it. ‘Honestly, Harriet, sometimes you frighten me. Most of the time you’re the sweetest, most docile, loving person anyone could wish to meet. There are times I think you walk this earth in mortal fear of doing something wrong, you can be so timid. Then suddenly …’ He raised up both hands. ‘Out of a clear blue sky.’

Harriet was already crying. She seemed to collapse as though her bones had turned to jelly, no longer able to hold her upright.

Matthew saw it coming, and let go of Sara to catch Harriet as she swooned. Lifting her up, he bore her into the house, calling for Miss Gilbert; Mrs Downey, their cook; Ellen, their new housemaid – for anyone, to run for the doctor.

All three had been alerted by Mrs Craig’s screams, but having let the next-door neighbours in through the side gate to help, had kept themselves discreetly out of the way, knowing that more authoritative assistance was at hand. Now they all came running at the master’s call, to do whatever was wanted.

‘Oh that
is
a pity.’ Mary Wilson nodded, pouring tea for Matthew while he related the sad news to her and Aunt Sarah, who spent more time with her sister than ever these days. ‘I know how she must be feeling. I’ve suffered the same loss in my time. Still …’

She brightened as she laid the teapot back on its stand and handed him his cup. ‘There’ll be other times. Hardly into its seventh week – she’ll get over that and start again. But it’s disappointing.’

Her sister pursed her lips over her own cup. ‘She doesn’t strike me as that strong, or stable. She worries me, that girl. Always edgy.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with Harriet,’ Matthew said quickly. ‘She had an upset. If I had known her condition, I would have been far more careful. I don’t think she was aware either – at that point.’

‘Careful?’ Sarah Morris caught on to the word, switching her glance from the window, its panes streaming with a brief summer afternoon thundershower. She cast him a look, her brows beneath her greying frizz of fringe drawing together. ‘What on earth did you do to her?’

Defensively, he told them in the briefest terms of the upset two weeks previously, how Harriet had swooned from the fright of some harm to Jamie. He avoided saying just how vicious a turn her temper had taken. It had been pure hysteria, her believing her son could have been blinded. Like a female leopard protecting her cubs, she had struck out – a natural reaction – and he should never have shown his anger as he had. And now he was reaping the bitter harvest of it, his child miscarried. He still hadn’t got over blaming himself. He wanted to weep.

‘I lost my temper. Over something quite stupid. But it truly did upset her. I shall never forgive myself.’

Mary leaned forward and laid a hand on his. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself.’

Sarah was made of different stuff. ‘Losing your temper’s no reason to make her lose a baby. Unless you struck her. Did you?’

‘I certainly did not!’ Matthew’s contrition erupted into instant outrage.

‘Only …’ Sarah stopped, the abrupt way she broke off causing both pairs of eyes to turn towards her.

‘Only, what?’ Mary prompted.

‘Nothing. My silly old mind’s wandering.’ Sarah took a quick sip of tea, averting her eyes from theirs.

But the way she had glanced towards Matthew, her look full of some veiled knowledge he couldn’t define, prompted recollections of his own, fleeting intimations he had submerged at the time as being too outlandish to be taken seriously.

Harriet had done nothing but cry after the doctor had left. She had been wretched, blaming herself for her failure to keep the baby. That night, she had woken up from a nightmare, crying that
he
was punishing her for what she’d done – that
he
said he would.

She had been so inconsolably terrified, clinging on to Matthew, begging him to protect her from ‘him’, that he altered his first thought of her referring to God and His punishment, to the Devil. But her cry that ‘he said he would’ had a more earthly ring to it than that, and for no apparent reason Will Porter, her first husband, sprang into his mind as he tried to soothe her.

He had never felt entirely comfortable about that man. It wasn’t jealousy – how could it be – a dead man? But there was something that had always nagged: the way Harriet never referred to him; that inexplicable haunted look that came upon her if his name cropped up.

Thinking of it now, he wondered, had she been frightened of Will Porter? A silly thought, but … Aunt Sarah had stopped so sharply just now. ‘Only …’ What was so awful that she had made excuses for not continuing? What did she know that no one else knew?

With an effort, Matthew pulled himself together and drank a large gulp of his tea to subdue these idiotic phantoms. He was entering into the realms of melodrama, and he must stop it.

Yet another sentence, cut short, forced its way into his mind, though at the time it hadn’t done so. ‘If I was to have killed you – I’m glad I killed
him
, but …’ She had broken off so suddenly, even in her distress apparently aware of having said too much about something.

Long after he’d left his in-laws, the thoughts still plagued him until he had to push them away forcibly, making his mind turn to more normal things in order to submerge them. Finally they did disappear. It was not until two weeks later that they re-emerged, stronger than before.

Harriet recovered more quickly than expected. For all her small stature she was strong, at least physically. Within days of the miscarriage she was on her feet, but so subdued that Matthew worried for her.

It was the way she looked at Sara that gave him most worry – such a look of hate, as though she blamed her for the loss of the baby. Again he had an impression that there was something more to this than met the eye. Even though Matthew tried to shrug it off, it persisted. Did Sara’s own father have something to do with Harriet never displaying the least fondness for her? He kept wondering.

As it got stronger, he decided enough was enough. Four weeks after the miscarriage, he left the journal in the capable hands of his assistant, Leonard Hallet, and went on a visit.

The
Freewoman
was ticking along nicely these days. If anything, it had expanded. Women’s suffrage societies were still making their presence felt in the north of England, if not to the extent of the 1895 gatherings, at least enough to keep women in the south subscribing to the
Freewoman
in substantial numbers. There was now a new and up-to-date printing press, the old printer long since gone. Hallet now took a large part in the journal, sometimes even being sent out on consignments, but mostly making himself useful in the office sorting the advertisements to go in, while Matthew did page layouts. He would also sift through the mounds of subscriptions, handing them to the new apprentice to file away after they’d been listed – a youngster named Bob Pullings who did all the menial tasks while learning his trade.

Confident of Leonard’s ability to take care of things for an hour or so, Matthew found himself a cab and gave the destination. Outside the oil and candle shop in Hackney Road he paid the driver and went in.

Behind the counter Mrs Hardy was weighing currants for a customer. At the far end of the shop Mr Hardy was drawing vinegar from a barrel for another, the brown liquid a slow noisy trickle from the tap into a metal jug.

Neither looked up as Matthew came in. He waited quietly. Mrs Hardy was the first to notice him as she closed the till with the customer’s departure. She stared for a fraction of a second, then was galvanised into life.