A Mother's Gift (21 page)

Georgie knew that tone of voice. She climbed down from her mother’s knee and walked up the stairs, holding on to the banister and sniffing as she went. Kate stood the
pram
up properly. At the bend in the stairs Georgie turned round.

‘Can I have my pram upstairs?’ she asked.

‘No you cannot!’

Matthew’s roar made her turn and run up the remaining flight and into her room. She looked around for Emily before remembering she had left her in her mother’s sitting-room. Lifting her chin she turned to go down for the doll but half way down the stairs decided against it. She could hear her father’s voice, the words clipped and decisive. She had meant to be so good when he came and she had waited so long for him. Her lip trembled for a moment. Then she walked to the window and stared out over the moors at the dead twiggy heather and clumps of gorse.

One day, she thought rebelliously, one day she would go out there and walk and walk and never come back. She would take Emily and live in a cave and drink from a stream and eat berries or something. And then they would be sorry when they couldn’t find their lost girl.

In the sitting-room Kate lay on the hearthrug with her eyes closed so that she couldn’t see Matthew’s face as he thrust himself into her. When he was angry, and he was angry now for he didn’t like his lovemaking to be interrupted by anyone or anything, he could be rough, sometimes very rough. Not at all like he was usually. It was as though he weren’t really aware of her, of who she was.

He had pushed her down on the rug and pulled her dress down away from her breasts and grasped them so
hard
she gasped with the pain of it. He’d thrust her cami-knickers aside and forced her thighs apart. It was over in a minute and he rolled off her and got to his feet. He buttoned his flies for he hadn’t even had time to take off his trousers. Then he sat down and crossed his legs and watched as she got to her feet and adjusted her clothing too.

Matthew felt a tinge of remorse when he noticed the bruise on her neck. Had he done that? He hadn’t meant to.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked and she looked quickly at him in surprise. On the odd occasions when this happened he didn’t usually inquire.

‘Yes, of course,’ she said and smiled to prove it true. Fleetingly she thought of Georgie, would Dorothy go to her? She would because it was almost time for Georgie’s milk and biscuits. Dorothy would make sure she had no hidden bruises from her fall. She herself could give all her attention to Matthew.

‘Would you like some coffee?’ she asked him. He had sat down by the fire and crossed his legs and was swinging one leg as he gazed into the flames. It was hard to believe he was the same man as five minutes ago.

‘If you like,’ he replied and she went to the door and turned the key back in the lock.

‘I won’t be a moment, Dorothy will be busy upstairs I think,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

In the kitchen she saw that Dorothy had put on the coffee pot and laid a tray so it was but a minute’s work to
finish
it off. Kate got out the biscuit tin and laid a selection on a plate; Matthew was usually hungry after sex. She thought of slipping upstairs to look in on Georgie, make sure for herself that she was all right but decided against it. Matthew would get restless if she was very long away and Dorothy was there with Georgie.

‘I have decided that Georgie must go to school,’ said Matthew. He spooned sugar into his black coffee and took a sip.

‘School? But I thought you didn’t want her to go to school. That’s why Miss Whitfield comes isn’t it?’

Miss Whitfield was a quiet middle-aged lady who came three times a week to teach Georgie her letters and numbers. She came promptly at nine o’clock and went away again at twelve, refusing all overtures of friendship from her or Dorothy and evading any questions about her life and family. All Kate knew of her was that she lived in another isolated cottage somewhere on the moors. Matthew had hired her when Georgina was five for he was against her going to the village school three miles away.

‘How will she get there?’ asked Kate, accepting his decision as she did all his decisions, until his next words, that is.

‘She will board,’ said Matthew and Kate gasped.

‘No!’

Matthew looked at her as she sank down into the chair opposite him. He sighed and said nothing for a moment or two as he marshalled his thoughts.

‘There is a small private school in Guisborough which
is
ideal for her,’ he said. ‘She will mix with other children and have a proper education.’

‘She can read well, and write an’ all. And she is good at arithmetic, she can say her seven times tables. That’s very good for her age. And I don’t want her to go.’ The flat vowels of her youth came to the fore in her agitation.

Kate was frantically trying to think of reasons why Georgie should stay at home. She had always thought that Matthew didn’t want the world to even know she was there and this decision had taken her completely by surprise. What would she do on her own in this house on the moor with only Dorothy for company? She would go mad, that’s what.

‘Really, Kate you should not be selfish about this,’ Matthew said smoothly. He was well aware that he would get his own way in this for what could Kate do? ‘Georgina must be educated; I want her to be a proper young lady. I want her to speak properly,’ he said pointedly and Kate was acutely aware that she had slipped back into a ‘pitmatic’ colloquialism with ’an’ all’ and forgotten to modulate her accent.

‘I will arrange with the school that she comes home every other Sunday and of course for the holidays,’ said Matthew. He finished his coffee and placed the cup and saucer on the tray.

‘Why not every Sunday? Matthew I will miss her so much!’ said Kate.

‘It will be too unsettling for her to come every Sunday,’ said Matthew. ‘Come now, Kate, many of my friends and their sons went away to school at six years old, a whole
year
younger than Georgina. And if you are lonely, well I will contrive to be here more often. I will come for a few hours on Sunday afternoons, won’t you like that?’

He said it with an air of bestowing a great gift, she thought and he was right. She knew herself; she would look for him eagerly, almost as eagerly as she would look for Georgie’s visits. She loved him and he left her with no will at all. Sometimes she wondered at what she had been like in the old days, the days when it had all happened. But her mind soon shied away from that. He was her life now, him and Georgina.

‘Come on then we will tell her she is going to school. I’m sure she will be really excited. She’ll love it, making new friends, learning new things.’

Matthew put an arm around her and drew her to the door. He looked down at her tenderly, oh, he loved her. He was surprised that he did, he hadn’t expected it to last this long but it had. His days of visiting certain houses in Middlesbrough were over, at least for the foreseeable future. He was besotted with Kate, couldn’t keep his hands off her. And she loved him, he knew that. He hadn’t meant to hurt her earlier on. He would take her to bed after lunch and make love properly to her, he decided. Georgina wasn’t allowed in their bedroom so they would be completely private. And soon she wouldn’t be much of a problem at all. Not that he didn’t love Georgina, of course he did but she was not to be allowed to get in the way of his time with Kate. And school would do her good. The school in Guisborough was small and insignificant and the head mistress
discreet
. There would be no breath of scandal getting back north of the Tees.

‘Daddy! Am I really to go to school? Really and truly? Oh, thank you, Daddy, thank you, thank you,’ cried Georgina and jumped on him so that his arms went round her instinctively.

‘Mam, did you hear Daddy say I’m to go to school? Isn’t it grand?’

‘What did you call your mother, Georgina?’ her father asked but not sternly so that she wasn’t abashed.

‘I meant Mummy,’ she replied. ‘I’m sorry, Father.’

Matthew looked over her head to Kate. ‘You see why she should go to school now, before she learns any other bad habits.’

From me, thought Kate. He means calling me Mam is common.

GEORGINA SAT AND
stared at Miss High dumbly. Oh, she hated school and she hated the teacher and she hated the other girls who were sitting sniggering at her.

‘She doesn’t even know which is the capital of England,’ Susan Jones whispered loudly. Susan Jones was the bane of Georgie’s life. She always knew the answer to any of Miss High’s questions.

‘Stop that talking, girls!’ snapped the teacher and Susan subsided into a giggling which enraged Georgina. She turned in her seat and glared at Susan; forgetting all about Miss High, she shouted at the girl.

‘I do! I do!’

‘What is it then?’ Susan grinned. She was the daughter of a prosperous grocer in the town and had a group of friends always around her while Georgina was usually alone.

‘York!’ cried Georgina and the class erupted into laughter.

‘Girls! Girls!’

Miss High raised her voice and cast a quelling glance around the class. ‘Susan, Georgina, go and stand outside in the hall at once. I will not have such behaviour in my class.’

Georgina walked out to the front of the class and across, feeling every eye on her and her cheeks burned though she held her head high. Susan followed and they stood outside, one on either side of the door. They could still hear the teacher’s voice.

‘Now who knows the capital of England?’

‘I do! I do!’ There was a chorus from the children. ‘London!’

‘I knew that,’ said Georgina.

‘You’re telling lies,’ scoffed Susan. ‘You don’t know anything.’

‘I do, I do!’

Georgina was so enraged she launched herself at her tormentor and the surprise of it pushed Susan to the ground with Georgina on top of her pummelling at her chest. All the frustrations of the first week at the school, all the loneliness and all the longing for her mother and home came out and Susan began to scream with fright.

Next minute Georgina felt herself hauled to her feet and shaken until she was breathless by the headmistress, Miss Nelson, who had come out of her office to see what all the commotion was about. Susan had subsided into the occasional sob, obviously her feelings hurt more than her body.

‘Georgina, you will sit in my office and not move or make a sound until I tell you to,’ decreed Miss Nelson.
Georgina
found herself sitting at a corner of the desk in the headmistress’s study, adding up columns of figures then subtracting one answer from the other. She did this in record time and perfect silence, forgetting all about the tribulations of the morning. Georgina was fascinated by figures, their relation to each other and the satisfaction of coming up with the right answer to a sum.

Miss Nelson watched her then marked her work; Georgina scored full marks. A fluke, maybe? Miss Nelson gave her more sums, more suitable for a nine-year-old and Georgina went through them smoothly, pausing only to lick her pencil once. Again her work was faultless. Miss Nelson gave her more, the work usually done by eleven-year-olds, the top class in the school. Georgina sucked her pencil a few more times and frowned but then her brow cleared and she came up with the correct answers.

When the bell rang for lunch Miss Nelson was convinced she had a mathematical genius on her hands. Of course, Georgina was abysmally ignorant about some things but with a mind such as hers she would soon catch up with her age group. Why, thought the headmistress, her school could one day be famous as the school that gave Georgina Hamilton her grounding in the mathematical sciences.

‘You can go to lunch now, dear,’ she told the girl. ‘Afterwards tell Miss High that I want you back here with me for the first period.’ She had it in mind that she would test her in other subjects.

‘Thank you Miss Nelson,’ said Georgie. She slipped off her chair then hesitated, she hadn’t been punished yet.

‘Run along then, Georgina.’

‘Thank you, Miss Nelson.’

Georgina’s smile lit up her face and her eyes sparkled. It wasn’t so bad here after all. And she was going home on Sunday.

In the dining-room Susan, sitting with a group of her friends, smirked when Georgie came in. ‘Here comes the dafty,’ she said jeeringly to the girl next to her. ‘Doesn’t know anything.’ But Georgie wasn’t caring much, she hardly heard her. It was Friday and she hadn’t to go back into class this afternoon, she was going to see Miss Nelson. And she liked Miss Nelson, she was lovely.
And
on Sunday she was going home and her man would be there (her mummy she had to remember to call her Mummy or Father would be cross again). He might be there too and it would be lovely. He loved her, she knew he did and he only got cross when he was disappointed in her. That was what Mam said. So she had to try her best not to disappoint him, she told herself. She would be good all day.

Sunday came at last and Georgie was on her way home. The school hired a bus to take the girls to their homes, a twenty-four-seater Dennis and Georgie sat at the front and waited impatiently as one girl after another was put down and she was the last one left on the bus as it climbed up from the village of Roseley to the point where the road met the track over the moors which led to the cottage.