Читать книгу A Fallen Woman - Nancy Carson - Страница 15

Benjamin Sampson stepped down from his gig and tethered his horse to a lamp post close to the tiny terraced house he had provided for Maude Atkins on The Inhedge, an impoverished street in Dudley. As his footsteps echoed through the narrow entry that led to the backyard and the door to the house, he was still fuming about the behaviour of that despicable upstart Algie Stokes. His cheek throbbed; it was swollen and threatened to manifest itself as a black eye very soon. Stokes would pay for it and pay heavily. Benjamin Sampson (in his overestimated opinion of himself) was a man of no meagre standing. He was a captain of local industry, a personage respected and admired. He was not the type to tolerate reprehensible attacks on his person by some contemptible ne’er-do-well, without extracting due revenge.

Maude was busy in the brewhouse. It was her wash day, and she was folding napkins she had just collected off the line that was stretched like a telegraph wire between the brewhouse and the house. Hearing footsteps in the entry, she peered round the door to catch a glimpse of whoever might emerge from its dimness. Her first instinct was to smile when she saw Benjamin, but her expression changed to apprehension when she discerned his swollen cheek.

‘What on earth have you done to your face?’ she asked at once, with evident concern.

‘Nothing,’ he answered grumpily.

‘Well, somebody has. You’ve got a black eye coming. What’s happened?’

‘Let’s go inside and I’ll tell you.’

‘D’you fancy a cup of tea? I’m parched.’

‘Can a duck swim?’ he replied.

He followed her indoors. Before he sat down in front of the fire he took a peek at himself in the mirror to ascertain the damage to his face. His baby daughter by Maude was asleep in her crib, a picture of innocence that would have moved many a man, but failed to move Benjamin when he peered at her. Maude grabbed the kettle and, in a flutter of apron ribbons and frills, floated back to the yard to fill it. When she returned seconds later she hung it over the coal fire that was burning brightly in the blackleaded grate.

‘So tell me what you’ve been up to.’

He sighed theatrically, raising his eyebrows. ‘You were right all along about Aurelia, though it grieves me to admit it. She’s had an affair, like you said. That second child definitely ain’t mine.’

Maude shrugged with a fatalistic expression. ‘I told you so. Clarence Froggatt’s, I suppose?’

He shook his head and uttered a little laugh of irony. ‘No, Algie Stokes’s,’ he seethed, as if the very name was bile to be spat out. ‘The damned ne’er-do-well.’

‘Algie Stokes, eh? You said you had an inkling.’

He nodded.

‘I must say, I’m surprised she went for him. So how did you find out for sure?’

She took her teapot and tea caddy out of the cupboard at the side of the grate and placed the teapot on the hob to warm, then sat down.

‘Last night when I got back home Aurelia was still up. A golden opportunity, I said to myself. We talked, and I accused her of having an affair with Stokes.’

‘Goodness, Benjamin. But it was a long shot, wasn’t it?’

‘Oh, she denied it, of course.’

‘Well, she would.’

‘Course, but too strenuously for my liking. Anyway, I laid it all on the line about divorce and all that. So today I sought out Stokes at his so-called factory. I said, “Aurelia’s confessed to having an affair with you, and Christina is your child,” I said. And guess what – he fell for it hook, line and sinker. He couldn’t deny it.’

‘So you tricked him into a confession?’

‘Very neatly, I thought. But it serves him right. I told him he’d be cited as co-respondent in the divorce.’

‘You’re going through with a divorce then?’

He shrugged. ‘Do I have a choice now?’

‘What if Aurelia decides to divorce you for your adultery?’

‘It’d never get to court.’

‘It would if she could prove cruelty as well.’

‘How can she prove cruelty? I’ve never been cruel to her. I’ve never hit her. I’ve been a model husband. Generous to a fault.’

‘It’ll open up the question of custody,’ Maude remarked, deliberately broaching a topic that would concern her directly if a court granted him a divorce. She reached for the poker, and prodded the coals to liven them up.

‘For little Benjie, yes. Not for Stokes’s bastard, though. She’s stuck with that. But I’m bound to get custody of my son.’

Maude continued attending to the fire. If Benjamin did win custody of his son, then she, Maude, would be the one to end up being mother to him. She had her own child by Benjamin to consider, and maybe more to come if things turned out how she planned.

‘But it’s not certain they’d award you custody, is it?’ she suggested. ‘I mean, Aurelia could still plead for custody, couldn’t she? I know I would, if I were in her shoes.’

‘She could try, and I daresay she will, but I wouldn’t wager a penny on her getting it.’

‘I think you’re being a bit unkind, Benjamin, if you want the truth. I think it’s heartless of any court to award custody to a father, when that father is out at work all day. I reckon any mother would be only too keen – and better qualified – to look after her own children. And do the courts ever spare a thought for which parent the poor child might prefer to live with?’

‘Whose side are you on, for Christ’s sake?’

‘Yours, Benjamin. Of course I am. I’m just giving you my opinion, for what it’s worth.’

He shrugged again. ‘Well, it might not be my decision in the end. The courts make such decisions.’

‘But you could ask the court to consider awarding custody to Aurelia. That would be an act of kindness, and put you in a very favourable light, don’t you think?’

‘With whom?’

‘With everybody. Including the public. You don’t think such a scandal as your divorce won’t be in all the papers, do you? If you pleaded for Aurelia to have custody you would be seen as somebody compassionate, somebody who cared.’

‘But why should I reward her with custody of my son when you and I both know she’s not fit to bring up a child? And I’d be obligated to pay her alimony for the child as well. No, Benjie should live with me – with us. You would do a much better job of raising him than Aurelia. And he knows you well enough already.’

‘Except that I haven’t seen him for so long. He’ll have forgotten me by now…So how did you get that bruise on your cheek?’

‘Something I said to Stokes about his wife that he didn’t like…The swine assaulted me. I’ve already threatened to report the attack to the police. They take a dim view of assault.’

The kettle was boiling at last and Maude spooned tea leaves into the warm teapot. For the first time that day she laughed, aloud.

‘Maude, what the hell is so funny?’

‘Oh, Benjamin. Don’t you think you deserved it? Sometimes you have no appreciation of other people’s feelings.’

* * *

Benjamin returned home, full of righteous indignation. He hated Aurelia with a passion, the intensity of which surpassed any emotion he had ever experienced before. The love he had felt for her in those early days had been nothing compared to this loathing, this ruthless contempt he now felt. Maude’s suggestions of an alternative scenario he overlooked, ignored, and had already forgotten. Bent on revenge, he was itching to tell Aurelia exactly what he thought of her and her despicable paramour, and hint at the hell to which he was planning to subject them both.

He stormed into the house like a whirlwind, slamming the front door behind him. He took off his gloves and hat and tossed them onto the sideboard that faced the grandfather clock in the hall. Nobody greeted him; not the maid, not Aurelia, not little Benjie. For once he felt as if he were a stranger in his own house. It seemed unwelcoming, even hostile. He felt he was no longer king of his own castle. Maybe it was just his imagination; it had been a peculiar day after all, and likely to become even more so.

He sought Aurelia but found only the maid at her labours in the scullery.

‘Where’s your mistress?’

‘Upstairs, I believe, sir.’ Jane’s eyes seemed focused with insolent curiosity on his bruised cheek and darkening eye.

He took the stairs two at a time and reached the landing. ‘Aurelia!’ he called tersely.

A door clicked open and remained ajar. A blue eye appeared, peering at him through the gap. Aurelia opened it fully, stepped onto the landing and closed it behind her quietly.

‘The children are having their afternoon sleep,’ she whispered. ‘What d’you want?’

‘In here…’ He ushered her into his bedroom, which they used to share, and shut the door behind them.

‘Sit down,’ he nodded, indicating the bed.

‘I prefer to stand,’ she replied, eyeing the same neatly made bed with suspicion, lest he try to take advantage of her upon it. Such an outrage would not be beyond him.

‘I went to see your paramour Algie Stokes today.’ He looked into her eyes searching for a reaction, but all he saw was how utterly beautiful her inscrutable face was. Her physical loveliness had captivated him at the very first glance, but the faults in her character were so obvious now that he wondered why he had never perceived them in the first place. She was prey for men, and easy meat; she couldn’t keep her drawers on. ‘You might as well know, Aurelia, that he admitted everything.’

‘Oh? And what exactly did he admit to, Benjamin? Giving you a black eye?’

‘You know what. Don’t play games with me, I’m in no mood.’

‘Neither am I, to tell you the truth. So was it Algie Stokes who punched you in the face and gave you that lovely bruise?’ She smiled, taunting him. ‘It will turn into a real shiner before the night’s out.’

‘The bruise is neither here nor there. I’m telling you that in view of Stokes admitting everything I’m commencing divorce proceedings, based on your adultery, and I’m citing him as co-respondent.’

‘Well…something to look forward to at last,’ she goaded.

Benjamin ignored her jibe. ‘When I recall how you have deceived me with your disgusting infidelity, and have lied to me about it all this time, I am flabbergasted at your gall. When I ponder how you and that twit Stokes sordidly brought a child into this world and you tried to pass it off as mine, it makes me feel physically sick. Did you really think you could get away with it? Did you really think I was that stupid? Well, you’ll pay the price, Aurelia. God alone knows where or how you will live, because I shan’t keep you. You’ll not get a penny from me. You and Stokes’s bastard can wallow in the gutter for all I care. Maybe the workhouse will take you in, but that’s your concern. Either way, I shan’t envy you.’

‘So what about Maude Atkins and your own bastard, Benjamin?’ Aurelia countered acidly. ‘Will she and her child likewise end up in the workhouse when you’ve had your fill of her? Because I suppose the poor soul is destined to become the new Mrs Sampson and live here, and end up as unloved as I have been in this vile mausoleum, while you gallivant off with some other beguiled and deluded young woman and father your next bastard.’

‘You have a very low opinion of me, Aurelia.’

She rolled her eyes. Such a stupid, stupid man…‘Is it any wonder? Are you so dense that you can’t see why? Do you honestly believe you are such a wonderful catch?’

‘You seemed to think so when I saved you from the follies of your mad-brained father. You were grateful enough for marriage then. I have given you respectability, despite the fact that he shamed himself so—’

‘You hypocrite, Benjamin,’ she interrupted. ‘Can’t you see that you are exactly like my mad-brained father, whom you are so fond of disparaging? Can’t you see that what you’ve done in cavorting with our former nanny, under the same roof you share with your wife, is just as shameful as what he did with my aunt, Marigold’s mother? No, I don’t suppose you can, because you’re too stupid and too blind to see it. I don’t suppose for a moment that fathering a child with Maude Atkins is on a par with anything my father did, in your eyes.’

‘Listen, you harlot, I’ve kept you in fine clothes, fed you and provided a roof over your head. You’ve lived the life of a lady, wanting for nothing. Yet how do you repay me? You allow yourself to be seduced by that ne’er-do-well.’

‘Yes, it’s quite all right for you to be unfaithful, isn’t it? But not me.’

‘I am allowed to be unfaithful, Aurelia,’ he roared. ‘You, as my wife, are not. It’s that simple.’

* * *

Algie leaned his bicycle against the wall and went into the house, resigned to the inevitable chaos that his confession to Marigold would create. Clara, his mother, was in the kitchen preparing food.

‘My goodness, Algie, you look as if you’ve lost a sovereign and found a sixpence,’ she remarked on witnessing his sombre expression.

‘Maybe I have,’ he replied glumly. ‘Where’s Marigold?’

‘Out the back, fetching in the washing. It’s been a good drying day.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll go and find her.’

In the back garden, beneath billowing sheets, he saw her dainty feet and black stockings protruding below her long skirt as she reached on tiptoe for the wooden pegs that attached the sheets to the washing line. He called her name. As she pulled back a sheet, as if peering behind a curtain, she saw him approach.

‘Hello, husband,’ she greeted with a warm smile, ‘it’s been a good drying day.’

‘Mother said.’

‘Our Rose has been a proper little madam all day, though.’

He forced a smile.

‘Here, Algie, help me fold this sheet properly, save getting it creased. Sheets can be a devil to iron if they get too dry and ain’t folded proper, all smooth like. Are your hands clean?’

He inspected them cursorily. ‘Yes.’

She held out one edge of a sheet to him and he took it. Between them they stretched it taut and made the first fold, then another. Marigold took the long folded sheet, gathered it in cross-folds, and placed it in the wicker washing basket at her feet.

‘Have you had a good day?’ she asked chirpily.

‘Not particularly.’

She unpegged another sheet and offered him one end. ‘Oh? Why’s that?’

‘There’s something I have to talk to you about, Marigold.’

She smiled enigmatically and he detected a twinkle in her eye. ‘Well, it can wait till I’ve got the washing in, I daresay.’

‘I daresay.’ He was glad of the delay and shrugged as they pulled on the sheet to make it taut before executing the first fold. When they had finished he took her hand and led her to the wooden bench at the top of the garden at the point furthest from the house, so as not to be overheard. They sat down, he turned to face her, conscience-stricken, and took her hands in his.

‘Before you say a word, Algie Stokes, I have something to tell you,’ she said, and it pained him to see how cheerful she was, and how soon his news would turn that cheerfulness into misery.

‘What?’ he asked, grimly.

‘Oh, just wait till I tell you.’ There was no mistaking the teasing frivolity in her eyes, the contentment.

‘So tell me,’ he demanded impatiently.

‘I’m having another baby. You’re going to be a dad again.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ he exclaimed, closing his eyes and facing the sky. He let go of her hands and stood up, bewildered by her news. ‘How? I mean, when?…I mean, how long have you known?’

She giggled at his obvious perplexity. ‘Oh, Algie…Since before today, o’ course. Ain’t you pleased?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’

‘I’ve been meaning to for days and days. But you can never be sure early on…’ she shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to get your hopes up, then have to tell you I was wrong.’

‘So how far gone are you?’

‘Well, I’ve missed two months. So I reckon I might be nearly three months already.’

‘Jesus,’ he repeated. He sat down beside her again and leaned against the backrest. This was a twist he had not reckoned on.

‘Ain’t you pleased?’ she asked again, disappointed at what seemed to her his detachment. ‘I thought you’d be ever so pleased.’

He laughed at the sad irony of this new, unanticipated development and threw his arms about her. ‘Oh, sweetheart, I am ever so pleased,’ he said, and smothered her with kisses. ‘Does Mother know?’

Marigold shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t tell anybody afore I’d told you, you daft thing.’

‘So Aurelia doesn’t know either?’

‘Course she don’t know.’

‘Shall you tell her, or d’you want me to tell her?’

‘Why d’you think I’d want you to tell her?’ she asked. ‘No, I’ll tell her meself. She’ll be that pleased.’

‘Oh, she will,’ he remarked, the irony in his voice lost on Marigold.

‘I think she should be the baby’s godmother, don’t you?’

‘If you still think so…once you’ve had the baby, I mean.’

‘So what is it you want to talk to me about?’ she asked.

‘Oh, nothing really.’ How could he possibly mar the happiness of these precious moments by telling her his preposterous news? Besides, it might be better to keep quiet about it until he knew for certain that Benjamin had begun divorce proceedings. After all, it could conceivably have been a hollow threat.

‘It must have been something, Algie,’ she prompted.

He shrugged, struggling to invent a plausible tale. ‘Oh…I’d been thinking about applying for a loan to buy a new stoving oven for the business. But it can wait. After your news, it can certainly wait.’

She stood up and smiled sassily. She offered her hand and he took it, also rising from the seat. ‘Come on, help me carry the washing in,’ she said. ‘Then we can tell your mother the good news over tea.’

* * *