Eve and Her Sisters (29 page)

‘They’re from different backgrounds, lass. Different worlds. You know that as well as I do, now then. He’s from the gentry, however he seems.’

‘But he’s not like them, you know he isn’t. And our Eve could rise to whatever was expected of her. She’s got an air about her, she always has had.’

She’d got the bit between her teeth. Recognising the signs and knowing from past history he couldn’t win whatever he said, Toby kept quiet.

‘Well? Couldn’t she carry herself anywhere? You saw her tonight and how she was. Like a lady to the manner born.’

‘Aye, I’m not saying she’s not able, lass.’

‘So what’s to stop them? With him being like he is an’ all?’

Stifling his growing impatience, Toby reached out and stroked his daughter’s downy head. ‘Lass, there’s no one I’d like to see settled and happy more than Eve, but even if he does like her, and we don’t know that for sure, what if she don’t want him?’

Nell’s eyes narrowed as she glanced towards the glowing fire. ‘She admires him very much, she’s said that. And he’s nice looking and smart and kind. She’d have him if he asked, I feel it in my bones.’

‘Oh well, that’s settled then if you feel it in your bones. We can all go to sleep knowing there’s nowt to worry about.’

‘And don’t try to be sarcastic. It doesn’t suit you.’

It was the day before Christmas Eve. Although the war was over, the new and deadlier enemy, the Spanish flu, was still in the business of taking the lives of men, women and children throughout Britain. Fear of the epidemic had instigated strict hygiene measures for crowded public places in all the big cities, but still the relentless culling of the weak, the elderly and the very young went on. Most folk were hoping the bitter weather would kill off the spread of the infection but to date this had not happened.

As Caleb crossed the inn yard he was not thinking of the influenza outbreak, his mind being fully occupied with the subject that had dominated it for months now: Eve’s whereabouts. He couldn’t have put a finger on exactly when it had dawned on him that it was not Mary’s absence that was affecting him but Eve’s departure. Certainly it had not been for two or three months after Mary had broken their engagement and left him again. He had been desolate at first or, more precisely, he had thought he was. It had taken finding an old pair of Eve’s gloves at the back of a drawer before the realisation had hit him that the void she had left with her going was consuming. It had taken him a further few weeks to admit he was aching to see her face, hear her voice, watch her as she busied herself in the kitchen but when he did, he’d called himself every kind of fool. He hadn’t seen what was under his nose and now it was too late.

He paused at the gates into the yard, watching a woman alighting from a cab on the other side of the road but his mind was miles away. Why hadn’t he realised his love for Mary had burnt itself out long before Eve had gone, even before Mary had returned to Washington? Perhaps he had but hadn’t been able to admit it to himself, feeling it made him fickle, inconstant. His love for Mary had been a schoolboy kind of emotion anyway, he realised, a love which placed the beloved on a pedestal, which refused to see anything but perfection. And when Mary had returned pregnant and in need, it had brought out the protective side of him which had always been a strong element in his feeling for her. Eve didn’t need protecting in the same way, Eve was strong, gutsy. Theirs would have been an equal union, mentally as well as physically.

Why was he thinking like this? He took off his cap and raked his hand through his hair before pulling the cap back over his forehead. Eve had always regarded him as a friend, nothing more, and a friend she had found it easy to wipe out of her life at that. Furthermore, she had witnessed his infatuation with her sister at first hand and must faintly despise him for his weakness where Mary was concerned. She’d washed her hands of them all.

Scowling to himself, he turned out of the yard but he had only gone a step or two when he froze.

‘Hello, Caleb.’ The woman from the cab had crossed the road and was now standing a few feet away, a cloth bag in her arms. ‘I know I have no right to expect you to take me in but I have nowhere else to go.’

‘Mary?’ As he spoke he saw her sway but before he could pull himself together, she had fainted at his feet.

 

An hour later Mary was lying in bed in one of the guest rooms and Caleb was sitting in a chair at her side. He could hardly believe his eyes on two accounts. One, that Mary should have returned to Washington once more, and two, that she was so changed as to be almost unrecognisable. The woman lying so pale and still in the bed looked to be forty if a day, so thin she was skeletal. Her once glorious hair was thin and brittle, with no life or colour left in it, and this, more than anything else, had transformed her looks. Clearing his throat, he said, ‘I’ve called the doctor. He should be here shortly.’

‘You needn’t have bothered. I could have told you what he will say and none of it will be good.’

It was Mary’s voice coming from the skull’s head, in which only the eyes were the same.There followed a silence. It was broken by Caleb saying softly,‘You’re ill.’

‘Yes, I’m ill.’ She took a breath. ‘I’m very ill.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I believe you are which is . . . amazing considering how I have behaved.You should be pleased to see I’ve got my just desserts.’

‘Don’t talk like that.’

‘Why? It’s the truth and we both know it. The only excuse I have to offer is that I couldn’t help myself, which is no excuse at all really. I’ve always liked you, Caleb. Always. But to stay here in this little backwater was beyond me. I thought I could perhaps manage to do it after William died, I was genuine in that, please believe me, but as the weeks went by I felt stifled. I couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t you, it was me. I needed more than there is here.’

‘More than me.’ He smiled to soften the words, surprised how little they hurt. ‘I could never have been enough, could I?’

‘Oh, Caleb.’ She stared at him for a moment and then spoke the very thing he had come to understand over the last months. ‘You never really loved me, just an image of someone you wanted me to be. I could never have lived up to it. You always looked at me as though I was an angel or something, I could see it in your face. But I’m no angel, Caleb. Unless it’s a fallen one.’

‘Mary—’

‘No, let me speak. Please. I-I don’t want to lose your regard but I have to say it.’ She looked for a moment longer at the tender expression on his face and then shut her eyes tightly. ‘I’ve done things I’m ashamed of, Caleb. Bad things. It - it didn’t begin like that but that’s how it finished. Everyone, if they knew the truth, would say I’ve got what I deserve.’

‘Not in my hearing.’

‘No?’ Her voice was soft. A whisper.

‘No.’

‘Thank you.’ The tears were seeping from her closed eyelids.‘But you wouldn’t say that if you knew.’

Leaning forward he reached for her joined hands which were lying on top of the eiderdown. The bedroom was warm, there was a roaring fire in the grate and Daisy had warmed the bed with stone hot-water bottles, one of which Mary still had at her feet, but her hands were icy cold. ‘Open your eyes,’ he said. And when she obeyed he stared into the swimming blue pools. ‘I’m not the young lad wet behind the ears I was when you and your sisters first came here. I went away to fight and,’ he smiled, ‘I sowed my wild oats. You won’t shock me, Mary.’

‘You-you won’t hate me if I tell you? I couldn’t bear that.’

He looked at her solemnly. ‘I can promise you I won’t. OK?’

‘When I left here, the-the last time, I went back to London but it wasn’t the same.The man who had been keeping me had said things to his-his associates. A girl in the same house where I’d lived before said I could share her flat. Men came . . .’ She moved her head on the pillow. ‘They were vile, some of them. But I felt trapped. I didn’t know where to go.’

Caleb kept his gaze on her. She would never know the effort it took. Whatever he had expected, it was not this. She was saying she was no better than the dockside dollies or the girls in Ma Skelton’s place in Gateshead. Not that he had availed himself of the services of either but he’d heard the talk of men who had. He rubbed her hands which were lying limply in his because the pain tearing through him had to have some expression. His voice was throaty when he said, ‘Why didn’t you come home?’

‘I couldn’t, not after running out on you the way I had.’

Her eyes were tight on him and he knew she was looking for a sign of the shock he had promised her he would not feel. But he was shocked.And repulsed. And angry. He had to wet his lips before he could say, ‘How did you get ill?’

Again she shut her eyes as though she could not bear to witness what she might read on his face. ‘I got pregnant again. I thought I’d been careful but one night there were a group of men, young mostly, who almost broke the door down so Sarah, the girl I lived with, let them in.They-they were drunk. One of them was a regular of hers but the others . . .’ She turned her face into the pillow. ‘They came into my room. I had been asleep until they started banging on the door. I tried to make them leave but there were five of them . . . After-afterwards I wanted to go to the police but Sarah laughed. She said they’d never take the word of two . . . of us against some toffs, one of which was the son of a lord. When I found out I was expecting I went to someone. I couldn’t go through a birth again.’

Again he wetted his lips. ‘What happened?’

‘It worked but after I didn’t stop bleeding. I-I didn’t dare go to a doctor, not for ages. Sarah was good, she looked after me but from the beginning I knew.’

‘Knew what?’ He stared at her.‘Knew what, Mary?’

She was staring fixedly at him now. ‘A life for a life.’

‘Don’t talk like that.’ He shook his head.

‘It’s true, Caleb. Even before I had it done I knew something would go wrong. Sarah had an abortion a couple of years ago and something happened. She-she has to wash all the time or . . . she smells.’

Dear gussy. He remained very still, just looking at her. ‘If you knew that why did you go through with it?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose I thought I might be all right and I just wanted to get rid of anything to do with that night. And I was scared of the pain of having a baby. It’s-it’s awful.’

‘All right, all right, don’t cry.’ He shook her hands gently. ‘Look, we’ll sort this. The doctor will be here in a minute. This might not be as bad as you think.’

‘I saw a doctor yesterday. He told me what to expect. That’s why I’ve come home. I didn’t want to die so far away and Sarah’s not well herself. Do you mind very much?’

‘This is your home, it’s always been your home and I want no more talk of dying, all right? You’re going to get better.’ The shock and anger was gone but now he was having to fight the overwhelming feeling rising up in his chest and blocking his throat, a feeling that made him want to shout out his pain and shame. Pain for her, and shame that he was a member of a sex that could take something so beautiful and innocent and turn it into the broken woman in the bed. Forcing out the words, he said, ‘Say it, Mary. I’m going to get better. Say it out loud.’

She was looking at him almost pityingly now. ‘I’m going to get better.’

‘You will, I promise you.’ He patted her hand and stood up. ‘I’m going to get you something to eat and drink now so just lie quiet.’ Mary nodded and closed her eyes. He went out of the room and crossed the landing to the stairs, but once on the ground floor he did not go directly to the kitchen. Instead he made his way to the privy in the yard and it was there he brought up the contents of his stomach.

 

The doctor had been and gone. He had given Mary a strong sedative. She would sleep, he had assured Caleb, until late the following morning and once she woke she could have a smaller amount of the same medicine every eight hours. It would help with the pain and keep her in a relaxed state. Other than that he could do very little for her. Whoever had been responsible for butchering her - and that was the only word for what he had discovered - had done such a thorough job, there was no hope of recovery. Perhaps if the patient had sought help within a day or two of the procedure which had torn her womb and damaged her bowel and done goodness knows what other mischief, there might have been a chance. As it was . . .

Caleb had thanked the doctor and paid him. After showing him out, he had made his way to the kitchen and told Ada and Winnie enough to let them know that Mary had come home to die.When he sat down at the kitchen table with his head in his hands, they had come either side of him, patting his shoulders ineffectually while Jack whined at his knees.

When Caleb left to inform Nell and Toby that Mary had returned, Ada made a pot of tea.‘Whatever next is going to happen?’ She stared at Winnie. ‘Nothing has been the same since Eve left, you know that, don’t you? And now this. I won’t pretend I’ve ever had any time for Mary but she’s not twenty yet. It don’t seem right, does it?’

Winnie shook her head.‘Do you think Eve’ll come and see her?’ They had long been of the opinion that Nell knew where Eve had gone.

Ada nodded. ‘She’ll come.’ She raised her eyes to the ceiling as though she could see into Mary’s room. ‘But she won’t have to dally.’

Caleb was saying much the same thing to Nell at that very moment. ‘I know you must correspond with Eve, she wouldn’t have gone without letting you know where she is but if she wants to see Mary alive there’s not much time.’

Nell stared at Caleb. She had been in the middle of making a batch of mince pies when he had knocked at the door.‘How much time?’ she asked bluntly.‘Did the doctor say?’

Caleb shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘A few days, maybe even a week or two, the doctor wasn’t sure.’

Nell’s mind was racing. It had been a while since she had been face to face with Caleb and seeing him afresh she could see what attracted her sister. He was a very masculine man, not exactly good-looking but with an appeal that went beyond handsomeness. And Eve loved him. If she came back now, would she be tempted to stay and comfort him after Mary died, hoping he would turn to her? It was possible. And then this other thing would be finished. And there was no guarantee Caleb would ever return her affection; in fact, it was highly unlikely.