Mary's Child Page 10

  Forthrop hitched at the knees of his trousers and sat. His suit was a sober dark grey but well cut and expensive. He was tall and smoothed a wide, silky moustache with thick fingers, a florid, fleshily handsome man in his late twenties.

  He explained, ‘My wife and I have made our wills. A sensible course, I think.’

  Arkenstall inclined his head. ‘It prolongs life. Or so I tell my clients.’

  Forthrop laughed. ‘Quite so. But we wondered, would you be prepared to act as executor?’ He added, ‘They are fairly simple wills: we’ve each of us left all we have to the other.’

  Arkenstall agreed. ‘I will act, of course, though I would hope and expect that the pair of you will see me out.’ He smiled; he was some thirty years older than Forthrop. Then he went on, tactfully, ‘You can make provision for any children as they come along.’

  Forthrop’s smile faded and he answered, ‘There will be no question of that. Sylvia had a miscarriage soon after we were married. Now she is unable to have children.’

  Embarrassed, Arkenstall said, ‘I see. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It is a great sadness to both of us.’ Forthrop’s smile returned, though faintly. ‘But we have each other.’

  A few days later Arkenstall went along to Forthrop’s office at the young man’s invitation. He found Sylvia Forthrop there, and as Forthrop rose from his chair, smiling, Arkenstall bowed to Sylvia. ‘Good morning, Mrs Forthrop.’

  Sylvia answered wanly, ‘Good morning, Mr Arkenstall.’ She was five years older than Forthrop, pallid and plain, fragile. Arkenstall thought her an odd partner for the flamboyant, full-blooded Forthrop.

  Forthrop called in a couple of clerks to witness his and Sylvia’s signing of the wills. When she had scrawled her name and the clerks had appended theirs in neat copperplate and gone, she sank back in her chair with a sigh and said with relief, ‘Thank Heaven that’s done. All these legalities just make my head ache. My uncles used to deal with them for me. I’m lucky to have someone like Max now, to organise these things for me.’

  Arkenstall knew, had learned when Forthrop and his wife had come to his house for dinner, that Sylvia had lost her father, a widower, not long before she was married. And he had deduced from her casual comments that she had also been an heiress. He suspected that it had been her money that bought Forthrop his partnership in the firm and a house in the expensive neighbourhood of Ashbrooke.

  Max Forthrop had already pounced on both wills and tied them with red tape. He said with satisfaction, ‘We’ll keep them here in the office safe.’

  Arkenstall left them after a few minutes, making the excuse: ‘I have some work I must complete.’

  Forthrop put in quickly, smiling, ‘So must I. But first I’ll see Sylvia to her motor car.’

  But Arkenstall did not go at once to his office. Instead he stood at a window looking down on the busy high street and watched Sylvia climb into the Vauxhall, with its chauffeur holding the door open for her, and be driven away. He guessed that her money also paid for the motor car; he knew very well how much money Forthrop received as a partner. He might have private income of his own, of course . . .

  He stared out at the cabs and carts rolling by, pulled by trotting horses, their iron tyres bouncing on the cobbles of the street. The bell of a tram clanged in the distance and the riveting hammers in the yards kept up their never-ending racket. The coals in the grate behind him settled, hissed and spat. There was a brief smell of coal as a down-draught from the chimney blew smoke into the room. He was aware of none of these things.

  He told himself his fears were irrational, illogical. The man was good at his work and had come with excellent references from his previous employers. Yet Ezra’s instincts told him there was something not right about Max Forthrop. It did not enter his head that the man could pose a fatal threat to the child Ezra had seen but once and more than ten years ago. Why should it?

  But Arkenstall was uneasy.

  He was not the only one.

  Chapter 9

  August 1908

  Chrissie also had cause to be uneasy, but not at first.

  Daniel Milburn, in his good blue suit and with a white silk scarf knotted around his neck, brought home his intended bride before the end of the summer. Bessie had not been dead a year when he fulfilled her prophecy: ‘He’s a man that needs a woman.’

  He ushered her in at the kitchen door and introduced her: ‘Now then, Chrissie, this is Agatha.’ She was a woman in her forties, sharp featured and quick eyed, prim in a dark grey costume and starched white blouse.

  Chrissie dipped in a curtsy and held out her hand, ‘Pleased to meet you.’ She wore a clean white pinny over her best dress, for the visit was expected, had been arranged. Daniel had warned her a week ago and she had known of the affair almost since it began at the start of the summer.

  Agatha’s gloved hand shook the tips of the proferred fingers and she smiled without showing her teeth. ‘And pleased to meet you, I’m sure.’

  Chrissie said breathlessly, ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’ She moved it from the hob to the coals and then busied herself with the final preparations for tea.

  The three boys still at home, and the five lodgers, were introduced. All were in their suits and wore collars and ties, their faces fresh shaven and hair neatly brushed. The two married sons were not present. They and their wives considered Daniel should have waited longer before seeking another wife. There had been a bawling, shouting row that had left Chrissie, a spectator, trembling. It ended when Daniel told them, ‘It’s got damn all to do with you! You’ve made your own beds! Now lie in ’em and keep clear o’ me!’

  So now only two of the boys living at home worked with Daniel. Ronnie was at Ballantyne’s yard, but still talked to Chrissie of going south to work. The three of them in the upstairs front room did not approve of the match either, but they, too, had been told the options by Daniel: ‘Shut up or get out!’ They needed a roof over their heads – and the work.

  They sat down to tea. The best cloth, washed and ironed by Chrissie, was on the table, with the best crockery and cutlery. She had washed and polished all of it. There were plates of cold meat – sliced ham and pork – and jars of pickles.

  Ronnie said, ‘Chrissie baked all this lot, the bread, cakes and the tarts.’ Besides the fruit cake there were two kinds of tart, one meat and one apple. Chrissie blushed, but she was proud of the spread. She had pinched and scraped on the housekeeping to put a bit by for just such an occasion.

  Agatha smiled again. ‘Very nice, I’m sure.’ She examined the bread and butter and asked, ‘Can you cut me a thin slice, please?’

  ‘Oh, yes! I’m sorry.’ In a house full of men Chrissie was not used to this. She got up quickly, flustered, and shaved from the loaf a paper-thin slice that fell apart as she tried to lift it with the knife.

  Agatha took the pieces between finger and thumb with a fixed smile. ‘That’s all right, dear. It’ll do.’

  She ate little and daintily, smiling the while, agreeing with whatever Daniel or the other men said or keeping silence when they disagreed among themselves, taking no side. She ate little but the bread and butter, did not touch the tarts Chrissie had baked and when offered the cake, asked, ‘Only a small piece, dear. I don’t like anything too heavy but I’m sure it’s lovely.’

  After the meal she insisted on helping with the washing up, taking the drying cloth. She passed several items back to Chrissie, up to her elbows in suds, with a smiling, ‘I think that could do with another rinse, dear.’

  Then she left for her home with Daniel in the dusk, one arm in his, the other hand reaching out to pat Chrissie’s cheek. ‘I’ve had a lovely tea, thank you. I think you do very well for your age and you’re a clever little girl.’

  That was the first of a succession of visits that only ended with the wedding in October. Chrissie went to church with Daniel and Agatha to hear the banns read. She worked for a week preparing the food for the reception and Agatha told her, ‘You’re so
busy, with such a lot to do.’ So she asked a cousin to come from Newcastle to be her bridesmaid. Chrissie was only a spectator at the wedding.

  The celebrations lasted all through the afternoon and evening and ended at midnight when the happy couple retired to their bed in the front room. The boys and the lodgers climbed the stairs, singing with the beer they had drunk. Then Chrissie locked the doors of the house, front and back, banked the fire, washed up and cleared up the debris of the party.

  Finally she climbed the stairs, tiptoeing through the sleeping house, and got into bed at one in the morning. She was tired but content. The reception had been a great success. Everyone had said so: ‘A real good do.’

  Well, not everyone . . .

  On Monday morning Chrissie ran downstairs only to find Agatha, in a brand new white apron, already at the kitchen range with the frying pan sizzling on the coals and the kettle hissing on the hob. She smiled thinly at Chrissie. ‘Having a little lie-in, dear?’

  Startled, Chrissie blinked up at the clock but saw the hands standing at the usual time of seven. She started, ‘No, I—’

  But Agatha cut in, ‘Never mind, dear. I’ll be cooking the breakfast from now on. You just set the table and start making the beds, then later you can wash up.’

  So while Chrissie was making the beds, Agatha ate her breakfast with Daniel, the boys and the lodgers, then went out into the yard to see Daniel off on his round.

  That was the beginning. In the days to come Agatha would assemble the washing, but it was Chrissie who lit the fire under the boiler in the washhouse to heat the water, wielded the poss-stick to thump the clothes in the tub of hot, soapy water, then scrubbed and scrubbed. Agatha fed the wet clothes into the wooden rollers of the mangle but Chrissie heaved on the handle to turn those rollers and squeeze out the water.

  She did not mind; after all, she had been doing all this on her own for almost a year. And when all was done, including most of the ironing, Agatha would tell her with that thin-lipped smile, ‘Now you have a rest, dear.’ So when Daniel returned he found Chrissie sitting by the fire while Agatha finished the last of the ironing with a flourish.

  Once he frowned and commented, ‘Taking it easy, lass?’

  And Agatha cut in quickly before Chrissie could answer, ‘The lass seems worn out. She was busy earlier on. Mind, I don’t think I got tired like that when I was her age. But she seems well enough. Aren’t you, Chrissie?’ Again with that smile.

  Chrissie agreed meekly, ‘I’m fine.’ And for a time she was bewildered, could not see what was happening. Then, though slowly because this was foreign to her own nature, she realised how she was being manipulated. But she was still bewildered because she could not understand why Agatha was doing this to her.

  Once, when they were alone, with all the men out at work, she asked, ‘Agatha, please, I don’t know why but I think you’re trying to make me look as if I’m lazy.’ She was almost crying with nervousness and confusion.

  The woman looked at the girl, still only fourteen years old, and smiled. ‘I don’t know what you mean, dear. I’ve never said you were lazy.’ Agatha’s eyes glittered. ‘But Daniel was saying the other night that you seem to sit about the place a lot instead of getting on.’

  ‘But I do work! It’s just that I happen to be sitting down when he comes home.’

  ‘Well, he’s bound to believe the evidence of his own eyes, isn’t he? You couldn’t argue with him over that, could you?’ And as Chrissie stood silent, Agatha went on, ‘But that’s enough of that. It’s time those bedrooms upstairs were turned out. They look as if they haven’t been touched for years!’

  Chrissie protested, voice breaking, ‘But they have! I did them only—’

  But Agatha was already urging her towards the foot of the stairs, one hand in her back. ‘We haven’t time to talk all day, girl!’

  Then there came a night in November, just two months after Agatha had moved in, when Daniel stabled Bobby and walked in at the kitchen door. He halted there, swaying, lifted a hand to his head then fell flat on his face on the floor. Chrissie ran to drop on her knees at his side while Agatha shrieked and stood by the fire with her hands to her face. Chrissie listened to Daniel’s stertorous breathing while she loosened his shirt at the neck. She heard voices in the passage and shouted, ‘Ronnie!’

  He came running, with Joe Gorman and Mickey Barker, two of the lodgers who worked at Ballantyne’s yard, pounding at his heels. He stooped over her, shocked, and asked, ‘What’s wrong with me dad?’

  ‘I don’t know! He just collapsed! Run and fetch Dr Simmons!’

  He turned and dashed down the passage, boots drumming on the boards, and out into the street. Chrissie turned to the lodgers and asked, ‘Will you carry him in to his bed, please?’

  Mickey and Joe lifted his loose body, shuffled into the front room and laid him on the bed. As they stood back, Agatha pushed between them and demanded, ‘Get out of here now. I’ll see to him. Chrissie! Take off his boots! The bedspread will get filthy!’

  Dr Simmons came within minutes, in a cab that rattled up the street at a canter, bouncing and rocking on the cobbles, and pulled up at the front door with the horse blowing. Curt and smelling of wintergreen ointment as usual, Simmons examined Daniel with Agatha at his back while Chrissie waited on the other side of the closed door, in the kitchen where Agatha had thrust her.

  Agatha waited until Simmons had emerged, grave faced, put on his top hat and left. Then she passed on his verdict to Ronnie and the others, Chrissie among them: ‘He says Dan had a stroke. He’ll come back to see him but he doesn’t think he can do anything for him.’

  Simmons was right. Daniel was a week in his bed. When he got up from it at the end of that time it was only to shuffle as far as his armchair by the fire where he sat staring blankly into the flames. He was still there, master of the house, and Agatha deferred to him. He could not speak but she would ask him, smiling and nodding, ‘Would you like me to sort out the work for the boys in the yard?’ And he would nod back at her.

  Or she shook her head, saying, ‘You don’t want all the family round here all the time while you’re like this, do you?’ And his head would shake in a negative. So the two married sons stayed away.

  She consolidated her position as the mistress of the house as the year wore to its close. The days shortened to just a few hours of pale light from a sky sunless and grey above the smoke hanging over the river and the ships. The morning streets glistened with a silver frosting, there were flurries of snow and the horses pulling carts and cabs slid and scrambled and sometimes fell on the treacherous surface, breaking their legs. So the people said as they huddled inside their thin coats, collars pulled up against the biting wind out of the north-east, ‘It’s the poor horses I’m sorry for.’

  Chrissie would not complain to outsiders, ‘washing dirty linen in public’, but with the houses crowding cheek by jowl the neighbours sensed or suspected. Mrs Davis and Mrs Johnson talked outside the front door of the latter despite the bitter cold. Swathed in shawls against it, they stopped Chrissie one day as she walked by. Mrs Davis asked, ‘How are you getting on with that Agatha, Chrissie?’

  The girl smiled brightly. ‘Oh, very well, thanks.’

  Mrs Johnson pressed, ‘Keeps you busy, does she?’

  Chrissie fielded that. ‘No more than usual.’

  They tried to pump her for some minutes and she answered all their questions with false cheer: ‘Grand! . . . Lovely! . . . Fine!’ Until she broke away.

  But that in itself told them something.

  As they watched her hurry away, Mrs Davis said, ‘It’s too good to be true, if you ask me.’

  Mrs Johnson nodded, ‘Aye. I reckon the lass is hiding something.’

  Chrissie always cooked the midday meal, at Agatha’s snapped orders, while the woman went shopping, though always back in time to serve it. Then two weeks before Christmas Agatha turned from the kitchen range, after the men had been served, to say, ‘I ran a finger al
ong that ledge out in the passage and it came off thick with dust.’

  She eyed Chrissie, who blinked at her and protested, ‘I dusted it this morning!’

  Agatha ignored that and went on, ‘And the state of that passage! It’s filthy dirty!’

  ‘I swept it—’

  Agatha pointed with a ladle. ‘You’re bone idle!’

  ‘I’m not! I swept it first thing this morning as well, but it’s where the boys come in with their dirty boots—’

  The ladle jabbed the air. ‘You’re a liar! I never saw you.’

  ‘You were out in the yard!’

  And Ronnie put in, ‘That’s right. I saw you out there.’

  It was Agatha’s turn to blink, surprised by his intervention. But she replied quickly, ‘I was keeping an eye on her because I know I have to.’

  Ronnie said doggedly, ‘I saw Chrissie sweeping the passage as well.’

  Chrissie shot him a grateful glance, but Agatha let out a bray of laughter. ‘You saw her! What do you men know about it? Did you look in the corners? I did. And that’s what I found!’ She dropped the ladle and picked up the small shovel from the hearth, showed it filled with fluff and dirt. Chrissie stared at it, wondering where the dirt had come from.

  In fact, Agatha had brought it from the yard. She shoved the pan under Chrissie’s nose and told her, ‘You’re a little liar! All that passage got from you was a lick and a promise.’

  Chrissie whispered, ‘I did it properly.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me! I know you and where you came from!’ And as Chrissie stared at her open mouthed, Agatha jeered, ‘Aha! That’s shut you up! You didn’t know that. You won’t get away with lying and laziness with me here!’ She watched, that thin smile twisting her lips, as Chrissie ran from the room.

  Ronnie pushed back his chair and stood up, accusing her angrily, ‘You’ve made her cry!’

  Agatha’s glare was contemptuous. ‘Cry? Never! You don’t know her and her kind like I do. And you can sit down. I’ll deal with her.’ Then bending to nod at Daniel, sitting head-shaking and vague in his armchair before the fire: ‘You want me to deal with Chrissie, don’t you?’