Читать книгу A Fallen Woman - Nancy Carson - Страница 14

Some half an hour later, Algie spoke to the men, two of whom were in the workshop in the building with the skew-whiff chimney. One of them was Whitehouse.

‘I have to go out, Harry,’ he said morosely. ‘I might be an hour or so. Keep an eye on things, eh?’

‘Summat amiss, gaffer?’

‘Something’s cropped up,’ Algie answered, giving nothing away.

‘Summat to do wi’ that weasel Sampson, eh?’

Algie nodded glumly. ‘I’ll see you later.’

He grabbed his bicycle that was leaning against the wall near the door, and wheeled it outside. Once on the lane, he cocked his leg over the saddle and pushed off.

He had to see Aurelia. It was vital. They must talk about this calamity that had so unexpectedly befallen them, form some plan of action, for it concerned her as much as it concerned him. Besides, he needed her considered advice as to how they both should handle this desperate situation before ever he mention a word to Marigold.

As he rode, he was oblivious to the streets and the streets’ activities. His mind, his thoughts, were focused entirely on the immediate problem and the depth to which he was implicated. He dreaded the inevitable aftermath.

At Holly Hall, breathing hard from his exertions, he rounded a huffing steam tramcar that had halted to drop off and pick up passengers. He was careful not to entrap his narrow wheels and tyres in the equally narrow and perfectly fitting channel in which the flanges of the tram’s wheels rolled. Even in his preoccupation he was aware that to do so would ensure a painful and ignominious tumble, and he did not relish a painful and ignominious tumble. Ignominy was already knocking hard on his door.

He passed the turning that led to Kingswinford, and soon arrived at Holly Hall House, the home of Benjamin Sampson. There was no sign of Benjamin’s horse and gig, so he decided it was, after all, a reasonably safe time to approach.

He rapped on the brass knocker. Eventually a maid, neat and tidy, unfamiliar, plain and mature, opened the door to him.

‘Is Mrs Sampson in? I’d very much like to see her.’

‘Who shall I say is calling, sir?’

‘Algie Stokes, if you please.’

She nodded and half closed the door. He waited agitatedly, tempted to push it open a little to glean what reaction inside the house his appearing might engender. Yet he did not; he had too much respect for Aurelia. Within a few short moments Aurelia herself was at the door, holding Christina in her arms. At the sight of mother and daughter, his heart lurched, and no wonder; here was a woman he had previously known as intimately as a man can know a woman, and she held in her arms the very consequence of that profound intimacy.

‘Algie! This is a surprise.’ She began to feel excitement at his unexpected presence, till she saw his troubled demeanour. ‘Whatever is the matter?’

‘We need to talk.’

‘Come in, please come in,’ she said, stepping aside to allow him entrance. ‘Let’s go in the sitting room…’ She turned to the maid. ‘Jane, would you be so kind as to brew us a pot of tea? I take it you’ll take a cup of tea, Algie?’

‘I’d love a cup of tea. Thank you.’

Jane duly scurried to the kitchen, while Aurelia led Algie to the small sitting room.

‘I assume Benjamin’s not here?’

She turned to him and smiled. ‘Of course he’s not.’ She closed the sitting room door behind them and they stood facing each other.

Algie looked intently, benevolently, smiling at the child that was evidently his, sitting up attentively in its mother’s arms. He reached out and ran his forefinger gently down her cheek. ‘Hello, little Christina,’ he said softly. ‘You’re just as beautiful as your mother, you know…’

Christina bashfully hid her face against her mother’s shoulder.

‘Gracious, are you shy of Uncle Algie?’ Aurelia cooed.

‘Not “Uncle”, I believe,’ he remarked gently. ‘Not strictly “Uncle” at any rate.’

Their eyes met.

Aurelia regarded him with unease, at once comprehending, and with her comprehension came the first feelings of guilt that she had never let Algie know that Christina was his child.

‘If what I’ve been told is right, then I’m the father of this beautiful child,’ he said kindly.

‘Shall we sit down, Algie?’ She did not know what to make of this sudden affirmation, how to react.

They sat beside each other on a settee, the red velvet covering of which reminded him of theatre seats. It faced the cold, empty fireplace, but the sun was streaming in soft and warm through a large window to their left. Aurelia, sitting with her back erect, settled the child in her lap.

‘Let me hold her,’ he said, and held out his arms to receive her. ‘I should try and get to know her a bit better.’

Aurelia passed Christina to him. The baby manifested a wide-eyed look of confusion, but with mother so close, she made no murmur of objection, and Algie hugged her to him, and whispered, ‘Hello, Christina. I’m your daddy, you know…but for now we have to keep it a secret…’

He looked at Aurelia. ‘I do wish I’d known,’ he said softly. ‘I honestly didn’t know. Not for sure anyway. The thought had crossed my mind, but I never sort of allowed it any weight because of all it would entail. And you never gave me any inkling.’

Aurelia sighed, meeting his eyes again. ‘I dearly wish I could have,’ she said sincerely, ‘but it would have created too many problems. I can only apologise, Algie. But what use is an apology? There were too many other considerations. Do you see?’

‘I do see, and there’s no need to apologise. I’m beginning to understand. It all falls into place now.’ He shook his head as events and Aurelia’s actions started to make sense. The whole sequence was like a book revealing its story, sentence by sentence. ‘So when you ended our affair all you were doing was sacrificing yourself in favour of Marigold?’

‘If that’s the way you want to look at it, Algie. But I had a husband. Marigold did not. I had it within my power to reunite the two of you, so I did. I thought about it long and hard, and it seemed so much more practical.’ She sighed profoundly. ‘I’d only recently met Marigold for the very first time. I soon discovered she was my half-sister. She had just given birth to Rose and she had nobody if she didn’t have you…Her child was yours. Please don’t condemn me for what I did, Algie. I thought it was best for everybody.’

He reached for her hand and held it reassuringly, aware that it was the first time he had touched her intimately and in private since those heady days and nights, also aware of the effect it could have on them both.

‘I don’t condemn you for it at all,’ he answered softly. ‘I should thank you from the bottom of my heart. If I’d been in your shoes I doubt whether I could’ve been half so noble.’

‘Oh, nobleness didn’t enter into it, Algie, I assure you. It was expediency.’

‘Expediency?’ He was not certain of the word’s meaning.

She nodded. ‘The most convenient solution for everybody. So how did you find out?’

‘Oh, well…’ He rolled his eyes. ‘The small matter of a visit from Benjamin this morning.’

‘A visit from Benjamin?’ Her stomach churned. ‘I hope you mean to your works.’

He nodded solemnly.

‘Oh, dear God…What did he have to say?’

‘Just that he knows we were lovers. That you confessed to him about us, that you confessed Christina is mine and not his.’

Aurelia gasped with disbelief. ‘But I did not, Algie,’ she protested. ‘I swear, I would never confess any such thing, especially to him. Believe me, I confessed nothing. Not even that we had an affair.’

‘He said that when he got back home last night you and he had a chat—’

‘So we did.’

‘And that you confessed everything.’

‘I did not. Algie, believe me…He accused me, yes, but I denied everything. I swear to God.’

He shrugged. ‘Well, thanks for trying to protect me…but…’ He buried his face in his hands and sighed ruefully. When he looked into her eyes again, he said, ‘So it was me who let the cat out of the bag.’ He paused as it dawned on him that Benjamin had tricked him into a confession. ‘I reckon my reaction to what he was saying gave the game away. And now he’s going to start divorce proceedings, citing me as co-respondent.’

‘Oh, dear God,’ Aurelia said again.

‘It’s his due. But don’t you think he’s got a nerve, considering his own shenanigans, and the fact that he’s fathered a child with that Maude Atkins?’

‘That would never enter into the equation as far as Benjamin was concerned – or the law either, I suspect. My wrongdoing is a greater sin than his. The fact that he has wronged me is irrelevant. He’s vindictive by nature, Algie, and never considers himself at fault. Whatever goes wrong or displeases him, it’s always somebody else’s fault. Never his. That’s the way he is. It’s not his fault our marriage has failed, it’s mine, of course. Don’t you see?’

‘Whoever is to blame, Aurelia, I want you to understand this – I’m willing to accept my responsibilities. I’m willing to shoulder my share of the strife.’

‘Oh, Algie…Really, I…’

He took her hand again. ‘I want you to know you can rely on me all the way. I’ll be around whenever you need me. Any help I can give, just ask. Please, don’t be afraid to ask…But I dread having to tell Marigold.’ He shook his head in despondency. ‘I dread having to explain everything.’

‘Marigold…’ Aurelia sighed gloomily. ‘Poor Marigold…You know, Algie, when she and I first met at my Aunt Edith’s, and she’d just had Rose, I saw her as my arch-rival because I was also carrying a child by you. Only I knew it of course. Can you imagine how that felt? But as I got to know her, as I discovered so much more about her, I couldn’t help but like her. We used to do each other’s hair, you know, trying different styles. We’d talk for hours. I admired her enormously. She had such courage, such firm principles, and such unswerving loyalty to you. She defended you as though her life depended on it, and I liked her all the more for it. She believed you were lost, gone forever, but that it was all her fault. It would have been so easy for me to let her carry on thinking it. It would have been so easy for me to ignore her strife, to pretend I’d never heard of you. It would have been so easy to walk away, and make a home with you as we’d planned, as if nothing else had happened, as if I had never known her. I couldn’t do it, though. I just couldn’t – I would never have been able to live with myself. I had to tell her that I knew you, that you were not lost after all – that I knew how to contact you. The look of hope and anticipation in her eyes when I told her that…The realisation that after all, she would find you and realise her dream…’

Tears moistened Aurelia’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She let go of Algie’s hand, pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed her eyes.

‘Compared to Marigold,’ she continued, ‘I was in an unassailable position, don’t you see? There was always Benjamin. Because I was already married to him it was so easy to pass off the child I was carrying as his. I believe women do it all the time…And I’m just another such woman – I know I’m no saint…’ Her voice trailed off and she shrugged.

‘So what should I say to Marigold?’

Aurelia shook her head and wiped more tears. ‘I don’t know, Algie. I wish I did. It’s a horrid situation. Despite the fact that she’s married now to the man I love more than anything, I have come to love her too, not just as a sister but as a dear, dear friend. I don’t want to lose her now that I’ve found her, especially since I can’t have you.’

‘You just said despite the fact that she’s married now to the man you love…’ He looked her squarely in the eye and even before she answered he saw the truth manifested in their troubled, misted blueness.

‘Yes, I still love you, Algie…’ She took a deep breath and sighed again vocally, as if trying to exhale her inner strife. ‘With all my heart. Oh, I know we can never be together in the way we wanted to be, and I’ve learned to accept that, but it doesn’t alter how I feel.’

Still holding Christina, he stood up and turned away. ‘I think maybe you shouldn’t have told me. I imagined you were over all that.’

She stood up with him, agitated. ‘I’m sorry. It’s complicated enough. You’re right, perhaps I shouldn’t have said it. It’s just that I’m feeling rather sorry for myself…’

‘I have Marigold to think about now…and Rose. And my mother, of course.’

‘Of course. I do understand.’

‘That’s not to say I don’t think about you, Aurelia. Barely an hour goes by—’

‘Please don’t say more, Algie…’ She sniffed, and laid her hand on his arm reassuringly. ‘It’s Marigold you have to consider now. And Rose.’

‘So what do I tell Marigold? I’m at a complete loss.’

‘The truth, Algie, I suppose. You’ll just have to tell her the truth. We neither of us have an option. It’ll all come into the open anyway if Benjamin does begin divorce proceedings. She’ll be mortified, naturally. I just hope that in time she’ll come to understand and accept things.’

‘I don’t know if I have the heart to tell her, Aurelia.’ He gave the child another hug, and offered her back to Aurelia, who gently took her. ‘I’d better go,’ he said. ‘I still have work to do.’

‘Of course. And thank you so much for…for being so understanding.’

* * *

Algie returned to his factory, his head swimming with confused thoughts. One minute he decided he must tell Marigold all, the next that he must at all costs try and conceal from her all knowledge of his affair with Aurelia. When he arrived back at the factory he could concentrate on nothing. All he could think of was that he had enjoyed an affair with Aurelia Sampson, that she had had his child, that she still loved him, and that now all his troubles were coming home to roost.

The prospect was made worse by Marigold’s innate sensitivity. He knew his young wife well enough to acknowledge just how easily she was hurt. In the early days of their courtship she had shown how jealous she could be, labouring under the misapprehension then that he was still keen on Harriet Meese. Marriage had not decreased her sensitivity to any noticeable extent, especially at certain times of the month. She would want to know everything; how and when the affair with Aurelia had started, where they met for their trysts, how many times they coupled and where. Not least, she would demand to know whether he still loved Aurelia, whether he loved Aurelia more than her…And she would torture herself with the information and make herself miserably unhappy. Marigold did not deserve that kind of torture.

Whether or not he had the courage or the moral fibre to confess all was irrelevant. Aurelia was right; it had to be done, and he was the one who had to do it. How he did it was up to him. He could not expect Aurelia to do it for him. Once divorce proceedings were in full flow, the local newspapers would be full of the scandal. His own name would be dragged in the mud. The whole world, his poor mother included, who had suffered cataclysmic tribulations of her own already, would be made tragically aware of the dire consequences of his dallying with Aurelia.

Better that Marigold was prepared for all that.

The sooner it was out in the open, the sooner they could return to some semblance of accord.

* * *