A Mother's Love (39 page)

Sara’s stomach was churning as they rattled towards Liverpool Street. It wasn’t so much what she expected to find as the scramble of male reporters who would elbow her, a mere woman, out of the way in their eagerness to get photos, a story, be first back to their paper. She thought of suffragettes who’d been thus manhandled, the gentle sex having no protection. She could get a smack in the face as easily as they had, and there would be no one to support her, as Jonathan had once pointed out.

‘I’ll keep an eye on yer,’ Duffy said, noting her white lips. He too had been a little shocked by Jonathan Ward’s callous order.

Sara smiled her thanks, but felt small comfort. Once in the fray to get pictures, Duffy would forget her. He had his job to do.

It was the scene she’d expected. After she had explained herself to the police, ignoring their surprise, she and Duffy hurried down the iron steps to the noisy, smoke-blackened terminus with its stink of soot and oil, and across the stone concourse area towards the knot of gawping onlookers whom more police were persuading to keep their distance.

Elbowing her way through, she managed to reach the scene of the earlier affray, or rather a sea of reporters’ backs. Coats tight across shoulders, they jostled for position, notebooks and pencils at the ready, cameras aimed, smoke from their flash-pans already rising in small white puffs above the throng, while police called for them to keep their distance from the two covered bodies, the Black Maria already having borne off the survivors of the fight.

Duffy was already up front – as a small man, he was able to wriggle his way through – and Sara began shouldering her way between two reporters.

‘’Ere, watchit!’ One turned, saw her notebook and gave a loud laugh, assignment forgotten for the moment. ‘Cripes, lady! Who d’yer think you are? George Bleedin’ Bernard Shaw! Sod orf with yer!’

Sara ignored him, continued to edge forward. A painful dig in the ribs stopped her, making her gasp. A voice hissed in her ear: ‘Bugger off, yer stupid bitch! No place fer you ’ere.’

Sara glared, then turned back to the two unevenly bulging sheets she could now see four feet from her. A hard thump caught her between the shoulder blades. ‘’Ere what I say? Or d’yer wanna get ’urt?’

What she would have retorted, she didn’t know. In that second one worthy leaped forward to yank a sheet down enough to expose the face of one victim. Sara felt a shock wave strike through her at the sight of a pugilistic face gashed from receding hairline to heavy unshaven jaw, neck slit half across, blood surrounding the bullet head like a halo, the rest of the face, with its flattened nose, the colour of putty.

Her first instinct was to fight her way out, stomach heaving. Then she remembered why she was here. Duffy was already taking a picture as police pounced on the one who had yanked away the sheet. Duffy’s camera turned on the ensuing struggle between police and reporter. A baton descending upon the man’s shoulder as he battled with them did no damage, but a spectacular photograph was caught by Duffy.

Sara took it all in that second as calm was restored. She had her story; different, she hoped, to the rest of those around. Her hat had been knocked sideways, her foot trodden on, the dig and the punch she had received still hurt a little, but she didn’t care.

‘Who does he work for?’ she demanded of a man next to her.

‘
Daily Echo
.’ The man, now uninterested in interfering women, swore angrily. ‘Bloody coppers! No regard fer our rights.’

Sara called to her cameraman. ‘Carry on here, Duffy!’

He looked up, bowler on the back of his head. ‘Where you going?’ But Sara was already on her way.

The taxi chugging towards the
Graphic
made her fume. The hansom cabs of old would have been far faster and more nimble, but they had gone in favour of the combustion engine.

The newsroom was in uproar, but blind and deaf to all but her story – ‘Police Attack on Reporter’ – she hurried to her desk in the corner. Eyes on the paper she fed into the clanking typing machine, not even pausing to take off her hat, she began typing furiously.

Jonathan stood at her shoulder, made her jump. ‘You can’t use that.’

She turned to do battle. ‘Why not? It’s a good story.’

‘Maybe it is.’ His voice held a grudging admiration. ‘But you can’t use it. Can’t have a down on policemen doing their job.’

‘But they beat him – one of our people. For nothing.’

‘Defending themselves. No, my girl, you think again.’

Sara’s lips tightened. ‘But this is …’

‘Sorry.’ He was smiling. ‘Scrap it. Anyway, we’ve a damned-sight-hotter story than that you are messing about with.’

Her blue eyes glared. An editor was free to publish or not to publish. Jonathan was deliberately blocking her – he had sent her out only to kill the story she’d brought back. Quite deliberately. She made to protest, but he cut her short.

‘Haven’t you even noticed what’s going on here?’

No, she hadn’t noticed. Now she did. From the relatively relaxed newsroom she’d left earlier – as far as any newsroom could ever be relaxed, the work from the night staff rolling through the rumbling printing presses downstairs – everyone was now rushing back and forth, bending over copy, frantically cutting, pasting, messenger boys running in from the wire room and out again. Even Mackenzie, usually in his office, had come up from the machine room to move about between the desks, impatient, urging everyone to greater speed. How could she not have noticed?

The story, coming moments before Sara’s return, was still sending shock waves not only around this office but no doubt every newsroom in the country. She sat stunned as Jonathan relayed the news to her that the great new unsinkable
Titanic
, pride of the nation, departed a week previously from Southampton on her maiden voyage, had sunk. The cause was said to have been a collision with an iceberg off Newfoundland. It was not known how many lives were lost, but the huge liner was reported to have gone down within an hour – not many would have got off a ship that size in that time. In the face of what was a national disaster, what price Sara’s bit of a story? All this Jonathan said in a gabble before turning away with Mr Mackenzie signalling urgently to him.

Sara had become aware of the silence of the building itself. At this time of day it was usually reverberating from end to end to the rumble of the printing presses churning out the morning edition down in the machine room. But all was still. The print run had been stopped halfway through. An expensive business unless absolutely imperative, the front page had been scrapped to accommodate this fresh and terrible news – and every newspaper in the country was stopping its presses for the same reason.

But why hadn’t Jonathan told her immediately, instead of taunting her? Anyway, there would be room somewhere for her now piffling snippet of news. Disaster or no, the paper had to be filled with other news, trivial, banal; even if the front page was being frantically redrawn, reassembled, the wire-room lads bringing ever more detailed intelligence as it came through, morse-coded.

Angrily, she tore the sheet from the typewriter and threw it after his retreating figure. ‘Here, scrap it! See if I care!’

His low chuckle floated back, but he didn’t turn round, merely shouted for a lad trying to catch his breath to ‘move himself!’

Sara turned back to her typewriter. She was sure now why he had sent her to cover that story. To teach her a lesson. To see how she would weather the vile language spat at her, the digs in the ribs, men delighting in hurting and humiliating a woman. It must be like that for suffragettes, at the mercy of men. They had to be admired, the way they fought, entirely voluntarily, against a world men had created for them.

That was it – voluntarily. Jonathan had ordered her into this; had hoped perhaps that she would cry so he could gloat and ask,
ready to give up
? Taking his male superiority out on her. Well, she’d give him no such satisfaction. She hadn’t cried; hadn’t turned away in horror; had stood up to the behaviour of her fellow reporters. From now on, she would go into the fray and dare them to do their worst. She had become a proper reporter, a good one, and to bloody hell with Jonathan Ward and his view of women. As far as she was concerned, he was the loser, not her.

The rest of her thoughts were swept away as she was pulled into the fervour of the morning’s exciting, terrible news, Mr Mackenzie himself tossing a scribbled note for her to rush down to the waiting compositors to be fitted into their ever-lengthening sticks.

From the window of his lodgings Jonathan Ward stared down at the street below. A damp November morning. Nothing was stirring down there – everyone would still be in bed, families reading papers, kids fretting.

He hated Sundays – having to wake up alone after a Saturday night binge with colleagues, the whole day stretching in front of him, wondering what to do with himself as he waited for a muzzy headache to disperse.

There was no one to talk to, share his thoughts with. There was that girl he’d brought home last night, of course. Still in bed. But soon she would go – he wouldn’t want her around anyway – leaving him alone again. At times like these, he wished he had someone – a real partner. Christ, he was good-looking enough to get the girls, but none of them had any depth, any brains. Those that had bored the shirt off you, going on about how much they knew. Women were a bloody trial. One was better off without them.

He moved from the window to the washbasin and poured cold water from the jug. It would revive him. Then what? Shove Emmy, Ella, or whatever her name was, out of his bed, tell her to get dressed and go. And then? Roam about his rooms, he supposed. Read through his stack of Sunday newspapers. Study them. That would take up most of the morning, maybe a little longer, as it always did, spinning out the time. And after that?

He could take a bus and go home for the afternoon. That thought occurred to him briefly, then was immediately dismissed. He had a home. Two brothers at university. An older sister married, living up north with her business husband and two small toddlers. His father and mother lived their stately lives alone now, in Finchley. Father had wanted him to be a doctor like himself – in Harley Street – and had frowned on his chosen profession – Fleet Street. No, he wouldn’t go home. Better be bored here than bored sick there.

The cold water cleared his head. He dried his hands and face on a rough towel. He’d have to start getting dressed, and prod that girl out of his bed. He couldn’t even recall bringing her home, but was sure he’d fallen asleep the moment he’d hit the pillow.

He thought suddenly of Sara. Not that she could ever compare to the painted thing in his bedroom, but for some strange reason he found himself wondering what she would be doing at this moment.

He pictured her rising from bed, elegant body, near black hair dishevelled from contact with her pillow, those startling blue eyes blinking at the new day, dreary as it was. She’d stretch her limbs, languidly … Jonathan cut short the thought. God, he was going soft.

He threw the towel back on to the washstand and went across to the bed to rouse Ella, Emmy, or whatever her name was. He needed his rooms to himself today.

Saturday had been a beast of a day. Sunday looked to be no different. Harriet was having one of her bad times. She still had them from time to time. The cold November damp outside didn’t help.

She wasn’t drunk. She drank hardly at all now, money being so short, and she wasn’t prepared to sponge off her benefactors. Even Sara had to grant her that, her face impassive whenever she came home from work and went up to see her.

‘You should try to go downstairs a little more often.’

This was her daughter’s answer to a broken heart. The girl had no feelings.
She
hadn’t lost a husband – two husbands – with no one to show her any affection or care if she died of grief. Sara certainly didn’t care. Cold, that was what she was. No emotion.

Even when Matthew had died – poor dear Matthew – Sara hadn’t shed a tear. Not one iota of regret or remorse. But hide her soul though she might, there was no hiding what had been going on between her and Matthew; evil, underhanded creature that she was. She had been the cause of Matthew’s death. Wicked, like her father. She’d never be able to forgive Sara for what she had done, yet now she must rely on her for money. The knowledge made Harriet cringe, hating to be forced to debase herself so in order to live.

If Jamie were here, he would have comforted her, but he was away at boarding school, paid for by his grandfather. Were he home and Sara away, life would be so much better. Harriet gave a tremulous sigh.

She knew she should get up. But downstairs she would be taken for granted, unfeelingly assumed to be recovered. If she stayed up here, at least that fact would be noticed. Despairing of her, Mary and Sarah would often instruct Mrs Thompson, who cooked and cleaned for them, not to indulge Harriet by taking meals up to her. This would actually bring her more to their notice than if she had fought her misery and made the effort to appear. On the rare occasions that she made it downstairs, no one ever thanked her for doing so.

In the room she’d had as a child, Harriet lay on her bed, her face turned up to the ceiling. What had once been a much loved room had become a symbol of what she’d been reduced to, a constant reminder of all that had happened to her.

She had lost a husband she’d loved so much … Oh yes, loved, even though he had said she didn’t, running out to leave her all alone and penniless, with only the clothes she stood in, forced to beg for this and that, to rely on Sara’s wage for every little thing, subservient to the very daughter who had widowed her, and whom she detested. It was cruel.

A tear slithered from under her lashes. Without her medicine, she felt hungry. She would have to get up and go downstairs, sit with the others and pretend she was getting over her loss. But her loss would be with her to her dying day.

She thought of Will. So long ago now. Yet everything that had happened that terrible day was still so clear. Nightmares that had slowly diminished in her marriage to Matthew had returned since his death. It was her marriage to Matthew that now seemed dreamlike – the one to Will only too real.