A Time Like No Other (17 page)

‘Shall we move to the drawing room, Harry?’ Lally enquired, just as politely. ‘There is brandy, whisky, port . . .’ for Harry himself had replenished the meagre supply she had managed for guests. ‘We could be more comfortable.’ She hoped this didn’t sound too inviting as though she were importuning him to some more intimate situation but she did long to get this first evening and
night
over and done with.

They had dined on vermicelli soup, breast of veal, followed by a transparent jelly inlaid with brandy cherries and topped with whipped cream. A simple meal, but well prepared and cooked and Biddy had outdone herself with the table and so far Harry had seemed well pleased. He rose and moving round the table took her hand and led her from the dining room, across the enormous slabbed hallway in which a huge fire burned – already the house was showing the results of the money he meant to put into it, and his own comfort – and into the equally warm drawing room where applewood logs burned brightly in the wide fireplace. He ceremoniously seated her before it on the worn old sofa which he had already told her he meant to replace then moved to the drinks table and poured himself a large brandy.

‘May I offer you a liqueur, Lally?’ he asked her courteously. She had not even known there was such a thing among the many bottles he had had placed there.

‘Thank you, yes,’ for it might give her courage for the ordeal to come. He poured her a pretty coloured drink into a tiny glass – she had no idea what it was – and handed it to her. It tasted lovely and after he had lit a cigar and drawn the smoke deeply, satisfyingly into his lungs, she asked for another. He gave it to her and she was made aware that he too was eager to facilitate the situation, make it easier for both of them.

They did not speak, both of them gazing sightlessly into the fire. Of what
could
they speak? Current affairs? The comings and goings of the royal family? The impending wedding of Joshua and Mildred Fawcett’s daughter to which he – but not Lally – had been invited? He drank brandy, glass after glass, and when the clock struck ten he stood up abruptly.

‘Lally,’ he said, his voice harsh with some emotion that seemed to devastate him. Lally’s face was drawn suddenly into a mask and he knew she was afraid, not of what was to come for she had known a man’s body before but of what was to happen between
them
. It could be disastrous. His own brother had impregnated her several months ago and now he was to attempt to go where Roly had been before him. It was intolerable, both of them knew it, but it had to be done. If they were to make any sort of a life together this night and all the ones to follow, it must be done. A terrible mistake had been made and this was the only way to rectify it.

‘I’ll be up in a minute.’ His eyes looked directly into hers and she was made to understand that there would be no avoiding what was to come. As she obediently left the room she saw him reach once more for the brandy bottle.

Biddy had gone, saying nothing, for what was there to say to the tragic figure who sat in the centre of the bed. She had helped her to undress, put her into her demure nightgown, brushed her short hair and kissed her cheek.

‘Blow the candles out, Biddy,’ the small voice from the bed told her.

‘Nay, lass, tha’ ’usband will do that.’ She shut the door quietly behind her.

He strode into the room, fortified by the enormous amount of brandy he had consumed, without which he would not have been able to do this thing. She shrank away from him for an infinitesimal moment and he almost turned away since he could not in all conscience force her to his will, then her head came up and her eyes, so blue and lovely with their flecks of green, darkened. Even in the subdued light of the candles he could see them, then they gleamed with what seemed like defiance. Her head came up and her soft mouth tightened. With one glorious movement she stood up in the bed and drew off her white frilled nightgown, tossing it to the floor. She stood, challenging him and in answer he threw off the brocade robe which was all he wore and advanced towards her. She did not shrink from him. Her body, though slender, was in perfect proportion, her breasts high and proud despite bearing two children, her waist neat, her hips soft and flaring and her legs long.

‘Well then,’ he heard himself murmuring, he had no idea why. His own body was bold, virile, thrusting, lean as an athlete’s, but strong and the colour of amber. Quite beautiful, masculine, a manly beauty which she had time to notice before he stepped up on to the bed and drew her into his arms. His penis pressed against her belly then he pulled her – not gently – down into the softness of the bed that she had once shared with Chris Fraser. He had not yet told her but he meant to change that and move them both into another room, one he would make into
their
room, a bedroom that would be made luxuriously lovely and would have no memories of her dead husband. But tonight they must make do with this and he hoped to God the ghost of Chris Fraser would not come to disturb them. Even Roly, his own brother might have shared this bed with her; he had never asked her where the event had taken place in which the child had been conceived but as soon as possible he would have the builders, decorators, designers, furnishing experts in to change not only the bedroom he and Lally would share, but the rest of this threadbare, decaying old house.

He loved her that night in a way that took her by surprise. She had expected it to be quick and not exactly brutal, for she instinctively knew Harry was not a brutal man, but not gentle. He kissed her, parting her lips, caressing them, folding them softly with his, then began to lead her along the sweet and honeyed paths which he had learned with other women but which was also his nature. She felt the beginnings of joy as his hand held her breast, moving down to her belly, the dark triangle of hair at the base of it and into the increasingly eager centre, the moist centre of her womanhood. She cried out and he hesitated but she grasped him to her, pulling him down with no thought for the child growing within her as he entered her, spilling his seed where his brother’s and Chris Fraser’s had once been spilled. For a moment he agonised that he was not the first but, by God, he would be the last, his triumphant cry said.

She slept then, her back against his belly, his arms cradling her, his face buried in the sweet scented tangle of her hair. He lay awake, his thoughts filling his head and his sad heart, for he loved this woman more than life itself and his love was not returned. He drew deeply into his lungs the smell of her, her soft hair tickling his nostrils and as he himself drifted off to sleep his last thought was that he would persuade her to grow it.

He woke in the night. The candles had burned down but the fire glowed orange and red in the grate. She was still in the same position in which she had gone to sleep. She murmured something and as he turned her towards him she smiled. He kissed her, moving from her mouth to her jawline, down her throat to the peak of her breast where the nipple stood in a rosy point. He took it in his mouth and sucked gently and when, still half asleep, she pressed his head to her he smiled in triumph.

‘Chris . . . darling . . .’ she murmured, arching her back the better to accommodate him. At once he lifted his head and turned away from her to lie on his back, devastated by the name she had uttered and when she sat up he turned away from her, his wonder and the rejoicing that had filled him at what he saw as her acceptance and even eagerness to have him in her bed become ashes in his mouth.

She lay back on her pillow, saying no more, then edged away from him so that they no longer touched. He lay for what seemed hours beside her, listening to her breathing, then fell asleep himself.

Strangely, when they both woke she was curled up beside him again, her arm across his chest, his own holding her closely. It was still dark, five o’clock in the morning and at once he leaped from the bed and reached for his robe.

‘You must excuse me, my dear,’ he said in his polite, cool way, ‘but I have a mill to run. Several, in fact, and I must be there at the gates when they open.’

‘Of course,’ she answered in the same tone as his.

‘I’ll be home for dinner so until then . . .’

He did not kiss her as he left and she turned over, staring blindly into the darkness wondering why she felt so foolishly disappointed.

11

The woman on the bed stifled a moan, heaving herself on to her side in an effort to alleviate her own suffering. The boy crouched beside her, his pale face twisted into an anxious frown. He put out his hand and touched her sweated face and she did her best to smile as though the birth of a child was nothing more than the grazed knees he often brought home for her to bathe and to receive the kiss and cuddle that made it better, but as the pain returned, knifing her in the small of her back, she could not help the cry that escaped from between her bitten lips. The boy seemed ready to cry himself, for he was only ten years old and though he lived among the poorest of the poor, the multitude of rag-pickers, the mill workers, the under-privileged, the slum dwellers who lived cheek by jowl with one another in the tenement building he called home and had heard the cries of the downtrodden women who gave birth every year, he and his mother did not mix with them. Mam was different from the rest of them. If his father had not died in an accident in the weaving shed at High Clough, an accident that had taken not only his pa but the child he had tried to save from the lethal machinery that had trapped them both, he and his mam would not now be in this frightening situation for Pa would have seen his ma through it. The child, a scavenger like himself, had slipped on a patch of oil, put out his hands to stop himself from falling and had been dragged into the machine’s clutches. His pa, working in the loom gate, had tried to save the child and in so doing had slipped in the same patch of oil and had shared the child’s fate. Bled to death the two of them and ever since then the maister had looked out for Sam and Susan Harper. Mam worked two looms in the vast weaving shed at High Clough where 816 machines clacked and whirred in the ‘fly’-laden air, seventeen rows of forty-eight in each row. She had carried on, grieving silently for her young husband until seen one day by the maister, struggling to reach the cord that jerked the wheeled shuttle across the loom. She was seven months gone then, hampered by her swollen belly, and without a word the maister had sent her home and with his help and Sam’s small wage they had managed. Sam should have been at the mill two hours ago.

‘Tha’ go, lad,’ Mam had told him but he could not leave her like this, could he?

‘Nay, Mam, ah can’t, not wi’ you like this. Babby’ll be ’ere soon. Then ah’ll go.’

Susan Harper clutched the sheet with work-worn hands and writhed through the next pain, gasping for breath and wishing she had mixed more with her slatternly neighbours who might have helped her, since it was not fair to expect a ten-year-old boy to deliver her but she and Jack had kept themselves to themselves. They had clawed their way upwards, kept a clean home, ate cheap but nourishing food and had even gone to the local evening classes, taking their baby son with them, and had learned to read and write. They would better themselves, Jack had told her confidently. He was not sure how but when they had mastered the art of it he would approach Mr Sinclair and see if there was work, perhaps as a supervisor, that could be put his way. They would teach young Sam to read and write, which they had done and with their combined wages, though it had tormented them to put Sam to scavenging, they had kept themselves decent, their room spotless and had been shunned by their slovenly neighbours who lived their lives in muddled chaos.

‘Sam, love,’ she gasped, clutching at his poor little hand, making him wince, ‘tha’ll ’ave ter go fer ’elp. Tha’ can’t do this on tha’ own.’

‘’Oo shall ah fetch, Mam?’ His child’s face was frightened and yet set with a determination to help his mam. ‘Will ah go fer Mr Sinclair? ’Appen ’e’ll know o’ someone . . .’

‘Eeh, no, lovey,’ she gasped. ‘’E’s a busy man an’ll not be bothered wi’t likes—’

‘’E will, Mam, ’e will,’ the boy said eagerly. ‘’E’s a grand chap.’ And before his mother, who was in the grip of another spasm, could stop him he was out of the door and running up the slimy cobbled road that led to the track across the moorland and the mill at High Clough.

‘I’m taking Merry out for a gallop, Biddy. The children are both taking a nap and it’s more than my life’s worth to wake them. Dora makes it quite plain who’s in charge of the nursery and it’s certainly not their mother. I won’t be long.’

‘Don’t go far, lass.’ Biddy looked compassionately at her young mistress. She had been married a week and had shared her bed and eaten her meals with her new husband – apart from breakfast, since Mr Sinclair rose and left the house so early – but anyone less like a happy bride Biddy had yet to see. She drooped about the house, only coming alive when she was with her young sons. ‘Shall I get Carly to go with you? I don’t think Mr Sinclair’d like you to be riding on your own,’ for Mrs Harry Sinclair was a vastly different kettle of fish to Mrs Lally Fraser.

‘Of course not. I’ve been on the moors by myself ever since I can remember. Now don’t fuss, Biddy. Ask Carly to saddle Merry and I’ll be down directly.’

Biddy, grumbling beneath her breath, left the room while Lally opened her wardrobe door and sorted through her outfits until she found her riding habit. Throwing off her pretty negligee she reached for her breeches, pulling them up about her waist but was dismayed to find that since she had last worn them, which wasn’t all that long ago, they had become very tight. They clung to her hips and were like a second skin across her distended belly wherein Roly’s child lay. She could hear Biddy coming back up the stairs, still muttering on the inappropriateness of Mrs Harry Sinclair riding out alone and woe betide them all when he came home and heard of it, so hastily Lally shrugged into her riding jacket which she was still able to fasten and which covered her almost to her knees. She draped her full riding skirt about her. Jamming her tall beaver hat on her head, since she knew that would please Biddy and might distract her from looking too closely at the rest of her, she picked up her crop, pulled on her gloves and strode from the room.