Mary's Child Read online

  Chrissie made her way home in the dusk. She was apprehensive when she first saw the darker shadows that flitted through those cast by the trees that lined the road. The branches almost met above her head, making a green tunnel. The cart was almost empty now as she drove Bobby down the middle of the road. There was no one else in sight except for her and the three youths, sidling towards her in the gathering gloom. They were a hundred yards away and she could not see their faces yet, but they were roughly dressed and there was something menacing about their approach. In the stillness of the dusk she heard one of them call out something, and they all laughed raucously. She took a tighter grip on the reins, and then saw another figure coming rapidly along the side of the road behind the other three. This one was no clearer than the others, just a pale blur of shirt collar and face above it, but she was glad to see him there.

  Jack Ballantyne was on vacation from his boarding school in Yorkshire and had spent the afternoon playing rugger at the sports club near by. He was hurrying back to the Ballantyne house to jump into a bath. A jacket was thrown on over his muddy shorts and jersey, he wore a pair of plimsolls and his boots dangled from one hand. He saw the cart further up the road but the three youths were much nearer. Because of the plimsolls the youths ahead did not hear him until he was almost upon them. Then one happened to glance around and see him, saying, ‘Look what’s here!’

  The others turned to stare at Jack, who held on. Then the first one moved to block his way. Jack stepped aside to pass him but another blocked him there. He halted and demanded, ‘D’you mind getting out of my way?’ He was not going to show fear. He saw now that they were about his age, fifteen or so, dressed in ragged jackets and trousers, caps on the sides of their heads. It was not the poor dress of poverty but laziness. There was a shiftless air about them. He could smell stale beer.

  The first said, ‘Who are you, then?’ and shoved closer. The others moved up on either side of Jack. He saw one was about to get behind him and so took a pace to the rear. He became aware of a tree looming at his shoulder and took one more pace so he could set his back against the trunk of it. The first one stepped in close again and Jack shoved him off. Then the fists started flying.

  Jack dropped his boots and lashed out. In those first few seconds he landed as many blows on them as they did on him. He could box but they flailed wildly and he had a bigger target, could hardly miss, while they got in each other’s way. That could not last. One of them reached in and grabbed at his collar, started to haul him away from the tree. Jack knew that once he was in the open and surrounded they would soon have him on the ground. He fought desperately to hold his place but they were wrestling him from it.

  Chrissie did not hesitate to consider her actions. She was still thirty or forty yards away when she saw the sudden attack on the lone walker and shouted, ‘Leave him alone!’ They did not hear her. She shook up the reins and whacked the horse with Daniel’s whip. Bobby surged forward, startled out of his ambling walk into a canter, only to be reined in short as he came level with the group struggling under the trees.

  ‘Leave him, I said!’ Chrissie shouted again, voice high, and remembered a phrase from Daniel Milburn: ‘Or I’ll flay the flamin’ ’ide off ye!’

  This time they glanced around but saw only a slight, dark-haired girl. They turned back to punching at the boy backed against the tree.

  Chrissie jumped up to stand on the cart, an instinctive move but one that put her above them. She shook out the whip, took a quick breath and then laid into the nearest of the three.

  Crack! Crack! Crack! She lacked Daniel’s expertise and did not try to match it. The whip did not snap in the air close by the head or the ear. It connected on both. The owner of the head howled and grabbed at his ear and skull, which felt as if struck by a hot iron. He reeled away in pain.

  Chrissie struck again: Crack! Crack! The youth trying to drag Jack Ballantyne from the tree let go and covered his face with his hands. He backed away, so hurriedly and blindly that he stumbled over a tree root and fell. The third attacker suddenly found himself alone and hesitated, looking about him. He realised the other two had left the fight, and saw the girl standing on the cart brandishing the whip again. Then Jack Ballantyne saw his chance, struck out and landed a fist on that last one’s jaw.

  He staggered and retreated with a hand nursing his chin. The three drew together, nursing their injuries, blinking from the boy backed against the tree with his fists up, to the girl standing high above them, shaking out the long lash of the whip. Then a carriage wheeled around a far corner into the road and rolled down towards them at a steady pace. The three turned as one and ran away, lost again in the shadows under the trees.

  Chrissie jumped down from the cart, patted Bobby with a soothing hand then crossed to the boy. He stepped away from the tree as she approached. She bent, picked up his boots and gave them to him. As she straightened Chrissie saw that he was tall, a head taller than she, with pale blue eyes and a mop of black hair, rumpled now, and mud smeared on his face – that had come from the rugger. There were now some bruises inflicted in the last minute or so. But she remembered – was sure – this was the boy she had met all those years ago.

  Jack saw she was just a slip of a girl, though growing into a woman. The slim hands that held out the boots were grubby from her work on the cart, as was the white pinny she wore over her dress. She had a high colour and was breathing quickly from her exertions. She gave him a wide-mouthed smile as she asked, ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. It was jolly good of you to help like that.’ Then pride made him add, ‘I could have handled those blighters, though. I’m in the boxing team at school.’

  Chrissie turned her back on him, disappointed, and climbed on to the cart again. She thought that was what she might have expected from one of his sort.

  Jack followed her to say, ‘But I am grateful. Thank you.’

  Chrissie looked down on him coldly. ‘You’re welcome.’

  She flicked the reins then and Bobby walked on. Jack was left to watch her go down the road and pass from his sight. He turned then and walked home. He did not recall her as the little girl who had sat with him in the tree to watch the dancing, though that night was, and always would be, clear in his memory. But he would remember her standing on the cart and wielding the whip like a small fury. And that wide-mouthed smile, those dark eyes.

  Chrissie took with her a picture of a bruised and mud-smeared face, not handsome but strong. It was not only her exertions that had left her breathless.

  ‘I’m taking you to the doctor with that cough.’ Bessie would brook no argument the following Monday morning. ‘Our Chrissie can manage your cart for another day. She did as well as you or better the last twice she’s taken it out.’ So Chrissie rode off behind Bobby again and Bessie took Daniel, fit to walk but still coughing, to Dr Simmons.

  The doctor was over sixty, bad tempered and brusque, with watery eyes and a strong smell of wintergreen ointment. He took Daniel’s temperature, listened to his chest and pronounced, ‘You’ve got a chesty cold. I’ll get the dispensary to give you some medicine for it.’ Now Simmons turned on Bessie: ‘I think I’d better have a look at you while you’re here.’

  She protested, ‘I’m fit as a fiddle.’

  ‘I’m the doctor. I remember the last time I saw you, a couple of years ago, and I think you’ve lost weight. Have you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

  ‘We’ll soon find out.’ So he began by putting her on the scales, and once started, went on to give her a full examination.

  At the end he sat in his chair scowling at his desk for a minute or so before he finally said, ‘I want you to see a specialist.’

  Bessie died as the first snow fell. The surgery came too late and only hastened the end by a few weeks. She asked to see Chrissie alone, and when the girl sat by the bed, reached out a bony hand. Chrissie gripped it, appalled at the way the flesh had melted from the once buxom body
; it now lay skeletal under the sheet.

  Bessie whispered, ‘I want you to have my brooch. I’ve told Dan you’re to have it. I never had a lass of my own but you’ve been better than any daughter to me. I’ve told Dan to marry again. He’s a man that needs a woman. It would be best if he married again, but till he does, look after him and the lads for me. Promise me, Chrissie.’

  ‘I promise.’

  Chrissie supported Daniel through his grief. Over the years she had helped Bessie make the funeral arrangements for several neighbours so she saw that all was done properly now. After the funeral she cried herself to sleep as she had when she first came to live in the small room over the stairs.

  But the next morning she was up before daybreak and down in the kitchen cooking breakfast, with the fire already lit under the boiler in the washhouse, preparing for a day’s washing.

  She would run the house now.

  While Jack Ballantyne . . .

  Chapter 8

  January 1908

  Jack was going back to school and wore his new Ulster. He had grown out of his old one, his head already up to his father’s shoulder. The overcoat hung open over the dark grey suit that was the school uniform. He stood on the platform as the train rolled into the station, Richard Ballantyne at his side. When the train ground to a halt with a hiss of steam the porter carrying Jack’s suitcase whipped open the door of a first-class carriage and swung the case up on to the rack. He stepped down to the platform again and Richard Ballantyne tipped him with a sixpence. He touched his cap before hurrying off: ‘Thank ye, sir!’

  Doors were slamming already and the guard had his whistle clenched in his teeth. Richard Ballantyne said, ‘Well, you’d better get aboard.’ He took out his wallet as Jack jumped up into the carriage, closed the door and leaned out through the open window. Richard reached up and tucked a pound note into the breast pocket of his son’s jacket.

  ‘Thanks, Dad. And thanks for a jolly good time over Christmas.’

  The guard’s whistle shrilled and the train shuddered in a clanking of couplings then started forward. Richard Ballantyne held up his hand. ‘Cheerio, son. It’s been good having you at home.’

  Jack gripped the hand, shook it once and let it go to wave, smiling as the train took him away. Then he tossed the Ulster on to the rack with the case, took the folded newspaper from its pocket and sat back in his seat. He liked his school, expected to get a trial for the Rugby first fifteen this term, and was happy at home with his father and grandfather. All was well with his world.

  Richard Ballantyne made his way out of the station well content. He thought that Jack had miraculously survived the loss of his mother – or maybe not so miraculously, because Hilary Ballantyne had never been a mother to him. Amy Jenkinson, his onetime nurse, who had retired on her pension some seven years ago, had filled that role very well. And now Richard and his son were as close as any father and son, despite Richard’s workload at Ballantyne’s yard.

  He had determined never to marry again. He would not risk matrimony and another possible betrayal. But there was Sally Youill . . .

  She met him that weekend, as usual, when they booked in at the hotel in York as husband and wife. They were of an age, in their late thirties, and from the same middle class. Sally was tall for a woman, long legged and high breasted, with a mane of soft brown hair piled on her head. She lived in Newcastle and was a divorcée, her husband having run off with a girl of twenty. He was now regretting it, too late.

  When she and Richard first met, a year after Hilary deserted him and Jack, Sally was struggling to educate two daughters on the income from a dress shop she owned and managed. He had discreetly courted her and she had told him bluntly, ‘I am not interested in marriage, Richard.’ Once bitten, twice shy.

  But he had been equally concise: ‘Neither am I.’

  They found that they shared a common experience, and that was not all. Now, as he stood back to let her enter their bedroom before him, she smiled and said, ‘Thank you, dear.’ He bowed, followed her in and tipped the porter who had brought up their bags. When the man had gone Richard helped Sally out of her coat. When she raised her arms to unpin and remove her hat his fingers began work on the fastening of her dress. She stood still, breath quickening and ready for him, as he stripped her.

  Later that night, with Sally at his side already in exhausted sleep, Richard thought back to that first meeting and the new life it had opened up for him.

  There was only one jarring note. Inside of a year old George Ballantyne had suspected what was afoot and challenged Richard: ‘Have you got a mistress?’

  Richard had never thought of Sally like that. Caught off balance, he answered stiffly, ‘There is a lady who has my affection.’

  George accused him, ‘You’re hedging! You’re keeping a woman!’

  Richard had regained his calm now. ‘We share part of our lives so I pay my share of the cost.’

  George brushed that aside with a wave of his hand. He demanded, ‘Why can’t you marry her? Are you taking her in adultery?’

  ‘No! The lady is divorced!’ Richard saw his father’s relief, saw him also note that emphasis, his realisation that he was antagonising his son. Richard went on, ‘But she doesn’t want to marry again and neither do I.’ Not after Hilary’s infidelity.

  Old George knew why. He did not raise the subject again.

  Now Richard turned over to sleep and thought that he was happy with his life. He had his son and his work. And for the exchange of affection and passion he had the woman beside him now. He decided there was many a man worse off.

  Andrew Wayman, of average build, dark, and forty, sat in the lawyer’s office in the little town in the Australian outback. In the sweltering heat he wore only cotton shirt and trousers washed thin and a pair of boots without socks. His wide-brimmed, sweat-stained hat lay on the desk.

  The lawyer on the other side of it had his jacket hung over the back of his chair. The white shirt he had put on crisp and fresh a couple of hours ago now had a wilted collar. It stuck sweatily to his chest where his braces pressed it against his skin. He said, ‘I asked you to come in because you run a pretty substantial property now, close on a thousand acres. You’ve done very well since you came here – what? Ten years ago?’

  Andrew answered laconically, ‘Twelve,’ though he had landed in Australia nearly two years before that. He had come out from England as a seaman in the fo’c’sle of a battered old tramp steamer that should have gone to the breakers. When she berthed at Sydney he had laid out the bullying first mate with a blow from a shovel and jumped ship. He had spent the intervening two years in the goldfields, where he had made the money that bought his thousand acres and stocked them with sheep.

  Now he said, ‘O’ course, I’ve worked a bit.’

  The lawyer chuckled. ‘I know that for a fact.’ He also knew that Andrew Wayman was a survivor. The hell ship, the loss of the first fortune he made in the goldfields, and the death of most of his sheep during one year of appalling drought; after all of these Andrew Wayman had bounced back with a grin.

  He said, ‘So what about this property of mine?’

  The lawyer leaned forward over the desk and mopped at his face with a handkerchief. ‘Have you ever thought of making a will? To clarify who should inherit the property if—’ He broke off as Andrew gave a bark of laughter.

  He shook his head, still chuckling, and said, ‘To hell with that! Who would I leave it to? One o’ the jokers who work for me?’ He stood up and reached for his hat, the interview over as far as he was concerned. ‘No. When I turn up my toes you can all fight over it.’

  The lawyer stared at him and asked, ‘You have no family?’

  Andrew Wayman shook his head definitely. ‘Nobody.’

  And so he believed.

  Six months later and twelve thousand miles away another lawyer stood up from his paper-covered desk in his office at the bottom of the High Street, and stretched. Ezra Arkenstall had been bent over his w
ork for two hours and now he paced to the window to take his eyes from the close work and ease stiffened muscles. He was older but had not yet shrunk with age, still filled out his good dark grey suit, though his hair was greyer and he stooped a little more. He stood at his window on the top floor of the building and stared out over the intervening roofs at the distant view of the river. Its yards swarmed with men along each bank, ships lay by the quays loading or being fitted out, and the puffing tugs scuttled downstream or puffed up against the current. And circling over all were the wheeling gulls.

  He thought that the summer was nearly over. He could see no flowers from his window, only an occasional patch of sooty grass. The wind off the sea was merely boisterous, still mild, and a weak sun blinked through holes in the overcast of clouds and smoke, but there was little warmth in it now. A month before, its heat had melted the tar on the few roads that were asphalted. The urchins living in the cramped and teeming slums down by the river had dug the soft pitch off those roads and rolled it in their palms to make marbles. Those days were gone for another year.

  He turned as there was a tap at his door and called, ‘Come in!’

  Max Forthrop entered, smiling as always. Some months ago Arkenstall’s partner, Henry Halliwell, had come into this office when Ezra was working late and said, ‘We can’t cope with all the business we have these days. We’ll have to take in another partner, Ezra.’

  Arkenstall had a son, Luke, at boarding school with young Jack Ballantyne. He hoped his boy would follow in his footsteps, become a partner in the firm and ultimately take over from himself. But all that was in the distant future. He had answered Halliwell, ‘I think you’re right.’ Halliwell had found Max Forthrop, now the junior partner.

  He asked, ‘Can I request a favour?’

  Arkenstall waved him to a chair before the desk while he sat down behind it again. ‘Of course.’