A Mother's Gift (20 page)

‘… Don’t you dare write to any of us ever again,’ Betty had written. ‘Gran is dead and it’s all because of you. The place was full of talk about you and your goings on. Gran couldn’t hold her head up and neither could the rest of the family. You never were any good, Kate Benfield. Our mam will never forgive you, never. And our dad, he won’t have your name said in the house. He’s badly and all, I won’t have him upset.’

Every word of the letter was burnt into Kate’s memory. All she had now was Matthew and she clung to him. But still, black despair haunted her most days.

Those early days with Matthew were hazy in her memory; she had wanted nothing but to stay hidden away here. And now she had got used to it. All her emotions were channelled into her love for Georgie and of course her love for Georgie’s father, for she found herself unable
to
think of anything else for so long. She thought for a while she was going mad: that was just before Georgie was born. Matthew had brought her pills until she found herself pregnant and then it was worse because she had to cut them out abruptly.

Kate sighed and drained her cup. She stood up and gathered the pots together to take them to the sink. What a weak, spineless thing she had been!

‘I’ll do that, ma’am,’ Dorothy said. ‘You shouldn’t, you know what the master would say if he caught you.’ The only time Dorothy called her ma’am was when Kate did some minor household chore or when Mr Hamilton was present. Kate’s hands stilled, she looked down at the neatly stacked cups and saucers and bit her lip. Dorothy was more than double her age and it didn’t seem right for an older woman to have to do all the work, servant or not.

‘Yes, of course, Dorothy,’ she said. ‘Well, I think I’ll go to bed myself now.’ It was only half past eight but the sooner she got to bed the sooner it would be tomorrow and Matthew was coming, wasn’t he? That would please Georgie. Anyway, Georgie would be up with the larks to see what Father Christmas had brought her. At seven, she was a firm believer in Father Christmas.

‘Goodnight, Kate,’ Dorothy said softly.

‘Yes. Goodnight, Dorothy,’ Kate answered. As she walked upstairs she thought how she loved the evenings with Dorothy when they shared a pot of tea and were just two women together. She couldn’t imagine what she would do without Dorothy. She was the next best thing to having gran in the house. A familiar stab of pain struck
her
at the thought of her gran. Oh, she would like to see her, try to explain to her. But she could never do that, not now. Gran was dead. There was no one in Winton Colliery who would welcome her now. Betty had made that plain.

‘You don’t want to go back there, Kate,’ Matthew said on the occasions when she had mentioned it. I don’t want you hurt and you would be if you tried to go back. Believe me, don’t I always know what’s best for you?’

Kate had to agree. Even when Georgina had been so ill with pneumonia when she was a baby and Kate had thought she would lose her. Oh how she had longed for her gran to come and help her. Gran knew so much about children and their ailments and she would have known exactly what to do to nurse the bairn back to health. Kate had begged Matthew to go for her but he would not and in the end Georgie recovered. Kate thought about that terrible time as she undressed and washed in the bathroom Matthew had had put in last year.

She put on her nightie and filled the hot water bottle from the hot tap and put it into her bed. From downstairs she could hear the wireless playing organ music and carols. The kitchen door must be open, she thought and was comforted to think that Dorothy should brave any draughts from an open door so that she would be comforted by the music. Dorothy always knew her mood.

She had already filled a stocking with a tangerine and an apple, nuts and little chocolate animals and now she took it along to Georgie’s room. Opening the door as quietly as she could, she went in and changed the empty
stocking
pinned to the mantelpiece for the filled one. Georgie slept on. Kate looked down at her in the light that came in from the open door. Oh, she looked so beautiful. Kate’s heart filled with the remembered anxiety of thinking she would lose her. She pulled the bedclothes up around Georgie, kissed her cheek and slipped back to her own room. Downstairs the chimes of Big Ben rang out nine o’clock. Kate got into bed and hugged the hot water bottle to her chest. She curled up on her side and let herself go on remembering.

Matthew had been away when Georgie came to the crisis. He had gone despite the baby being so ill. He had said he would be back that night but the weather was bad and it was impossible. It hadn’t been Matthew’s fault that he hadn’t been there, she said in her head. No, of course it hadn’t. Snow had blown across the moor, blowing the opposite way to the prevailing wind, which came in from the sea. The sparse trees were all bent permanently to the west because of the wind. But that night they were twisted the wrong way with the blizzard which came in from the west. And the snow was piled up in huge drifts right across the road, stopping any traffic.

Kate had rung for the doctor at six o’clock. And again at nine but Dr Brown hadn’t come. ‘He must come,’ Kate had cried into the telephone. Normally she did not use the telephone for she had no one to call. Matthew had had it connected in case of emergencies in the business but no one had the number but his solicitor.

Kate bathed the baby in lukewarm water to try to reduce her temperature for she was burning up with the
fever
. She no longer cried or made any sound at all, just lay there, panting for breath. The crisis had come just before midnight and the relief both she and Dorothy had felt when Georgie had opened her eyes and recognised them was indescribable. When the doctor came at one o’clock in the morning, Kate was sitting in the nursing chair Matthew had bought for her and rocking her gently in her arms.

‘Put her to bed now, Mrs Hamilton,’ said the doctor.

‘No, she wants her mother,’ Kate replied. It was as though she couldn’t believe that Georgie was all right. In the end the doctor gave her an injection of bromide and Dorothy had put her to bed.

It was the following evening that Matthew came at last. Dorothy had called the solicitor first thing but Matthew was ‘unavailable’.

‘How could you let it happen?’ Matthew demanded as he burst into the sitting-room. ‘You can’t have been looking after her properly! It must be your fault; she just had a bit of a cold when I left here. My God, even the wretched women in those hovels you came from look after their babies better than you did.’ He was filled with the need to inflict hurt to assuage his guilt and Kate bore the brunt of it.

‘I’m sorry, Matthew,’ she said dumbly. The nursery was warm, a fire burning in the grate, but Kate shivered.

Matthew gazed at Georgie’s face, calm now though pale, then turned and slapped Kate across the face. Kate stood with her head bowed while a red stain spread across her cheek. She felt she had deserved the slap and more for
she
had failed to give the right care to his daughter, hadn’t she? A wail came from the cot; Georgina had been awakened by his raised voice and sensed the atmosphere.

‘See to your daughter,’ he snapped as though she had been going to ignore the cry. That was the only time Matthew had raised his hand to her. She had seen it happen before in Winton Colliery when a man took out his anxieties on his wife. It happened, men were sometimes like that.

Kate turned over on to her back. She had to stop this remembering or she would never get to sleep. Going over things that had happened did no good, you couldn’t change anything that had happened no matter how you agonised about it. The only thing to do was to go on.

The house was very quiet now, Dorothy must have gone to bed. She had to get some sleep. She propped herself up on one elbow and reached for the bottle of sleeping tablets on the bedside table. She poured water into the glass from the pitcher there and took a tablet; hesitating whether to take two but in the end screwing the cap back on the bottle. One would have to be enough. She needed to get some sleep for Matthew coming home tomorrow but if she took two tablets she might be heavy-eyed and he wouldn’t like that.

GEORGINA’S SEVEN-YEAR-OLD HEART
swelled with excitement when she heard her father’s voice in the hall. She dropped Emily, the doll she had got only yesterday from Santa Claus, on to the sofa and ran to meet him, dragging the heavy oak door open and flying out to the hall. He was there. All the disappointments of Christmas Day were forgotten because he was here now. She ran to him, her straight dark hair flying out behind her and stopped abruptly a couple of feet away from him. She looked up at him as he took off his coat and hat and handed them to Dorothy. He smelled of bay rum and the cigar he was smoking and suddenly seemed almost a stranger.

Matthew looked down at her and smiled. ‘Hallo, little one, did you have a nice Christmas?’ he asked and held out his arms and suddenly he wasn’t a stranger after all. She jumped into them and he hugged her to him for a minute before putting her down.

‘You didn’t come yesterday and you said you would!’
she
accused him. ‘I waited all day; I watched for you out of the window!’

‘I couldn’t, Georgina,’ he said, the smile disappearing. Really, he thought, he was very fond of her but it was time she was taught some discipline, some decorum. ‘I’m here now though. Don’t you want your present?’ He stepped aside and revealed a large parcel wrapped in brown paper. ‘Go on, open it.’

Georgie tore at the paper, breathless with excitement and at last revealed a big doll’s pram. It was a splendid doll’s pram with shining, deep blue sides and a fold-down hood and sparkling chrome wheels. She was lost in wonder at the sight of it.

‘Daddy! How did you know it was just what I wanted? Now I can take Emily for walks in it!’

‘Just in the garden, now,’ he warned. ‘If you go out on the moors you might get lost. Now go to your room, I want to talk to your mother alone.’ He looked down at her and his smile returned. She was a pretty child, with her mother’s eyes and translucent skin. She had dark hair like his and her chin was firm like his too. Now she lifted it and gazed up at him.

‘I want to show you what Father Christmas brought for me. You didn’t come yesterday and I’ve waited—’

‘I couldn’t, I told you,’ he said sharply. He looked at the door of the sitting-room. Kate did not usually rush out to greet him, not these last few years. But she would be waiting for him in there. He felt the familiar rush of excitement that he always had when he was going to see her. ‘Go to your room, Georgie,’ he said
and
walked towards the sitting-room door.

Georgie stared after him, frustrated. Then she took hold of the handle of her pram and took it to the bottom of the stairs. She could hear sounds from the kitchen, water running into a pan, cupboard doors opening and closing. Dorothy was making a ‘nice dinner’ as she called it though Mam said she had to call it lunch. Georgie knew why that was. Father frowned when anyone said dinner when it was lunch. He frowned at a lot of things said or done by Mam or Dorothy and they all tried to avoid his frowns. For sometimes they meant he went away and didn’t come back for days and days and days.

Georgie tugged and pulled at the pram until the back wheels were on the bottom stair. Pulling and panting she managed to heave it up another three stairs but it was very heavy and wobbly and she couldn’t leave go of it to put back the hair that had escaped from her hair band and was over her eyes. She tugged and pulled with all her might because she had to get it upstairs. Father said that was where she had to go and how else was she to play with it, put Emily in it? At last she reached the first landing and sat down on the bottom step of the second flight to get her breath back.

The pram rolled back down the stairs. She saw it start to go and jumped up but she was too late, it was off, bumping on every step, bumping into the banisters, chipping the varnish on two and landing on its side at the bottom with a crash. Georgie ran after it, tripped and went head over heels to land beside it. She began to cry.

In the sitting-room Matthew was kissing Kate. He held
her
close and nuzzled her neck and she clung to him, moulding her body to his. And Matthew’s response was compelling; he wanted her
now
. He hurried back to the door and turned the key in the lock, he had no time to take her upstairs. He was half way back to her when the crash came, followed by the sound of Georgie crying noisily.

Kate’s expression changed in a split second from sensuousness to alarm; she started towards the door. ‘Georgie!’ she cried. ‘What’s happened?’

Matthew hesitated, actually torn between going to see what had happened and carrying on with his lovemaking, the urge was so strong. But, of course, he had to follow Kate out to the hall. Groaning he followed her as she ran to Georgie who was lying on the parquet flooring red in the face but her weeping subsiding.

‘What’s the matter? You haven’t fallen down the stairs? Are you hurt? Tell me where it hurts, pet.’

Kate had picked Georgie up and sat on the hall chair with her on her knee. Georgie nuzzled into her for comfort.

‘For goodness sake,’ snapped Matthew. ‘The child is not hurt.’

‘She’s had a shock,’ murmured Kate defensively.

‘She should not have been playing on the stairs,’ said Matthew. ‘Georgina, go to your room at once. I told you before, now do it!’