Born to Trouble (39 page)

Once in the house, he fetched the beef stew and dumplings Mabel had left on a low heat in the oven. She was a good cook but a plain one, and that suited him fine. He had never particularly enjoyed the elaborate dinners in his parents’ home. The cat wound round his ankles as he ate his meal and he left a good saucerful of food for her, although she was supposed to earn her living mousing.

Once he had finished, Christopher lit his pipe and poured himself a glass of whisky before settling in front of the fire. It was then he remembered the newspaper. Fetching it from the pocket of his jacket, he resumed his seat. After quickly going over the front page again, he opened it up and began to read the local news.

Many schools were closed because of the current influenza epidemic, and absences from work had risen sharply, but those who were able had celebrated Victory Day, some a little too heartily. The article showed a picture of an inebriated man clinging hold of a lamp-post with a silly grin on his face. Christopher smiled to himself.

Local women up and down the town had got together to throw street parties for the children which were thoroughly enjoyed by all. In spite of the restrictions on meat, butter and tea, there were veritable feasts to be had and the children had a wonderful time. The lucky children in Zion Street in the East End had a real treat when a local shopowner baked two hundred fishcakes for their supper. Christopher barely glanced at the photograph of a long trestle table covered with food, and benches upon which so many children were squeezed it didn’t look as though they’d be able to move, let alone eat anything. A woman was holding a large tray on which the said fishcakes were piled.

He had actually turned the page when he felt every nerve in his body jangle. His heart beating fit to burst, he whipped the page back and stared at the photograph of the woman and children again.
It was impossible.
Of course it was impossible, he knew that, but it was Pearl’s face smiling up at him. He stood up, holding the newspaper close to the oil lamp that was on the mantelpiece above his easy chair. The likeness to Pearl had his stomach churning. It wasn’t her, since this woman was a shopkeeper and obviously fairly prosperous if she could afford to provide a host of children with free food, but the similarity was uncanny.

He stared at the photograph for a long time before refilling his whisky glass and sitting down again. He tried to read the rest of the paper – it was rare they had the luxury of obtaining such reports from beyond their little world – but he couldn’t concentrate. He felt disturbed, restless.

After throwing some more logs on the range fire, Christopher walked to the window, staring out at what was fast becoming a blizzard. Last winter they’d been snowed in for a couple of months, but that hadn’t been till January. It was going to be a long hard time of it, if this little lot persisted. Still, with the war over he could maybe see about taking another man on in the spring. It might be a bit tight financially but they needed more help if the farm was going to thrive and grow. What was it his father had always said? ‘You need to speculate to accumulate.’ That was it. But then with thousands behind him, Oswald Armstrong hadn’t exactly been gambling his last penny.

Stretching, he turned away from the window. With Ray visiting his daughter he and George had been hard pushed the last couple of days, and he was dog tired. Last night he’d shut his eyes for two minutes in the chair and woken up to daylight pouring in the window and a stiff neck. He’d have a sluice down in a minute and get to bed – he needed his rest. But still he stood surveying the room, without really seeing it. She did look like Pearl, that girl in the paper. Could it be a relation? He remembered Pearl saying she had brothers but she hadn’t mentioned a sister. Perhaps a cousin? It could happen like that sometimes. How old would this girl be?

He picked up the newspaper again and studied the picture. It was hard to tell. Twenty-three, twenty-four maybe, but the camera could lie, and unless the girl had inherited the business it was unlikely she’d be that young. Anyway, it was no good going digging up the past. Pearl was gone and he’d learned to live with the fact. He was married to this farm now and she was a possessive wife. Flinging the paper down, he put the kettle on to boil. He’d spoil himself and wash with warm water tonight instead of making do with cold as he normally did, being too tired to bother.

By the time he climbed the rickety ladder to the long room under the eaves, he felt more settled. The girl in the newspaper might be a relation of Pearl’s or she might not; either way it was irrelevant. There would be nothing gained in trying to find her. The manner of Pearl’s death and the loss of the future they’d planned together had nearly sent him mad for a while; he couldn’t resurrect all those feelings and he didn’t want to.

Settling himself down on the straw mattress that made up his bed, he pulled the heap of covers over him just as he was, fully dressed. The roof had so many draughts he’d learned early on that he needed to sleep with his clothes on.

Not that it would always be like this, he told himself, smiling in the dark as the cat padded into the room and, purring loudly, curled up beside him. For a supposed farm cat, she liked her comfort, did Daisy. He’d restocked the farm over the last years and got the barns and cattle sheds into good order. He’d done quite a bit, when he thought about it. Next year he could think about moving the pigsties and boiling-up room, and then perhaps start on the house. Everything in good time.

On this comfortable thought and in spite of the wind howling like a banshee, Christopher went straight to sleep.

He slept soundly all night, curled up like a dormouse, barely moving, waking at five o’clock as he always did when some inner alarm clock told him it was time to start the day. Once downstairs, he stoked up the fire which he’d banked down with wet tea leaves the night before, and made himself a cup of tea. That would suffice until eight o’clock, when he came in from seeing to the animals and Mabel would have a pan of porridge laced with fresh cream ready for him. Nothing in his life had ever tasted as good as that porridge did first thing.

The storm of the night before had blown itself out, leaving a few inches of snow behind it. A few inches was nothing – it was when it was a few feet and reached the top of the hedgerows that it became a problem. George and Ray and their wives were already in the cattle sheds when he left the house, the women seeing to the milking and the men mucking out. It was to the men he spoke. ‘I’m taking Jet and riding into Sunderland – there’s some business I need to see to.’

He was speaking the words before he realised that some time during his sleep he’d reached the decision. Perhaps it had always been there in the back of his mind.

George and Ray stared at him with some consternation. It wasn’t the best of times for the young master to be taking himself off on a trip. Still, he was the boss.

Christopher read their minds. ‘I’ll be back tonight, at the latest tomorrow, but it can’t wait, all right? I want to go before the weather closes in.’ Calling to Mabel, he said, ‘I’d like an early breakfast today, I’m leaving shortly for Sunderland.’

By seven o’clock, when a murky half-light was struggling to bring in a new day, Christopher was already on his way, Jet thrilled to be out on an early-morning jaunt. The narrow road of smashed stone and pebbles which had taken months to complete was buried under its white blanket, but still made for far easier riding than had been the case before it was laid.

In spite of the excitement and fear and a whole host of other emotions which were making his insides churn, the white landscape gave Christopher pleasure. The vivid scarlet of wayside rosehips gave him just as much satisfaction as ever the best of his father’s paintings had done, and so it was with the glinting sparkle of spiderwebs as a reluctant sun rose like a feeble lantern over the scene.

When he was a child, Nathaniel had frightened him with stories about the month of November marking the Celtic ‘Samhain’, associated with the cult of the dead. In pagan times, Nathaniel had murmured so their nanny hadn’t heard him, massive bonfires were lit to ensure the sun’s safe return. The natives believed that as the flames licked into the winter sky, the Sun God grew stronger. November was the ‘silent’ month, full of days so stark and bare that it suspended natural laws and left spirits, ghosts and demons free to roam the earth. The little boy he’d been then had had nightmares for weeks.

Oh, Nat, Nat.
Christopher lifted his head and stared into the fleeting wisps of silver tingeing the sky where the sun touched it.
What would you think of me now, chasing a ghost all of my own in the vain hope that maybe – just maybe – there’s been some mistake? Has death mellowed you to the point where you would say, ‘Try, little brother,’ or would you be filled with pity or condemnation for my foolishness?

He would like to think the former, but he rather suspected it would be the latter. His mouth curved in a wry smile. Whatever, it didn’t matter. Foolishness or not, he had to make sure. The old crone at the gypsy camp might have dealt with him falsely for reasons of her own, even though he had held his hand with the man who had done him so much damage. Pearl had always said the Romanies were a law unto themselves.

Her name brought the familiar ache to his chest and for a moment he wondered on the wisdom of what he was doing, recognising how he would feel when he had to return home – as he surely would – disappointed and alone. Well, he’d put a face on things. That’s what people did. All the women, young and old, who had lost loved ones, the men who’d lost sons and fathers and brothers, they faced the choice of wallowing in their own misery or going on. Only children thought life was fair.

He’d just passed through the hamlet of Ditchburn when Christopher’s eyes narrowed as he peered ahead. Could that be Parker in the approaching trap? Yes, it was the Armstrongs’ butler. What now?

By the time he was abreast with the trap he knew something serious was afoot.

‘Oh, Mr Christopher.’ Parker was red-faced and agitated. Twice the trap had got stuck in thick snow since he’d left the house in pitch black in the early hours. Only fools and those with a death wish would attempt to travel in such conditions, but the mistress had been adamant. When he had suggested he wait until first light before leaving the estate she had been quite unlike herself. Of course it was her worry about the master, he understood that, but for the mistress to speak to him in such a fashion . . .

‘What’s wrong, man?’

‘It’s the master, sir. He collapsed two days ago and we understand he’s poorly. Very poorly, sir. The mistress said he’s been asking for you.’

‘Collapsed?’ If it wasn’t impossible, he would think his parents had done this on purpose. ‘What do you mean, collapsed? What have the doctors said? Is it his heart?’

‘Not his heart, sir, no. It appears the master has had some trouble with his stomach for months – an ulcer possibly. The mistress has called for a physician from London to come and look at him, but the master seems to be getting worse by the hour. He—’ Parker swallowed hard – ‘he’s sinking, sir.’

Christopher stared at the servant, not his father; Oswald Armstrong was the very quiddity of life at its rawest: loud, crude, objectionable but always vital.

‘Will you come, sir?’

‘Of course.’ What else could he do? Perhaps his father wasn’t as ill as Parker imagined. He had told his men he would possibly be home tomorrow rather than today, so he could still fit in a visit to Sunderland to seek out this woman who bore such a remarkable resemblance to his Pearl.

Everything in Christopher longed to let Jet have free rein and make short work of the journey to the estate, but apart from the obvious danger of the horse breaking a leg if he acted in such a foolhardy manner, he couldn’t leave Parker, who was clearly terrified of becoming stranded. Curbing his extreme frustration, he said to the butler, ‘Let us proceed as swiftly as we can. I have business in Sunderland to attend to once I have seen my father.’

Oswald Armstrong was dying and he wasn’t dying easy. Apart from the pain, which seemed to be tearing him apart, he wasn’t ready to leave the trappings of the existence he’d spent his whole life acquiring. He turned his head on the pillow and glanced towards the window where Clarissa was standing looking out. The last few days were the first time in thirty years she had set foot in his suite of rooms, and he hadn’t been allowed in hers in all that time. She was a cold, calculating shrew of a woman, without natural warmth and affection, and yet he knew there was still a small part of him that was in awe of his wife. He had been amazed when she had agreed to marry him. Oh, he’d known it was for the Armstrong wealth, no one had made any bones about that, but he’d still been surprised that a woman of her breeding and class had consented to take him. And she knew, she’d always known that at bottom she had the upper hand. And now she was waiting for Christopher to come so she could play on what she saw as his weakness and soft heart, and draw him into her web again.

Oswald shut his eyes tightly for a moment as the pain became unbearable. When the spasm passed and settled down into mere agony he opened them to see her surveying him dispassionately. ‘I’ll leave you to rest,’ she said, then nodded at the nurse sitting in a corner of the room and swept out. She could always sweep in and out, could Clarissa. Damn her.

Would Christopher hold out against her? Oswald asked himself silently. He knew at heart that he himself had never been able to. Oh, she let him have his little victories now and again if they didn’t impinge on her too much, but that was all. Nathaniel had been the same, she’d been able to play their elder son like a violin. But Christopher had surprised her that time they had gone to see him; she’d been beside herself for weeks after that. Christopher had surprised him too. The namby-pamby child and ineffectual youth had grown into someone he didn’t recognise, not that he had ever understood him.