A Time Like No Other (21 page)

Lally lay in her nest of pillows, washed and changed into her clean nightdress, her hair brushed and a bright blue ribbon tied in her curls. The birth, her third, had been relatively easy and Doctor Burton was pleased with her and the child. He was obsessed with cleanliness, hygiene, he called it, finding favour with Biddy who had helped him at the last, offending the nurse who had been employed by Mr Sinclair to look after his wife. Not that, in Biddy’s opinion, she had been needed at all, for wasn’t Biddy there to see to Miss Lally, before and after the birth and was the one who put the baby, even before she was properly cleaned up, into Lally’s arms. The doctor was engrossed in sterilising his instruments because after he had made a small cut to ease the passage of the child a stitch or two had been needed. Better a clean cut than a tear, he had told her, and Mrs Sinclair would heal more easily; and if the father would like to come in and see his child, and his wife, of course, he had no objection.

Harry had done no more than eye the child politely, seeming to recoil from the lustily bawling red-faced kicking scrap who gave the impression she would like to box his ears!

‘The doctor tells me you have done well, Lally, and that the . . . the infant is healthy.’ He smiled or at least showed his teeth for the benefit of the nurse and the doctor. The doctor knew quite well that this was a full-term child, as did the nurse, both assuming that Mr and Mrs Sinclair had anticipated their wedding night, for it was known in the district they had been married in October of the previous year.

‘A fine child, and what are you to call her?’ Mr Sinclair asked politely, surprising the doctor who was wrapping his instruments carefully away in a spotless piece of linen, placing them in his leather bag and making ready to avail himself of the steaming hot water brought up by the maidservant. Surely a man and his wife would discuss the naming of their first child – together – before the child’s birth but from Mr Sinclair’s manner one would think it was really nothing to do with him.

‘I don’t know, Harry,’ Mrs Sinclair answered just as politely. ‘Have you any preference?’

‘No, not really. Perhaps a family name?’

‘Your mother . . . ?’

‘She was called Agnes.’

‘Well, no, I think not but there is plenty of time.’

‘Of course, well, I will let you rest.’ Harry turned to the doctor who, being young and rather pleased with himself, was waiting for a word of approval but none came. The new father merely nodded and walked stiffly from the room and there was none to see or hear him as, in the privacy of his own spartan bedroom he sat down abruptly on his bed, his face in his hands and groaned aloud.

Oh, dear God, how am I to bear this? he agonised silently. I took it on willingly. I knew it was coming, but she looked so beautiful, like a Madonna with her baby in her arms and the child . . . the child is . . . is
his
. I am to pretend a joy which is a bitter thing to me but I must . . . it’s hard just now, for it is new to me but I cannot let them see . . . it was a shock, my brother’s child at her breast . . . Dear sweet Jesus, give me the bloody strength . . . they must not know, any of them. The child must be kept to the nursery so that I can avoid . . . I must get out, go to the mill. Jesus, if I did not love her as I do I might be able to manage it. If I could view her dispassionately as a woman who will be useful to me – entertaining, a hostess for my table, a woman in my bed to serve my needs. What will she be like when Roly comes home? Please God he does not recognise . . . it is supposed to be a premature child but even I, who know nothing of such things, can see it is not.

Savagely he stood up and strode about the room, twitching back the curtains to look out on the daffodil-carpeted slope, watching the nursemaid Dora following Jamie and Alec and the two boisterous dogs as they made unerringly for the lake which, as children will, they would do their utmost to fall into. Why did water fascinate them, he mused, taken out of himself for a moment as he watched them tumble down the slope, the dogs leaping round them, doing their best to elude the harassed nursemaid. His thoughts jumped from one thing to another, unable to land firmly on any particular one. Thank God it was a girl, a girl who could be fitted into the household without too much trouble. A girl who would have no claim on the Sinclair inheritance, a girl who he would not be expected to notice since it was well known that a gentleman only valued and was interested in a son to inherit and continue the family name.

He reached for his jacket and made for the back stairs, since he had no desire to run into the doctor whose small gig was still standing at the front door, fetching up in the kitchen. It was a big room with a massive table in its centre which had stood up to years of pounding, chopping and scrubbing and from its ceiling, thanks to the expertise of Biddy Stevens, hams were suspended. The walls were whitewashed and beside the pots and pans standing in neat rows on the well-scrubbed shelves, was a vast array of highly polished copper utensils hanging on the walls. A leg of pork was being spit-roasted over the open fire and set in the wall was a huge enclosed range, blackleaded, glowing and dark, and cleaned every morning by Dulcie. Everywhere they could be handy were all the implements of a good kitchen, trivets and skillets, toasters and grills, and on the enormous dresser jelly moulds of copper and earthenware jostled with a tea set and dinner service in a delicate blue willow pattern from which the servants ate and drank. Everything was spotless, for Mrs Stevens was a devil for tidiness and cleanliness and was behind them all the livelong day. There were several beautifully carved and well-proportioned Windsor chairs, old and well cared for and at the end of the day, when everything was to Mrs Steven’s satisfaction, the maids were allowed to rest in them and drink the cocoa that set them up for bed. Not that they needed a sedative of any kind, for they worked hard and slept the sleep of the just!

To the astonishment of the servants who were clustered in the kitchen ‘wetting’ the baby’s head, the master strode through them without a word and out into the yard, shouting for one of the grooms to fetch his horse and be quick about it. Ben, who had been celebrating the birth of the master’s first child with the rest of them, ran after him, slapping his glass of ale on to the kitchen table.

‘Well, wouldn’t yer think ’e’d be up there wi’ Miss Lally?’ Is first bairn, an’ all,’ Tansy said, quite astounded as they all were. With Mrs Stevens still up with Miss Lally they felt free to express their amazement.

‘Aye, now if it ’ad bin a lad,’ Dulcie offered knowingly, smacking her lips over the small glass of port Mrs Stevens had allowed the maids. The men were drinking ale and all of them agreed that if it had been a lad they would have been tipping back a glass of champagne. Mr Chris, God bless him, had pressed them to champagne on the birth of both his sons but then Mr Chris had been free-handed. Not that Mr Sinclair was a bad employer. He wasn’t, for weren’t they all well fed and housed, fairly treated and counted themselves lucky to be in such a household.

‘Still, yer’d think ’e’d be up there wi’t missis, wouldn’t yer?’ Clara added, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. For a moment they were all silent as they considered this last remark then the door to the front of the house opened and Mrs Stevens entered. At once, even though they had been given permission to do what they were doing, they all scattered, Barty and Froglet and the outside men darting to the back door, with Carly elbowing them to be the first through it. Mrs Stevens could be a bugger at times. She was in charge of them – well, not Ben, Alfie, Clancy and Seth who were really Mr Sinclair’s men, having come with him from Mill House, but all the women servants. Ben had run out to saddle Piper who he had just unsaddled and given a rub down, not expecting the master to return to the mill this day, the day his first child was born but Mr Sinclair could be seen racing off down the lane leading to the moorland track that led to High Clough just as though the devil were after him.

Lally was alone with her child. The nurse had gone off to the nursery to make suitable arrangements for the baby, telling Lally she would be back soon, for the baby must be bathed and the wet nurse, the one thought appropriate by all ladies in society, got ready. The baby would need to be fed and if Mrs Sinclair would hand her over Nurse would take her . . .

‘No, Nurse will not,’ Mrs Sinclair told her imperiously. ‘Go and do what you have to do and then come back for her. I wish to be alone with my daughter.’

‘But, Mrs Sinclair, she still has birth blood on her . . .’ The nurse was appalled.

‘I don’t care and therefore neither should you. Leave her with me, if you please.’ Lally looked down into the face that rested against her breast, searching for signs of Roly Sinclair but she could see none. The Sinclair brothers were alike in their colouring apart from their eyes, Roly’s being a cat-like grey and Harry’s a deep brown and the screwed-up eyes of the infant did not reveal their colour. They were both dark with smooth amber skins, tall, lean, wiry, only their nature being vastly different. Roly was good-natured, light-hearted, with a firm belief in his own ability to get what he wanted from any woman, or man for that matter who crossed his path, which was why he was such a good salesman. Harry was the steady one, firm, fair, shrewd, and with no inclination towards the charming ways of his brother. But he was also kind, reliable, so why was she staring into this child’s face looking for something that, even if it was to come, would scarcely show itself on the day of her birth. The baby was yawning now, having worn herself out with her own birth and the hullabaloo she had set up in the minutes after it. She rested her tiny, starfish hand against Lally’s breast and Lally waited for that glow of maternal pride, that bond she had formed with her sons in their first meeting. For that soft wonder and the awed need to touch her child’s cheek, to put a finger in the curled shell of the child’s hand but none came. The baby might have been another woman’s and she wished that the nurse would hurry up and come back. She had needed this moment to contemplate the child, Roly’s child, to be alone with her, waiting for that precious moment in a mother’s life, but it had not come and when the nurse returned she handed her the baby without protest.

‘I’d like a bath, please, Nurse. Will you ask Mrs Stevens to come to me and tell the maids to bring the tub in here. A further clean nightdress and the bed changed then I’ll have some of her broth. I feel remarkably hungry. Oh, and tell my husband to come in, would you, after I have had my bath and—’

‘I’m afraid he’s not here, madam,’ Nurse said with what seemed to be relish in her voice. She was not used to being ordered about like a parlour-maid, nor to have her orders defied by ‘mother’.

‘Not here?’

‘I believe he has gone to his mill, the housemaid told me. Shall I ask one of the men to fetch him, madam?’

Lally, for some reason she couldn’t fathom, felt totally let down. Gone to the mill! The child no more than an hour old and already he had left the house. Dear God . . . but then, this was not his child, her rational mind reminded her. He had done what all fathers are supposed to do and that was to be there at the child’s birth and should this one have been a boy, to lead the wild celebrations that would follow. Not only was the child in her arms
not
a boy but it was not even
his
child so what else could she expect of him?

Biddy bustled in to the room, summoned by the nurse and by her own need to see how her lamb fared. She of them all knew exactly what was in the master’s mind and could you blame him, poor chap. He had protected Miss Lally against what would have been her fate as an unmarried mother and probably thought that was enough for any man. Was he expected to stay and gloat over the child got on his wife by his own brother? Hardly, but she could and so, presumably, would Miss Lally, but it seemed the baby was already in the nursery, being bathed and fed by the woman brought in to see to her needs. The boys were still gallivanting about the garden with Dora who had been told to keep them out for as long as possible so that their sister,
half
-sister, could be dealt with before they were introduced to her.

But she had not expected Miss Lally to part with her new daughter so abruptly!

‘Where is she?’ she demanded to know, longing to get her hands on the girl child just born. ‘You’ve never let that woman take her already. I thought you’d have been having a hold and I’ve come up for my turn. A little girl and right bonny.’ She stopped speaking abruptly. ‘What’s up?’ she asked, moving towards the bed, her eyes suspicious.

Lally shrugged disconsolately. ‘I don’t know. I can’t . . .’ Her voice trailed away.

‘You can’t what and be quick and tell me because the bath and the hot water are on the way up though why you can’t use that lovely bathroom Mr Harry put in, I don’t know.’

If Lally noticed that Biddy was now calling Mr Sinclair,
Mr Harry
, she did not remark on it. She felt edgy, unsettled, not at all in the contented frame of mind she had known when Jamie and Alec were born. Perhaps it was because she didn’t love Harry and he had only married her to save her reputation,
and his brother’s, she supposed
, since she might have named him as the father of her illegitimate child.

‘Come on, lass, out with it. What’s up? There’s only you and me know . . . know the truth and it’s safe with me.’

Lally sighed, because really she didn’t know what was the matter with her except the uneasy fact that she did not quite love her new daughter. Perhaps in a day or two, when the child had become . . .
part
of the family. If Dora and the wet nurse were to bring her in here with her brothers . . . Dear God! Her brothers!

‘Anyroad,’ Biddy said cheerfully, seeing that what Miss Lally needed was taking out of herself. ‘What are you to call her?’

‘I don’t know, Biddy. I can’t seem to . . .’ She had been about to say ‘become interested’ but she hastily changed it to‘think straight about it’.