A Mother's Love (34 page)

‘It’s late. Your mother will be wondering where we are.’

The voice was harsh, the hand held out to help her up was cold and formal. Wordlessly she let herself be lifted to her feet, watched him retrieve his collar, swiftly fasten it around his neck, swing his coat over his shoulder.

‘Why do you say I’m beautiful when you don’t mean it?’ she asked as she matched his swift stride back the way they had come.

‘I do mean it, Sara.’ He didn’t slacken his pace.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she cried, stopping abruptly. ‘I shall never believe you again.’

He stopped too and stood looking at her, his eyes so sad she could have cried, but she wasn’t prepared to let him see her cry. She’d learned from years of feeling spurned and belittled never to allow anyone to see her cry and show herself belittled even more.

‘Why do you think I say it then?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said lamely.

‘It’s
because
I love you, Sara. A love I can’t declare. I know that confuses you but it’s a love I shall never acknowledge. I’ve no right to soil your innocence with explanations. If I did, it would ruin what we do have together. Now come on, Sara, we must go.’

She didn’t move. ‘Do you hate me, Matthew?’ She saw pain come into his eyes. His voice shook with emotion.

‘How could I ever hate you – the only person I can turn to in this unloving world I live in?’

‘But you treat me so … so horridly sometimes.’

‘It’s because … Sara, don’t ask me any more questions. I can’t answer them. You’ve asked me before. I couldn’t answer them then and I can’t answer them now.’

‘But you make me feel so …’ She searched desperately for a word. ‘So unwanted. The way Mother makes me feel. As though I’ve done something terribly wrong and you can never never forgive me.’

‘Oh, my sweet Sara, I could forgive you anything, because I love you.’

‘What have I done so wrong that you love me enough to forgive me?’

‘You’re twisting my words, Sara. You are not old enough yet to understand. Just be content that I do love you.’

‘Then why?’

He had become harsh. ‘No more, please. You must be content with that. Now let’s move on, or your mother might suspect … She might wonder … Just come along now.’

He moved off at such a pace that Sara, her long legs impeded by her lightweight but voluminous muslin skirt, was forced to trail behind, her parasol up to keep off the sun’s rays also helping to slow her pace. And her mind didn’t know which way to turn. She only hoped that he would forgive whatever she had done wrong and continue coming to her room the way he used to. It was the only comfort she had.

The very night they returned home from France, Jamie was awoken from a disturbed sleep by a most awful pain in his stomach. They often ate unusual foods on holiday and Jamie guessed he must have had something on the way home that hadn’t agreed with him.

His first thought was to crawl out of bed and reach for the pot that lay beneath in case he was suddenly sick. But nothing was worse than being sick all on one’s own. What he really wanted was someone to be here to comfort him.

There was not a sound in the house. The servants had all gone to bed by now, and his mother and father were fast asleep too in their respective rooms. There was Sara. He could rouse her. He had no qualms about rousing her, in fact felt a wicked delight at the idea of doing just that. The trouble was that the pain was subsiding. Nor did he feel sick any more. But it would return sooner or later, worse than it had been, and he would be sick, he was sure of it.

Hoping in a way that this would be true, he crept out of bed and went to the door to call Sara. Quietly he opened it, but no further than just a crack, for the door to Sara’s room was already open. A shadowy figure stood there – not Sara’s – the shape of a man. Ghost-like, it hovered, gazing back into the room from which it seemed to have emerged.

Jamie froze. It was a ghost. He felt his blood run cold as, silently, the figure drifted towards him. Petrified, Jamie watched it move towards the head of the stairs leading down to the bedrooms below. It had to pass him. What if it saw him, raised its arms to freeze his blood so solid that he would die on the spot? Yet he could not close his door again lest it see the movement and finish him off in a most horrible manner.

A thin shaft of moonlight threading through the rear landing window briefly touched the gliding figure and it was then that Jamie saw its face. His first impulse was to leap out and yell, ‘Thank heaven it’s only you, Father!’ But some instinct stayed him.

Fear receding before a different emotion, a reluctance to be seen watching, he stood peering through the crack of his door until his father slipped quietly down the stairs and disappeared. Listening intently, he heard his father’s bedroom door open, then close with a faint click. There was no more sound, and Jamie moved back into his room and then into his bed. He did not feel sick any longer, but when it did return, he didn’t go for help or comfort, but merely brought up the offending food into the chamber pot. Ellen could get rid of it in the morning.

‘Why didn’t you tell someone you were ill in the night?’ Harriet cuddled her baby to her. ‘You poor little darling, I’ll get Dr Horder to look at you this very morning.’

Jamie suffered himself to be cuddled. ‘I’m feeling much better. It went pretty quick once I was sick.’

‘Even so, it could come back. I think we’ll get Dr Horder to take a look at you just in case you’re sickening for something worse.’

Dr Horder diagnosed a brief bilious attack and gave him some foul chalky-tasting medicine, two spoonfuls, thrice a day.

Jamie grimaced at the first dose. ‘I don’t see why I need take any more. All this fuss! I’m better now.’ Rudely he pushed away a second spoonful. Ellen, who was trying to administer it, looked anxious.

‘You don’t want to be ill just before you’re going back to school. You’ve only got another fortnight before term starts.’

‘And I’m not spending it being dosed up with that muck! You can bloody well take it away!’

‘Master Jamie!’

He didn’t care. He’d learned to say worse than that at school. Real swearing. If you didn’t use it you were a cissy. If you dared use really foul ones, like fuck and cunt, even though these had to be whispered, and even though you weren’t sure what they actually meant, they sounded good and you rose rapidly in your fellows’ estimation.

He had come to enjoy the feeling of superiority that his exclusive schooling brought him and felt quite justified in his usage of his father’s staff; not, of course, Mr Seaforth and Mrs Downey, who in their way upheld their dignity against all employers, and woe betide young twelve-year-olds who tried to buck against them. But with lesser beings like Ellen, he could more or less say what he pleased. It made him feel good to shock her.

To add to his sense of superiority, he pushed the second spoonful away, spilling the chalky substance all over her apron.

‘Master Jamie!’ she exclaimed again, exasperated, but she didn’t attempt to pursue the second spoonful.

There was no recurrence of that night’s sickness, although he awoke at about the same hour two nights later for no apparent reason except with the feeling that he had heard something. Thinking of the ghostly figure of his father that other night, in a fever of curiosity he got out of bed and spent the next fifteen minutes peering through the tiniest opening of his door.

He was about to close it, his neck starting to ache from his post at the tiny opening and his bare feet grown cold, when the click of his sister’s door alerted him.

As before, his father appeared, pausing to look back, closing the door softly, then moving stealthily off down the stairs. Jamie closed his door after he’d gone, mystified. What was his father doing? It was all very odd.

It was even more odd when, several nights after that, Jamie, now full of curiosity, and swept up by the strange double occurrence, forced himself to keep vigil. He was rewarded by the now familiar sight of his father emerging from Sara’s room some time later. Jamie fell to wondering if Mother knew what was going on.

‘Why does Father have to go into Sara’s room in the middle of the night?’

Harriet looked up from helping him get his things together ready for his new term. There had been so much to buy: new clothes, new books, more sports equipment. The following day, Monday, he would be back at school, far away. She felt tearful. It was always a wrench saying goodbye to him, but bravely she held back the tears.

‘I don’t know, dear.’ She stopped, frowning at him. ‘I don’t understand what you mean, Jamie dear.’

‘Well …’ Jamie was gathering up his new socks along with some older ones, and stuffing them into the corner of his suitcase. ‘You know when I was sick? I went to see if Sara could come and help me feel better. I saw Father coming out of her room. I just wondered …’

Harriet stopped sorting shirts to interrupt. ‘What time was this?’

‘About half past twelve, I suppose.’ Jamie was still haphazardly packing socks. ‘And then it happened again a couple of nights later, around the same time. And then again, last night. I thought she mightn’t be well or something. Like I was. But Sara can’t keep on being ill, can she?’

Harriet stared at him but wasn’t seeing him. Her mind had raced on, was becoming appalled by what it visualised. She felt suddenly weak, exhausted, full of fear.

‘Finish your packing,’ she said tersely, and left him, protesting, to the task.

In her room, her heart pounding, her breath coming in irregular gasps, Harriet let herself sink on to her dressing-table chair. Hardly able to stop herself shaking, she fumbled for her medicine in her bedside commode. This summer she had hardly needed recourse to it; had felt her life beginning to pull itself together. But this morning there was a great need of at least one small sip to fortify herself. The one sip, however, became two, then three. Before she realised, she had taken four glasses. Her vision blurred, but still her thoughts reeled.

No, it couldn’t be what she was thinking. And yet. That she-devil knew she wasn’t Matthew’s child. Paying her out, that’s what she was doing – enticing her own mother’s husband … against her …

Yet how could she accuse him on the words of a small boy, an innocent little boy who might have been merely dreaming?

She took another sip of brandy and found a sudden need to drain this glass too.

‘I don’t know what to do!’ In her mother’s house, Harriet clung on to her, letting herself be held by that one good arm while her Aunt Sarah sat nearby, stunned by what Harriet had related.

‘Crying’s not going to solve anything,’ she said sharply, with not much show of sympathy, though her expression spoke otherwise.

By comparison, Mary’s voice held a new weakness since her stroke. ‘Coming from a child’s lips like that,’ it quivered. ‘I can’t believe it.’

‘That’s what I mean. From a child’s lips – James’s. How can we be sure what he says is true? Don’t forget, no one has given Matthew a chance yet to defend himself. I think he should be allowed to speak before we take the word of that young man.’

Sarah had never particularly liked James. It was a puzzle who he took after, unless it was Matthew’s family. They had never mixed with the Wilsons, but kept themselves to themselves. Snobs, and ignorant to boot – that was her opinion – Matthew being an exception, of course.

‘Jamie doesn’t tell lies,’ Harriet burst out. ‘Especially things like that. He wouldn’t
know
about things of that sort – at his age.’

‘I know, dear,’ soothed Mary. Her right arm tightened about her daughter. In her lap, the left hand lay crabbed and lifeless.

Sarah was not to be swayed by her niece’s defence of the boy. ‘I’m appalled by what you’ve told us, Harriet. But really you’ve no proper proof. Don’t you think you should speak to Matthew himself before jumping to conclusions and getting yourself in a state?’

Harriet looked startled. ‘I couldn’t do that. If I was wrong, I couldn’t bear him thinking I’m accusing him of something so … nasty. I trust Matthew. I’ve always trusted him. I don’t know what I’d have done without him to look after me and support me and that.’

‘That’s your trouble, Harriet,’ said Sarah, her tone still hard. ‘You’ve leaned on him from the very start – never tried to stand on your own two feet. You have to find out what’s going on or you will never be sure and it’ll always be left hanging over your marriage. I personally don’t believe there’s anything in it, but you
must know.
’

‘Perhaps if she watched him?’ Mary suggested waveringly. She took her hand from Harriet’s shoulders and used it to move her left hand to a more comfortable position, grimacing at the pain such a dead limb could produce when it could do nothing for itself.

Sarah regarded her sister with the pity she could not give her timid niece. The years had proved Harriet a disappointment and she now felt only impatience. Harriet’s daughter had far more courage. At fifteen she already looked you straight in the eye as her mother never could, and it wasn’t just her height. Sara had earned her approval in all things. And now this. Who should one believe? She couldn’t for an instant take the word of a wilful child over that of Sara. A child herself, the girl could have had no notion that such unsavoury things went on in this world, much less be part of them. The idea was revolting. Even so, she resolved to get to the root of it. She herself would face her great-niece with this business and see what came out of it.

She never did face Sara with it. Events overtook them before she could. And to have attempted to do so afterwards would have been heartless and cruel.

Harriet felt quite unsteady, having taken too many sips of medicine to fortify herself for the coming confrontation. She knew she’d drunk too much. Had she not, she wouldn’t have said the things she did.

She’d intended to follow her aunt’s advice and watch Matthew to make certain of her facts before daring to charge him with assignations with her daughter. Instead, when he found her and tried to take the glass from her, saying that it was the bottle talking, she had flung its contents at him, screaming abuse at him like a harridan.