Forever Yours (30 page)

For answer she shut her eyes and fear swamped him. It was a moment or two before he could trust his voice to sound normal. Then he said softly, ‘Is that a yes or a no, hinny?’

She mumbled something, and when he bent his head and asked her to repeat herself, there was a long pause before she muttered, ‘I – I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘So there is something?’

Slow, painful tears fell over the dark lashes of her lower lids and she jerked her hand free, turning over on her side away from him. ‘I said I don’t want to talk about it.’

He drew in a long slow breath, searching for the right words. ‘Is it anything to do with Larry?’ he asked quietly.

‘What?’ Her voice, though muffled, carried a note of surprise.

‘Larry Alridge. I wondered if you’d had an argument or something, or if he’d upset you?’

‘Larry?’ She turned back to him, scrubbing at her eyes with the sleeve of her nightdress. ‘I’ve hardly seen him since Mam was took bad, although he’s walked me home from the shop a few times. He’s waiting till my seventeenth . . .’

Relief robbed him of speech. So it wasn’t that. Thank You, God, thank You. Aware of her eyes on him, he nodded, as though the question had been of little significance. ‘Then what is it?’

‘I can’t – I mean – ’

When she burst into tears again he dropped on to his knees by the bed and gathered her into his arms and he soothed her quietly. ‘There, there, hinny, come on. We’ll get through . . . What?’ He put his ear closer to her face to catch her spluttering words.

Straightening, he raised himself to sit on the side of the bed, still with her head against his chest. ‘Don’t fret, hinny. Of course your mam knew how much you loved her,’ he said gently. ‘Where has all this come from?’

‘But that’s just it, Da.’ She twisted round, raising her streaming eyes to his. ‘I don’t think she did because
I
didn’t know till she was poorly. We – we never got on, me and Mam.You know we didn’t, and I was horrible to her at times. I – I didn’t like her. I loved her but I didn’t like her. She used to say I always saw your side of things and she was right.’

She buried her face in his chest and above her head Matt shut his eyes. The sins of the parents crippling the children. From a tiny bairn she’d been made to choose between them. Not by him. Oh no, not by him. That was one thing he could say in absolute truthfulness in his defence. But he had been part of the cold war which had damaged this child. And whatever Dr Fallow said, that’s what Rebecca was. A child. His child. It might not have been his seed that brought her into being, but no bairn from his loins could be more his.

‘Listen to me, lass.’ He had to lie now, and lie convincingly if she wasn’t going to be weighed down with guilt for years, maybe the rest of her life. ‘Your mam did know you loved her.’ As she moved restlessly, he put her from him and looked into her face, his hands holding her upper arms. ‘Do you know what she used to say to me? “That lass is a carbon copy of me, that’s why we come up against each other all the time. But it says a lot if you can fight but still love each other”.’

She was quieter now, looking at him, and warming to his theme he went on, ‘Your mam used to say the pair of you would never see eye to eye on anything. She used to laugh about it, hinny, after some disagreement or other. She liked to think you were a chip off her block, that’s how she put it. But she never, ever, doubted you loved her. That I do know.’

‘You – you can’t be sure.’

‘Oh aye, I am. Here . . .’ He reached for the small white Bible Rebecca had been given after her Confirmation, which was kept with a few other books on the shelf above the bed, and placing his hand on the cover, he said, ‘I swear she knew you loved her, hinny, and that she loved you. Before God, I swear it. All right?’

‘Oh, Da.’

Her relief was palpable; the weight had been lifted and that was all that mattered. For a moment he thanked the God he’d just sinned against that she was still young enough to accept the gesture as confirmation of the truth. ‘Now go to sleep with an easy mind, lass. All right? If your mam was back here tomorrow, and well and fit, the two of you would still carry on in the same old way, and to tell you the truth I think she enjoyed it. She was always proud of the fact you’d got a bit of what she called spirit.’

Her smile was absolution for the lies which had tripped out of his mouth, and when she said, ‘Da? Will you stay with me until I go to sleep?’ he nodded.

He sat stroking her forehead as she drifted off almost immediately, and he made sure she was deeply asleep before he went downstairs. It was midday on a Thursday morning. Normally he’d have been at work and Rebecca would be at the shop and Tilly— He put a hand to his brow. He couldn’t think of Tilly.

The kitchen was as warm as toast but he didn’t want its comfort. Knowing that nothing short of an earthquake would rouse Rebecca for a good few hours, he bolted the back door and pulled on his coat and cap before leaving by the front door which he locked behind him. He needed to walk. He would go stark staring mad if he didn’t leave the house for a while and that coffin lying on trestles in the middle of the front room.

The last glories of autumn had faded away and it was a dank, bitterly cold landscape that greeted him as he made his way to Plawsworth Road, turning left into Cross Lane after a while. Open fields stretched either side of him and the season’s dreary hue matched his mood. There had been a sharp frost the night before and the ground was still frozen, the stark, bare trees and grizzled countryside shrouded in a slight mist. Within the empty fields crows glided, emitting their cackling cries, and a number circled noisily overhead as he walked.

When he reached the Cross Lane Bridge he stood for some minutes, gazing blankly in front of him. Three-quarters of a mile away his da and brothers were grubbing away down a big black hole, as he himself would be doing tomorrow, he thought dully. And all the tomorrows following it. He looked at the blue marks on his hands full of the coaldust he’d take with him to the grave, and felt a moment’s piercing bitter-sweet relief that he didn’t have a son to follow him down the pit. That was one anxiety he hadn’t been called to bear, being responsible for taking another human soul into that hell-hole.

He pulled his muffler closer round his neck as the chill wind blasted his ears, but his lungs expanded as he sucked in the clean cold air. George and Andrew had never felt like he did about the pit, he knew that. They hadn’t been able to wait till they left school and went down like their father, and in spite of their carping and daily grumbles about working conditions and such, he knew neither of them would have wanted anything else. He found that incomprehensible.

Even now, after twenty-six years of being a miner, he still had moments when, deep underground, his bowels seemed to come loose and shake, and he wanted to throw up. The desire to get out, to escape the millions of tons of rock above him would be so strong he would have to shut his eyes and press his arms against his chest to quell the panic. He hadn’t noticed it so much before that first fall umpteen years ago when he’d still been courting Tilly, but after that the fear in him had grown until some days it was a battle to get into the cage and begin the descent into what he privately termed Hades.

He’d tried to bring up how he felt with George and Andrew once when the three of them were having a drink in the Colliery Inn, but they’d looked at him with such blank bewilderment he hadn’t pursued the matter. George had his canaries in a shed in his backyard with an outside wire enclosure attached so they could fly out and sit in the sun when they wanted to, and Andrew had his whippets and his darts, and they were content. As long as they had a few coppers for a drink and their baccy, they didn’t ask for more. He wished he could feel like that.

He should have died instead of Tilly
. The sudden thought startled him and caused his eyes to narrow.

Tilly had wanted to live. Although her body had given up the fight, her mind and spirit had been strong. Whereas he felt it was more painful to carry on than to slip into a place of . . . what? Endless joy for some and endless torment for others, if Father Duffy was to be believed, or maybe – just maybe – the Hereafter might be a place of eternal, dreamless sleep. Whatever, it was infinitely preferable to anything in the here and now.

Tilly had known how he felt about Constance. He took his cap off, raking his hand through his hair and enjoying the touch of the icy wind on his scalp before he pulled it on again. And the knowledge had hurt her because of the feeling she’d apparently had for him. He couldn’t, as yet, term this feeling love because there was only so much remorse he could shoulder at one time, but the truth of what she had told him had been plain to see in her face since she had known she was dying.

The waste, the futility, the pointlessness of it all swept over him anew and he drove his clenched fists against the solid oak handrail of the bridge. It was only when his knuckles were dripping blood that he could focus on the pain rather than the blackness in his mind.

He had to get control of himself. There was Rebecca, she needed him. She’d just lost her mam and he couldn’t go to pieces. He’d acted a part all his married life and most folk had been none the wiser; he could do it now he was a widower. And once the funeral was over he would pay a visit to Rupert Wood and show him what he thought of a man who’d carry on with a young lass who worked for him. Tilly had begged him not to go, and rather than upset her he had fallen in with her pleading, but she had gone now and he’d see the scum got a little of what was due him. He owed it to Tilly as well as to himself.

The grey November light was briefly illuminated by the flash of a pheasant’s iridescent plumage in the far distance as it strutted out of the hedgerow and made its way across a frozen ploughed field. He watched the bird until it took fright at something or other and rose squawking into the sky, and then he saw what had disturbed the bird as the reddish-brown body of a fox slunk into view. It crossed the field rapidly, and once it had reached the safety of the hedgerow, it howled a sharp triple bark. Matt knew what that meant.When he’d been a young lad working in the fields at the weekend for Farmer Todd, the farmer had taken a shine to him and would often spend his lunch-hour talking to him about the farm and the countryside. Farmer Todd had said November was the time the dog fox sought out a vixen to be his partner. Once the pair had enlarged a rabbit burrow, they’d make a den for protection against the worst of the winter, and the cubs would be born at the end of March. Sure enough, a moment later an eerie, wailing scream rang out – a female answering the dog fox’s call.

Job done. Matt smiled bitterly to himself. For supposedly dumb animals they certainly had the advantage over the human race in matters of the heart. He called, she answered – and a few months later there’d be four or five more foxes in the world. No long-drawn-out courtship, no pretence, no lies. And no getting it wrong and living the rest of your life regretting the loss of something you never had in the first place.

Oh, to hell with it! He straightened, stuffing his smarting hands in the pockets of his trousers. He had no one to blame but himself for the way his life had turned out, and he hated whingers. He would carry the weight of Tilly to his grave, but that was something he would have to come to terms with. It was either that or go under, and he couldn’t afford that luxury, not with Rebecca depending on him.

Nevertheless, as he looked across the bleak, empty countryside, it reflected what he could expect of the future and he shivered, his footsteps heavy as he turned for home.

‘But I don’t understand, Shelton.’ Isabella Ashton was clutching her husband’s arm as she spoke, her evident agitation confirmation of just how upset she was. Isabella had been brought up to believe one should never show one’s emotions in front of the servants, even one as close to the family as Constance was. ‘It is all arranged. We leave next week.’

‘I know, my lady.’ Constance stood wringing her hands in the middle of the drawing room at Grange Hall. This room, along with others in the house, showed signs of the exodus which was to take place shortly. In the hall, a number of trunks and cases stood ready to be shipped to Italy the next day. Some had already gone the week before and more would follow, once the family had left. The servants who were to remain in England and who were being kept on by the friends of the Ashtons who had bought Grange Hall, had a list of instructions to observe before the new family took up residence after Christmas.

‘Then what has changed your mind?’ Isabella’s voice was calmer and she motioned for Constance to be seated as she sat down herself. Sir Henry remained standing in front of the fireplace where a roaring fire glowed and crackled. It was the last day of November, and outside the window the grounds were frozen solid with the thick white frosts which had held the north in a relentless grip for a week. ‘I thought you had made your decision and were looking forward to coming with us?’

‘I was, my lady, and it’s not that I don’t want to come, not really, but . . .’ Constance’s voice trailed away helplessly. How could she explain that one letter had turned all her plans upside down? She hadn’t heard from Molly for months and then this morning a letter had come. She had been busy packing Miss Charlotte’s trousseau all morning – Charlotte had insisted on buying everything she needed in London and hadn’t trusted any of the maids to take sufficient care with the exquisite and wildly expensive items of clothing – and so she hadn’t opened the letter until lunchtime. It had begun with the usual apology for not writing sooner and then listed how each member of the family was doing, but it was the postscript which had caused her heart to race.

Molly had written in her large round handwriting:
She had read the words over three times, a tumult of emotion surging in her breast, not the least of which was guilt for the immediate stab of wild elation that Molly’s news had brought. But it was awful, awful for Tilly to have died. She had never wished for that, not once, and as Molly had intimated, Tilly had been a relatively young woman. She had sat clutching the letter to her, and when she raised her eyes it was to see Florence staring at her. ‘What’s up, lass? Bad news from home?’