A Mother's Love (27 page)

‘Don’t come near me! I know you hate me! Like your father.’

Sara didn’t know what to do. Her mother was often excited, upset – highly strung, Daddy called it – but she’d never smashed things before. She wasn’t sure whether to try and pacify her, or run from the room.

‘Daddy doesn’t hate you, Mummy,’ she tried to soothe. She wished her father were here now. He’d know what to do.

A crafty gleam had come into her mother’s lovely grey eyes. ‘You don’t know who your real father is.’

Sara stood looking blank. Of course she knew who her father was. She knew all about him. He ran a business; wanted to make it bigger so they could all be wealthy and have lots of nice things; wanted her to grow up to be a beautiful woman. He told her all those things when she sat on his knee. Of course she knew who he was.

Her mother had calmed a little, and now she steadied herself with an effort.

‘If you knew who he was, you wouldn’t be so cocksure of yourself. He raped me – put you inside me. That’s what you are, the creature of rape. I never wanted you. And every time I look at you, I see him.’

Her eyes ranged the room. ‘I know he’s there. He killed my baby. Why can’t he leave me alone? If he’d let me alone, it wouldn’t have happened …’

‘Nothing’s happened, Mummy,’ Sara attempted timidly, but she was confused. Who was Mummy talking about? Not her father? They loved each other. He was always tender and she was always so happy with him. Even when she wept, which was often, she’d cling to him – even after they’d had an argument.

She made another effort to reassure, but her mother’s expression, so full of hatred, terrified her into silence.

‘I never wanted you. I prayed and prayed you’d die at birth after your father died. Yes, he’s dead, thank God. But you had to be full of life. I wish to God you had died too. All my poor little babies died. Poor little babies …’ Tears strangled her voice to a whisper. ‘I’ve only my Jamie left – and I can never have any more.’

Sara could only stare at her mother as Mrs Downey came puffing up from the kitchen to see what on earth was going on.

She watched her hurry forward to calm the weeping, trembling woman, wrapping her housegown, which had come loose, more closely about her, and, with an anxious glance at the fallen table and smashed tumbler, guiding her carefully past Sara.

‘She’ll be all right, your mummy,’ she whispered as she passed, supporting the wilting form. ‘She’s had a bit of a seizure. I’ll get her to bed and we’ll get Dr Horder to have a look at her. I think he should.’

Sara watched them negotiate the flight of stairs, disappear at the turn of the bannisters above her, Mrs Downey’s soothing voice going on all the way up. She heard the door close, the soothing tone cut to a muffled mumbling. She hadn’t moved, couldn’t move, wouldn’t have known where to go if she had.

In two weeks she’d be seven. Seven years old. But her mother’s words were now beginning to sink in with all the pain of one twice her age, making her heart feel unmeasurably ancient with truths discovered only a moment ago. The father she loved so dearly wasn’t her father at all.
Her
father was dead, someone she didn’t know, someone her mother had hated so much that that hate had been transferred to herself after his death. And the hurt it thrust upon her was hardly to be borne by someone only seven years old like her.

Yet how could she hate her mother? She loved her. She loved her father, only he wasn’t …

Suddenly all the pain welled up from where it sat deep inside and she sank down in the doorway and cried and cried her aged heart out to be a child again.

Now that September had arrived, the nights had begun drawing in. Sara stood at the window of the drawing room watching the rain bouncing off the pavement, making patterns. It was Saturday. She would be starting at the high school on Monday. She had won a scholarship outright, achieving the highest marks of 1905, according to her school report.

‘I am so proud of you,’ Matthew had said, his voice ringing with pride as he read the report. She felt no pleasure in her achievement, in truth felt no emotion at all. She had won the scholarship, would be leaving behind most of those she had known throughout her earlier days, but there was no sense of loss. She didn’t feel sad or happy, pleased or sorry. She merely felt – immune.

‘You can’t even look pleased,’ her mother had said. ‘But then, you never have had any feelings. The older you get, the worse you get. Not a reaction, not a response. Nothing. You’re unnatural.’

Perhaps she was right – she certainly hadn’t been able to respond to Matthew’s unbounded joy, though she knew she should be proud of her outstanding talents, as Matthew euphorically called them.

She had looked upon him as Matthew for a long time now, ever since that day … She’d been nearly seven then – was eleven now.

From that day, she had never again been able to think of him as a father. Stepfather was unwieldy to say. It was better to avoid calling him anything to his face, though if he noticed, he had never said.

The door behind her opened quietly. Ellen’s small voice floated towards her. ‘Dinner’ll be ready in two ticks, Miss Sara.’

‘Serve mine in my room, Ellen,’ she said without turning round.

‘Mr Craig said he’d like you to eat with him. Mrs Craig isn’t coming down. She don’t feel well.’

Of course she doesn’t
, Sara thought bitterly.
Because she’s been up there all afternoon drinking that medicine of hers. That brandy.

It was no secret these days. Matthew tried so hard to cover it up. It hurt to see him making excuses for her. It wrung Sara’s heart, him pretending she ailed, never accepting any invitations to visit, never inviting people. He hardly went out except to go to the journal or, when he was forced, meet clients or attend a business function. ‘Mrs Craig’s health is poorly … Yes, I’ll convey your good wishes for her speedy recovery.’ Sara could imagine it being said. ‘Recovering, but not strong enough to accept any invitation as yet. It’s good of you to wish her well. Yes, she does suffer poor health these days.’

‘So Mr Craig will be dining alone?’ Sara spoke over her shoulder without turning round.

‘Yes, miss.’

Sara frowned and lifted her face towards the ceiling. ‘Very well, Ellen, I’ll have my dinner with Mr Craig.’

‘Very good, Miss Sara.’

The door closed as gently as it had opened, and she turned away from the window to regard the door with a blank stare.

They had a butler now – Ernest Seaforth, a smallish man, or was it that she was growing so tall that he just looked smallish? His shoulders were so narrow that his head seemed almost too big for the rest of him. But it was Ellen, dear Ellen, who made it her special task to tell Harriet of the approach of mealtimes just before Seaforth, in his official capacity, announced them. Ellen had taken it on herself to befriend Sara although Sara had never encouraged her. Unprepossessing, plain-faced and skinny, Ellen wore her thin sandy hair scraped back into some sort of bun beneath her cap, which made her look more childlike than her twenty-five years would have her be. But she was as near a friend as Sara felt she would ever have. She was not given to making friends as a rule, for which she blamed a deep-seated mistrust of people, although she knew of no cause for it, except an instinctive preference for her own company.

The little dinner gong in the hall gave a tinny buzz. To make doubly sure it had been heard, Seaforth came in to announce in a voice remarkably resonant for one of his stature that dinner was about to be served. Sara nodded and followed him across to the dining room.

It was a silly dining table. Long, designed to seat some dozen to sixteen people, it hardly ever saw more than three. It was usually laid for that number – herself, Matthew and Jamie – her mother mostly keeping to her room. Jamie was eight now, and, no longer able to use his babyhood as an excuse to keep him by her, Harriet stayed up there alone.

He sat now, opposite Sara, his father between them at the head of the table. Why they couldn’t get a smaller, more comfortable one, Sara could never fathom. Perhaps it gave the comforting illusion of a family larger than it really was. Matthew would have liked more children. He’d said as much to Sara herself in the past. But now it was too late. Mother was coming up to thirty-two, and for years she had kept to Dr Horder’s advice not to risk any more pregnancies by the simple expedient of having her husband sleep in a room of his own, the one above hers. He was still the gentle, caring, attentive husband, but Sara’s discerning eye noticed that that was as far as it went.

‘So you start your new school on Monday,’ he opened as the empty soup bowls were borne away by Ellen.

Sara didn’t look up. ‘Yes.’

‘Looking forward to it?’

‘I expect so.’ She knew without looking at him that he frowned. Now would follow the questions – why did she only expect so? Did she realise it was a great opportunity? Faced with the problem of having to explain that she merely saw it as another school and she’d get on with it, she was grateful for once when Jamie intervened.

‘I’m going up too,’ he put in. ‘Be in a junior class this term.’

Matthew laid his spoon down and sat back, smiling his apology for having ignored him. ‘You’ll be a big lad now at school.’

‘Wish I were bigger.’

‘But you
are
big. You’re taller than most boys of your age.’

‘I mean bigger sideways. They call me streaky bacon at school.’

‘That won’t last. In a year or so you’ll begin to fill out. Think yourself lucky not to be attending the sort of public school I did. An awful lot of bullying went on there under the name of strengthening one’s character. One had to endure or go under. It was as simple as that. I’ll make certain the one you go to is more pleasant – that is if you want to go.’

The thin, pallid face grew obdurate. ‘I’ll be glad to go to a public school; I’ll be more important. It’ll be better than being at
ordinary
school, coming home every day. I hate ordinary schools!’

‘It is not ordinary.’ Matthew grinned. ‘It’s a private one. A good one.’ His grin broadened. ‘I know: I pay enough for you to go there.’

Jamie pouted. ‘It’s not the same. I want to be
special
.’

‘You will be one day.’ Matthew laughed as the main course arrived, and didn’t see Jamie poke out his tongue at his watching sister.

Last night the fog had been solid, thick yellow. This morning it was greyer, but still wall-like, reducing visibility to a yard or so.

Matthew walked cautiously along a seemingly endless Victoria Park Road in the direction of Mare Street. Passers-by loomed up suddenly to be swallowed up the second they’d passed; the odd passing vehicle was heard rather than seen – a deadened clipclop of hooves, a blanketed rumble of wheels crunching on messy cobbles, the occasional muffled rattle of a motor-car engine – though now and again a ghostly shape would materialise as the fog swirled to the movement.

Stepping off a curb to cross the park entrance was disorientating. Feet feeling for the opposite curb, Matthew hoped he hadn’t inadvertently crossed over to become quite lost on reaching Mare Street. It was a relief to pass the fruit and vegetable stall on the corner of that main road, the greyness taking on a bilious tint from the hissing kerosene lamps. The optimistic stallholder crouched into his jacket, muffled to the eyebrows, beating gloved hands together as he hovered for customers. Matthew, glad to be on the right track, turned left. Just half a mile to his office from here. The fog-bound chug of a goods train on the elevated railway to his right helped him keep his bearings.

It was good to be out of the cold. Leonard Hallet had arrived half an hour before him to open up and the gas fire was radiating golden heat through the office. His two other staff were already at their desks, and Alfie Scott, a sallow boy of thirteen, was brewing tea in a cubbyhole. Matthew allowed tea to be made on cold inclement mornings. It helped the staff to be more eager about their work, not like some who had nothing until midday. A cup of tea at their side first thing on a cold morning had a remarkable effect, he thought.

‘Busy, are we?’ he asked as he took off his homburg and divested himself of scarf, overcoat and gloves, handing them to Hallet, who hung them on the stand for him. Hallet looked harassed. Hallet always looked harassed.

‘Busy’s not the word, Mr Craig. Snowed under is more like it. And it’s only Monday morning. You’ve never seen so much post, Mr Craig. The staff’s still sorting it and only halfway through.’

Matthew squeezed between his desk and the wall. These last three months lack of space in the office had become an increasing problem. He gazed at the mound of already-opened mail before him. ‘Anything interesting?’

‘Anything interesting!’ echoed Hallet. ‘Enough for a week’s work and more. And it’s only Monday.’

Matthew nodded and sat down as a cup of tea arrived at his side. At one desk Toby Billett, a married man of thirty, was separating subscriptions from contributions for Matthew to go through. At the other desk Eddie Wells, young and single, sorted invoices for Hallet, now Matthew’s chief assistant, to deal with. Beyond the narrow passage was the printing room. Matthew could hear both presses clacking away, each manned by an operator, finishing off what had been left over from Saturday.

It was a busy time. Two weeks to Christmas, and this month’s issue had had to be got out a week early. A couple of years ago this would have been no bother; indeed, they would have been scrabbling about for something to fill the journal. It was an entirely different story now.

In November the previous year the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies had held its national convention in London. It had been the saving of the
Freewoman
, which had been teetering on the edge of closure when Matthew and Leonard had hurried to cover the convention. With his command of shorthand, Hallet had proved an invaluable reporter. Matthew, with camera and tripod, had taken pictures of a sort, vowing to employ a man skilled in the art of photography the moment he could afford it.