A Mother's Love (6 page)

‘Eighty pounds then?’ Mr Jones declared on a falling note. His gavel rose. ‘Going – for the first time …’

‘Eighty-one.’ The newcomer stretched an antagonistic neck towards his rival. His look spoke for him.
Goad the fool one more time.
It was taking a chance, but worth the risk to see the fool go in deep.

‘Hundred!’

Even Harriet, knowing nothing about prices, was staggered. At her side, Clara gasped. ‘That must be twice what it’s worth brand-new.’

This time the silence drew itself out in defeat, with no counterbid coming. The auctioneer challenged for the third time, then brought his gavel down with a triumphant thud, revealing unprofessional elation at this mad offer. ‘Sold to the gent’man by the door! Name please?’

But from the hallway, Harriet didn’t catch the name.

The sale of the second, older press was even more surprising. The young man’s opening bid for a well-used ‘Model’ printer worth thirty-six pounds new was a staggering fifty pounds. There was no one else silly enough to bid but the auctioneer was beaming. The man was a raving lunatic – more money than sense – but who was he to tell him his business? His commission was now up far beyond his expectations.

The young man seemed bent on buying up the whole shop. The auction closed finally to ragged clapping. Those who had managed to buy something moved to the table, while the rest filed out, their conversation animated in appreciation of a good morning’s entertainment. Harriet watched the young man speaking to Mr Jones. She felt quite giddy.

‘With what’s been sold and the money Will left, I’ve got nearly five hundred pounds. I can live on that for years.’

She realised she’d said ‘I’, the child forgotten for the moment. It would have to be brought up, fed, clothed. Some of her joy waned. For some reason she recalled her nightmare and pushed it away in a small wave of fear, concentrating hard on what was going on around her.

Clara was clutching her arm, as excited as if she was the one who had made all this money. Harriet’s legs felt shaky as she moved towards where Mr Jones was still talking with the young man, now the owner of her late husband’s printing equipment. She had to thank him. Had he given it more thought he could have got it at a fraction of what he’d paid. Her eyes wide with gratitude and shyness as she came up, she saw that his were deep velvety brown, contrasting oddly with the sandy hair.

‘This is Mrs Porter,’ Mr Jones began. ‘Widow of the late owner. Mr Craig has arranged to take over the lease of your late husband’s shop premises for a publishing business.’

‘Matthew Craig,’ the young man filled in. ‘I publish a journal – not very large,’ he added with some modesty. ‘I’ve been looking for premises in London but I hope you will forgive me if I seem to have traded in on your misfortune. May I offer my condolences on your bereavement, Mrs Porter, if that isn’t too audacious of me?’

Taking the offered hand, she felt the warmth of his grip pass from his fingers into hers. She looked up at him, startled, to find his gaze riveted on her so intensely that she blushed and lowered her eyes hastily in utter confusion.

Of course he’d paid out far too much. Of course he was a fool. That fact showed in the expression of the auctioneer. But it was seeing the wan face of the girl in the shadows, her expression full of dismay as she viewed the paltry gathering, that had galvanised him. The one with her was much more self-assured. He’d guessed immediately which of them was the widow and his heart was unexpectedly moved to pity, compelling him to bid as he did. He had been foolhardy, but having now looked more closely into her eyes, such clear grey pupils, arrestingly dark-edged, before they were lowered in acute embarrassment, the girl’s pale cheeks turning fiery, he was glad he had been.

Sarah Morris surveyed her table laid for tea: scones, damson jam in its opaque blue glass dish, seed cake, a plate of cold ham. There was just the bread to be sliced and buttered. Her best china, decorated with pink roses, positively sparkled in the sunshine through the window facing the park. Sarah chewed on her lower lip, her mind wandering from the generous spread.

Would Harriet be bringing the baby? She hadn’t last Tuesday; had left her instead with that neighbour of hers, that Mrs Hardy woman. Too soon after the birth, she’d said; she was not strong enough yet to cope with bringing a baby all this way. Good Lord, six weeks since the birth – of course she was strong enough!

Sarah’s lips grew thin. Turning up in a hackney … spending poor Will’s money when more modest transport would have done … It didn’t require that much strength to bring little Sara! That was another thing, dropping the ‘h’ like that. She’d never heard such nonsense. Sara – what sort of name was that for a baby?

Her parchment cheeks sucked themselves into hollows as she sawed wafer-thin slices, the loaf clasped in her hand in a determined embrace. Her brows drew together beneath her scraped-back greying hair at the prospect of reminding Harriet of her maternal duties.

In the kitchen the kettle lid began rattling at the same moment as a rap came on the front door. At least her niece was prompt.

Sarah hurried to answer it only to have her cheeks sink again into hollows as she noted Harriet standing before her, empty-armed.

‘I know, Aunt,’ Harriet began hastily, seeing the disapproval on her face. ‘I was going to bring her but I still don’t feel up to it, and then when Mrs Hardy offered … I will next time, I promise. In a few more weeks I’ll feel a lot more confident, I’m sure.’

By Sunday Sarah had a pressing need of her sister Mary’s advice. It had been a stressful Tuesday afternoon. It had worried her ever since.

She hadn’t said any of the things she’d intended to say, somehow lacking the courage – she who seldom let anything or anyone stop her speaking her mind when there was reason to.

Something in Harriet’s eyes – haunted would be the word – when she mentioned the baby made it quite impossible to instruct her on her motherly duties. In fact the girl’s expression had given her the shivers. Was she hiding something? But what? She felt she dared not enquire. She was almost glad when Harriet left.

‘There’s something I should discuss with you, Mary,’ she said as they took the air in Victoria Park after Sunday morning service at St John’s Church in Cambridge Road.

Mary favoured St John’s. ‘Far nicer than those nearby,’ she maintained. After the service it was Sarah’s custom to have Sunday dinner with her sister and brother-in-law. If the weather was fine, Jack saw her home across the park to Cadogan Square afterwards. If it wasn’t, he would put her into a hired cab. This Sunday, however, it was warm and fine enough for her and Mary to enjoy a brief stroll in the park before returning for dinner.

‘It’s about your Harriet,’ Sarah continued.

‘Harriet?’ Her sister’s smile was innocently enquiring.

Sarah took a firmer grip on the slender stem of the cream umbrella protecting her cheeks from strong sunlight. She had hardly heard any of the service for wondering whether to confide to Mary the suspicion she had formed.

She’d have to tread carefully. As the girl’s mother, Mary might not care to hear hints of something not being quite right – something concerning her daughter and that young man downstairs perhaps. It could only be that. What else
could
it be?

‘You know she visited me on Tuesday,’ Sarah began as they passed between the wrought-iron park gates with their ornamental stanchions. ‘I’m worried about her. She seems to be acting very oddly to my mind.’

Mary nodded understandingly as they crossed the low bridge over Regent’s Canal. Tears gathered in her eyes for her daughter. ‘Poor child. She’s had such a terrible time. I feel helpless for her. I don’t think she’ll ever get over the shock.’

‘I mean, there’s her attitude towards Sara – she doesn’t appear to have any interest in the child, and …’

‘Oh, I think she does. She’s still terribly shocked by the sudden turn of fate. Who wouldn’t be? I just thank the Lord she has Sara. That baby will keep her sane. Looking after it for poor Will’s sake, it’ll keep her mind off what’s happened to her – at least, I hope so.’

I beg to differ …
The protest sprang into Sarah’s mind, but she stopped herself voicing it, feeling again the weight of her uncertainty where normally she never had qualms about voicing her opinions. What if she was wrong? There … uncertainty again. This wasn’t like her.

No one could call Sarah Morris a fine figure of womanhood, yet what she lacked in height and a well-rounded bosom was more than compensated by a bearing that intimidated even the most forceful. And as she grew older – she would be fifty that August, two years older than Mary – she became more potent. Will, a fine, sturdy, forceful young man, had been very wary of her, to the point of diffidence, and had been most caring of Harriet in her presence. Which struck an odd note – for it had often seemed to her that the girl was in some way frightened of him, even though she had always made such a point of saying how content and happy she was. Sarah still retained a strong intuition that there had been something more in that need to stress a happy and contented marriage than met the eye. She was even more suspicious since Harriet’s visit the previous Tuesday.

‘She mentioned that person who took over Will’s shop – several times,’ she added pointedly.

‘Mr Craig,’ Mary supplied, taking in deep breaths of the fresh tang of the recently mown grass bordering the pathway.

Sarah nodded. ‘What’s your opinion of him?’

Under her fawn umbrella, Mary tilted her head towards her sister in surprise. ‘I’ve not met him. Clara said he seemed a personable enough young man.’

‘First impressions!’ snorted Sarah.

Mary’s brow wrinkled beneath her greying, tong-curled fringe. ‘You sound disapproving. This isn’t one of your odd insights, is it? You’re very prone to them.’

‘That’s what I want to talk about – the way she speaks of him more than I’d have said was necessary. Has she mentioned him to you?’

‘No. Is it important?’

‘You don’t know if he’s married? Or engaged to be?’

‘I really wouldn’t know.’

The short, somewhat irritable laugh that accompanied Mary’s frown put Sarah at odds. She walked on in silence for a while, using the time to gaze at the other people in the park strolling under trees or sitting on benches; at children playing, and families picnicking on the grass by the fountain a little distance away that looked like a small version of the Albert Memorial.

For a while they both stood watching, then on an unspoken decision turned back towards the park gates.

Sarah still needed to speak her mind. She took a deep breath and began on another tack.

‘Perhaps it isn’t my place to say so, Mary, but I never hear her mention Will’s name. Nor have I once seen her cry.’

Mary’s back stiffened. ‘Grief does strange things to some people. Sometimes they can’t cry.’

‘When my Edmund died, I couldn’t stop tears filling my eyes, not for years. Seeing him fighting for breath from pneumonia, even now, if I think about it, some familiar smell or a certain sound, I feel choked. But Harriet … Then there’s another thing: little Sara. When I asked why she hadn’t brought her to see me, she became so … guarded. You know me, Mary, I’m not one to let anything daunt me. But there was something about her that made me almost frightened to ask. I felt I would hear something I wouldn’t wish to hear.’

‘Now why do you say that?’ Mary stopped in her tracks, her tone sharp enough to make passers-by look in their direction.

‘It bothers me, that’s all.’ Sarah stood her ground before her sister’s darkened expression. ‘Something odd’s going on …’ She stopped short of expressing what was really in her mind. ‘As I said, she doesn’t cry …’

‘Because she can’t. Grief takes us all sorts of ways.’ Mary’s umbrella snapping shut put an end to the subject. There was no more to be said. Mary moved on ahead of her sister as they passed back through the gates, Bonner Hall on their left, golden in the sunshine, and on into Approach Road, with its fine terraced houses.

Sarah was compelled to put on a little spurt to catch up with Mary. She had intended to mention the doorway between Mr Craig’s printing shop and the rest of the house not yet being boarded up, but the snapping umbrella had put paid to that for the while, though it was a subject that couldn’t be left too long, for everyone’s peace of mind.

She had questioned Harriet about it on the Tuesday. Harriet had replied that Mr Craig already had it in hand, but Sarah had felt far from reassured.

‘People gossip,’ she told her. ‘A young woman so recently widowed can’t afford gossip. Make sure that door’s sealed off properly.’

‘Of course, Aunt,’ Harriet had said, but the eyes swivelled away too quickly for comfort as the girl sought another scone, which Sarah knew full well she didn’t want. She had felt irritated. Did her niece take her for a fool? Did she think that because she was old, had no children, she knew nothing of the world’s ways?

‘You mustn’t let it worry you, my dear,’ Matthew said when she told him of the perceptive way her aunt had regarded her.

She stood watching him work on the next month’s journal. He called her ‘my dear’ now. Of late, she’d given him every reason to do so.

‘But I don’t want her to think badly of me. She’s very close to me. When I was little, she’d give me sweets and cakes, tell me stories.’

There had been so many stories. Like the one about her brother, Neil, who as a young man had come home drunk after seeing
Faust.
Scared by the play, he had walked into their mother’s washing line in the dark yard of the cottage in Three Colts Lane in Bethnal Green. In a frenzy of fear he had torn down the line of washing, and had dared not confess to it next morning when his mother had ranted about urchins dragging her clean linen in the mud. Grandmother had been a formidable woman in her day, by all accounts. Harriet never knew her, and such stories made her laugh as a child. But today she wasn’t laughing. Aunt Sarah’s formidable perception loomed large in her mind.

‘I’m sure she knows what’s going on – deep down,’ she said, biting her lip. ‘She seemed so suspicious when she asked me about this door.’