Snow Angels (26 page)

One Sunday in September, when her father had declined a walk to the dene because the wind was cool, she was standing with Matthew watching their twigs disappear under the bridge when suddenly a pain wrenched at her insides. Abby gave a cry and clutched her stomach, waiting for it to disappear. It came again, even more sharply. She slid down onto her knees and shouted and Gil came running over the bridge to her. She was fighting for breath amidst the pain.

‘My baby.’

‘No, it can’t be,’ Gil said, getting down beside her.

The tears began to run down her face from the pain. When it eased a little, Gil picked her up.

‘You can’t carry me all that way.’

‘Save your breath,’ he said, and urged the little boy to stay close.

‘It’s gone. I can walk. Put me down.’

‘Keep quiet.’

The idea of losing this child was more than Abby could stand. She closed her eyes against his shoulder. She was not heavy, he could carry her, but she didn’t want him to. She had lost weight during the last few years. Unhappiness did not make you fat, Abby discovered. Gil was big, but he wasn’t very fat either. Sheer hard work did that. She was reminded of when she had hurt her ankle and he had carried her into the house. They had been so young then and Gil had been a different person. He didn’t seem like a different person. If she could have forgotten about Helen and Rhoda, he seemed to her very much the same, only speaking when he had something to say. He was easier with the child, laughing and playing, throwing Matthew into the air and catching him when he came down, mock-fighting with him on the lawn or on the rug in front of the fire, sitting quietly with him reading stories or playing draughts with an old board and bottle tops. Thinking of Matthew made her feel even worse.

By the time they got back to the house the pain was excruciating and she could feel the warmth seeping between her legs. Gil put her down on the bed and ran to get the doctor. Kate helped her out of her clothes and into her nightdress, but the blood was not reassuring. Some hours later, with Robert and Gil in the same house downstairs, Abby lost her baby, a bloody lump that they wrapped in a cloth and quickly took away. With the physical pain gone and the doctor trying to quieten her, Abby cried and cried.

Robert came to her.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, ‘we’ve got plenty of time for other babies. Don’t cry.’

‘I don’t want another baby, I want that one.’

‘What were you doing?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I didn’t realise that you were spending so much time in that man’s company.’

‘I’m not. We took Matthew for a walk. There’s nothing sinister or intimate about that. I don’t even like him.’

‘Then why go?’

‘Because of Matthew. Why else?’

‘You go out with a man other women would die rather than be seen with because he has a child? What must people think?’

Abby didn’t want to talk about Gil or think about him, she wanted to think about the child that she had lost. She hid in the pillows.

‘I think you had better stop coming here on Sundays. It obviously isn’t doing you any good.’

Abby wanted to say that she came to see her father, that Matthew was a bonus, but she was so tired that she couldn’t. Her father refused to go to the big country house, which was Robert’s domain. Abby couldn’t understand why men had to be so difficult. All she wanted to do was sleep, wake up, be pregnant like before and not feel that dreadful pain which had brought her to her knees and the horrible sensation of her child’s lifeblood
running down her legs. She wished also that Robert was the kind of man who would put his arms around her, stroke her hair and tell her that he loved her. There was a time when he would have. She sensed his impatience, his disappointment with her and the failure that belonged to both of them because they had not produced a male child. The idea of him in her bed again pounding at her body was the least appealing of all. Abby didn’t look at him. She feigned sleep until she did sleep and by that time, somewhere in her vague unconsciousness, he left the room.

Gil had kept out of the way after Robert had arrived. He was working in his little office when Robert came downstairs and was surprised when the door opened and Robert glared at him.

‘Stay away from my wife,’ he said.

Gil knew that he was to blame for a great many things, but Abby’s miscarriage was not one of them. Robert came into the room and closed the door. Gil wasn’t very happy about this. This was his room. He stood back against the edge of the desk.

‘Everybody knows what you’re like with women and I haven’t forgotten the boy that you were, standing for hours at the edge of the ballroom watching her dance. If you go anywhere near her, I’ll see to you personally.’

He slammed the door after him. Gil winced. Matthew was in bed. He hoped the noise didn’t wake him. Gil went through into the sitting-room shortly afterwards, saying hopefully, ‘Has he gone?’

‘Aye, thank God. Couldn’t stay under the same roof with you and me, not even for her sake, poor lass. I don’t think she’ll have any more.’

‘Why not?’

‘The same thing happened to Bella,’ Henderson said sadly. ‘We wanted a big family. She used to talk about how lovely it would be to have them all gathered around us. A dynasty, a whole family of Reeds, that was what she wanted. She lost two
before Abby and another after her and there were no more. If that was what he married Abby for, he’s going to be disappointed. He seemed to care for her so much.’

When Gil went upstairs to bed he found Abby on the landing, a thin white figure, vague-eyed. Gil was about to ask her what she was doing up when he realised that she wasn’t awake. He led her gently back into her room and put her into bed. She woke up, looked accusingly at him and said, ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’m tucking you in.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I adore women in white nighties. Lie down and go to sleep. It doesn’t hurt, does it?’

‘Not any more.’

‘Good.’

‘And I will have lots of other children you see. Lots. That one didn’t matter. It’s gone. It’s gone.’

Gil sat down on the edge of the bed and Abby said, ‘I never want to go back to the dene again ever,’ and started to cry. ‘I want my baby.’ She put her arms around his neck. Briefly there was the feel of her face and hair and then she drew back and said, ‘What am I doing?’

‘Lie down and go to sleep.’

Abby lay down and he tucked in the bedclothes, left the lamp burning for her and went to bed.

*

When she went home nobody mentioned the baby; it was as though the child had not existed. Christmas came and Abby wasn’t well. Robert did not come into her bedroom. She thought the doctor had talked to him so at least she had peace there, but she was tired and her spirits were low. Quite often on Sundays she didn’t go to Jesmond. Occasionally she would visit friends in Newcastle and call in to see her father on Saturday evenings. Robert was resentful of her absence, but with Robert saying he
wouldn’t go to Newcastle and her father refusing to go into the country, Abby grew tired of them both

At Christmas she saw William and Charlotte and even Edward. She tried to talk to Edward about work; she thought that at least might interest him. He looked at her.

‘Is it true that you saved my brother’s life?’

Abby had no idea that anyone knew, though she also knew how difficult it was to keep a secret in a city like Newcastle where people were so closely involved in business and one another’s interests. She managed what was meant to be a smile.

‘Me? He stayed at my father’s house. He’s still there, though I wish things otherwise.’

‘I have heard lurid stories, though God knows how they could be worse than the things he had already done.’

‘My father has done himself a great deal of harm keeping your brother there.’

‘He hasn’t done us any good either,’ Edward said grimly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Don’t you know? Gil’s trying to destroy us. He’s taken all the best men, left us with the rubbish. He’s taken all the best work, and he’s taken the contract which my father fully expected to get. We built the
Northumbria
but when it came to the same thing again, the Admiralty gave the bloody contract away. To him. The devious bastard. Here we are, the greatest shipyard on the Tyne, scrabbling around for bloody work and him—’

Abby rarely saw Gil. On Saturdays when she went to the house he was usually still at work, or if she went in the evenings he didn’t come out of the office. She saw Matthew unless it was late and he was in bed. The visits were unsatisfactory. Henderson, tired after a week at the shipyard, had nothing much to say. Abby could remember a time when she and her father had delighted in one another’s company, when she had hated leaving him, had looked back from the carriage until she couldn’t see him any more and he stood waving her out of sight. Now he didn’t even get up, but wished her goodbye from his armchair,
and the house did not feel like her home any longer. Gil seemed to have taken it over. Perhaps that was what he had done with the shipyard, though she couldn’t have said. Nothing was altered in the house; it was exactly the same as it had always been, but somehow his presence had made everything different.

She had dismissed from her mind the rumours that Collingwood’s were having a bad time. Business was like that; no-one knew better, but Edward talked so bitterly about his brother. There was hatred in his voice. Abby was not surprised at that, but she had thought the cause was Helen’s betrayal and therefore Gil’s. She had not considered practicalities and she had not thought Gil devious. When she did see him he was usually with Matthew, laughing and playing silly games, and she could not see him now in any other role.

Edward did not look like Gil’s brother. He had grown fat and looked older, worn and weighed down by loss and disappointment. William was silent. Charlotte was the only person to discuss Abby’s miscarriage and Abby wished she wouldn’t.

‘You must take better care, stay in bed, rest. A child is vital.’ Charlotte gave her advice on what to eat and what to do until Abby itched to be gone from her. Charlotte was not the person to advise anybody on children, Abby thought. Her sons were no credit either to her or to William.

Abby did not see her father before Christmas, but on Christmas Day she grew restless. They had guests who had been there for several days and she was tired of them. She went for a long walk in the early afternoon. The sky was heavy but it hadn’t snowed and she decided that she would go into Newcastle and call in on her father. She could stay overnight with friends if she wished. Robert was playing billiards, several of his cronies around him, all rather drunk and laughing, and he paid little attention when she said she was going to Jesmond.

‘Tell your father I wish him all the best,’ he said, waving a billiard cue at her.

‘I just want to make sure he’s well,’ she said.

She took the carriage, called in on friends not far away, was assured that if she wanted to go and see her father for an hour or two she could come back to them if she liked. It was the middle of the evening when she knocked on the door of Henderson’s villa. Nobody answered at first, but after a while the door opened and there stood Gil in his shirtsleeves. Abby was determined to be merry and wished him all the best and Gil ushered her into the house.

It was silent, that was the first thing that caught Abby’s attention. There was no Christmas tree, no lights or decorations. There were no revellers; there was no smell of meat or pudding or brandy or any of the trappings which went with this day and the house was cool. At her house there was a huge Christmas tree. Holly and mistletoe hung everywhere and people were laughing and drinking and playing games. Tomorrow there would be hunting; she would go along to drink a stirrup cup with them and everybody would be warmly wrapped to see them away. It was a wonderful sight and traditional. Then they would all troop home to big fires and delicious food and champagne.

Gil led the way into the little office.

‘The fire’s lit in here,’ he said. Abby stared. He was quite obviously working. ‘Your father’s in bed, I’m afraid. He was tired and so was Matthew. Kate and Mrs Wilkins have gone home.’

‘You let your servants go home for Christmas? How very modern and how uncomfortable for you.’

She looked with distaste at the papers on the desk, the small fire in the grate and the way that the curtains were still open, letting in the draught. Snow was falling. Gil looked like a clerk, not an important man. His sleeves were rolled back and his fingers had ink on them.

‘My father isn’t ill?’

‘He’s fine. He was tired.’

‘He works far too much.’

‘Yes, I have tried to talk to him, but he loves it.’

‘I was talking to your brother. I saw your parents and Edward, they came to a party at our house.’

Gil tried, she thought, to disguise the hunger in his face, but he didn’t quite manage it.

‘How is he?’

‘He’s got very fat. I expect he eats too much.’

‘He takes after my mother. She used to have full weeks when she didn’t eat for fear of not being able to fit into her dresses.’

‘Are you trying to take everything from them?’

‘Am I doing what?’ Gil said, obviously taken aback at the question.

‘He said you have taken their best men and their work and that you have a huge contract to build a liner. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that you were involved in such projects.’

‘It’s just business,’ Gil said.

‘Is it?’

‘Your father wants to build up the shipyard, to make it bigger, to handle bigger ships. I think he’s always wanted to do that, but it was too much for him on his own.’

‘And now he has you and can.’

‘Something like that.’

‘You got the big contract yourself.’

‘I did build the
Northumbria.’

‘I thought it was Collingwood’s who did that.’

Gil looked at her and there was something about the look which silenced Abby and he said softly, ‘I am Collingwood’s. Edward knows nothing and my father—’ He didn’t complete the sentence.

‘And you have stolen their best men.’