The Great Betrayal (22 page)

Adam had followed the kitten into the kitchen, but now he returned. ‘Where’s Grandpapa?’ he asked.

‘He’s in the garden.’

‘No he isn’t. I looked.’

There was a brief pause before his words registered, and then Lydia sprang to her feet with a cry of alarm. ‘Run upstairs, Adam, and see if he’s there!’ She rushed to the front door and glanced up and down the road. There was no sign of her father.

Dolly had followed her to the front door as Lydia turned.

‘He’s wandered off again!’ she cried. ‘Oh Lord! It’s my own fault. I got distracted and forgot to keep an eye on him.’

Adam came downstairs shaking his head. ‘He’s not there, Mama.’

‘And you looked in the bathroom and the bedrooms?’

‘Yes, but he’s not there.’

‘Then I’ll have to go after him.’ Confused and beginning to panic, she looked at Dolly. Every moment she hesitated would take her father further from her and into possible danger. ‘Can you wait here until I get back? I can go faster without Adam.’ She turned to her son. ‘Will you wait here with Auntie Dolly?’

He nodded.

Dolly smiled at him. ‘I know a story about a teddy bear and a kitten called Sooty. Would you like to hear it?’

‘Ooh yes!’ He checked himself. ‘I mean, yes please!’

‘Come along then, Adam. There’s plenty of room on my lap.’ She winked at Lydia. ‘He can share the space with
my
young’un!’

Lydia hesitated, weighing up her options. Dolly would take care of him, she decided, and Adam had taken to her. John would have a fit if he knew she was leaving their son with someone she hardly knew – but then John had abruptly disappeared from their lives with little or no explanation, leaving her with sole responsibility. He was in no position to criticize her decision, she told herself firmly.

‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ she promised, and without bothering with a jacket she closed the front door behind her and, turning right in case her father was heading for the paper shop, she began to run along the road.

Adam watched his mother leave with obvious trepidation, but Dolly’s story soon caught his imagination and he listened enthralled.

‘. . . So the teddy bear said to himself, “I’m going to run away into the big wide world and see all the birds and animals” . . .’

‘And the cows?’ Adam added helpfully.

‘
And
the cows and pigs and . . .’

‘And the dogs?’

‘Oh yes! The dogs, too. We mustn’t forget them, must we? And the kittens . . .’

Dolly watched the little boy’s face and tried to imagine that this was her own son and that everything was all right again and Don would be home for his supper of mutton stew and dumplings which she had cooked for them and then . . .

‘What about white mice, Auntie Dolly?’

‘Oh yes! Clever boy! How could I forget them?’

The story trailed on and on, held up by a multitude of interruptions, and Dolly’s concentration wavered. She picked up the photograph of Lydia’s wedding and stared at the husband. The mysterious John Daye who was not a spy but something very like a spy . . . The likeness was astonishing, she thought. He could be Don’s long lost brother! Her mouth twisted a little, and she sighed enviously. He and Lydia had obviously had a proper wedding.

‘Auntie Dolly!’ Adam prompted.

‘Sorry, dear. I was looking at your ma and pa’s wedding picture.’

‘Papa has gone away and we don’t know where he is but when he does come back he’ll bring me a present but I mustn’t ask about him any more because it makes Mama cry.’

‘Oh dear! Poor Mama!’ Dolly felt a rush of solidarity with the unfortunate Lydia Daye, but then an idea entered her head which was so monstrous that it made her voice falter and her head swim. Desperate and fearful, Dolly tried to hold out against the suspicion, but finally, cold with shock, she surrendered to the hateful possibility. Adam’s father and the father of her unborn child could be one and the same. Was it . . .? She began to shake her head. No, she thought. I won’t even think it . . . but somehow she was going to have to put the idea to Lydia.

‘Auntie Dolly?’

‘Yes, dear?’ She looked down into his innocent eyes and saw the bleak future for all of them.

‘What happens next?’

What indeed?

By the time Lydia reached the paper shop the full extent of her troubles had dawned on her also, and she was in no state to argue the finer points with her father and another man who were arguing heatedly over who had reached first for the last copy of
The Times
. Mr Wright was trying to calm matters, but a Mr Williams was insisting that Lydia’s father had snatched the paper from him and George was denying it, insisting that Mr Williams was a cad and ought to be ashamed of himself.

Several other customers were watching the argument with interest, and an urchin child was taking his chance to fill his pockets with sweets before slipping out of the shop.

Without bothering about the niceties, Lydia snatched the paper from her father, handed it back to Mr Williams and dragged her father out of the shop on to the pavement.

‘Don’t look at me like that!’ she told him through gritted teeth. ‘And forget about
The Times
! We have trouble with a capital T, Father, so not another word. You are coming home with me. Now!’

To her relief he did not argue, but allowed himself to be led along with only a brief backward glance. He had been enjoying the little scrap, but Lydia was Lydia and would never understand the workings of a man’s heart. Mr Williams was an obnoxious little squealer, with his fancy tweed suit and silly little spectacles, and George had longed to thwack him around the shoulders with the rolled up
Times
.

After a couple of hundred yards George stopped abruptly. ‘So what has happened?’ he asked. ‘Why are you behaving like a shrew?’

She faced him with an expression he could not read but which sent a shiver down his spine. Trouble with a capital T. That was what she had said.

‘If you think I am going to tell you in the middle of the street,’ she began hotly, grabbing his arm, ‘you’re wrong!’

He looked into her white face and saw the strain in her eyes and felt the first stirring of deeper unease. ‘I am not going a step further until I know what has happened,’ he told her, ‘and if you try to drag me home people will think you’re kidnapping me!’

For a moment they stared at each other, and then Lydia said, ‘When I tell you, you’ll wish you were at home.’

‘So be it!’

She hesitated as a woman walked past pushing a pram, then she said simply, ‘I think Don has betrayed me . . . with another woman.’

George drew in a sharp breath and struggled to remain focused. He said shakily, ‘I wouldn’t put it past him.’

‘Dolly Wickham!’

He nodded.

‘And if I’m right then, Father . . . he is wanted by the police.’

A child ran past with a hoop.

She said, ‘For theft and . . . for assaulting someone who has died from the injuries.’

‘He could hang!’

‘Oh God!’

‘When did you find out all this, Lydia?’

‘I think it was beginning to dawn on me when Dolly was looking so closely at our wedding photograph, and I realized that if the letters I sent to her home were read and answered then John must have been there and . . . and her husband goes away when mine goes away and . . . and the rings and the pearls . . . It was Glazers, the jeweller’s, you see!’ She drew a long, painful breath. ‘What do you think, Father? Am I right? Could this really be happening?’

George put an arm round her waist, and she slumped against him. He asked, ‘Did she know? Dolly Wickham – did she know he was already married?’

‘I think not.’

‘So he has betrayed her, too. Poor woman.’ He tightened his arm round her as a young man walked towards them.

Sensing a possible problem the man paused, hesitating, regarding them suspiciously. Then to Lydia he said, ‘You all right, miss? This man annoying you, is he?’

‘No, no! Thank you for asking, but he’s my father.’

George said stiffly, ‘My daughter is feeling unwell. A little faint. I’ll be taking her home as soon as she feels able to walk.’

If I ever do, Lydia thought with a touch of hysteria. I may never feel able to do anything ever again! This might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back!

The young man looked from George to Lydia with an unspoken question. Lydia forced a smile. ‘It’s true. He is my father. I’m in no trouble.’ But that was a lie, she thought. She was in very serious trouble, but her father was not the problem – her husband was. ‘But I appreciate your concern,’ she added.

He gave a brief nod, touched the brim of his hat, said, ‘Then I hope you feel better soon,’ and walked on.

Silently, they watched him go. He turned back to give them a final cursory glance, then continued on his way, apparently satisfied.

George returned at once to their discussion. ‘Are you going to tell Dolly Wickham? It will be a terrible shock for her, especially in her condition.’

Carefully, Lydia eased herself upright, taking her weight on her own two feet and finding that she was just about in control. ‘We’ll have to talk,’ she said, ‘but she’s not stupid. She was looking very closely at my wedding photograph, and I suspect that, like me, she’s already put two and two together.’

George tucked her arm in his, and they moved slowly in the direction of home. Still shocked by her recent discovery her steps faltered, and she felt like a hospital patient who has been given less than a month to live.

George said grimly, ‘I’d like to get my hands on that bounder. I’d wring his damned neck with my bare hands!’

‘He’s Adam’s father, remember.’ She made the protest from habit.

‘I don’t care who or what he is!’ George replied hotly. ‘So don’t let yourself pity him, Liddy, and don’t make excuses for him. You have to face facts, and you might as well start now. John Daye is an out and out bounder!’

‘But he’s still my husband.’

‘More’s the pity! Don’t expect me to make allowances for him because I won’t listen. We have to face a dreadful truth. John Daye has ruined our lives, and I want him to pay for it. Hanging would be too good for him!’

Twelve

As they approached the front door it was opened by Dolly and an excited Adam who immediately began to tell Lydia all about Sooty and the teddy bear, but after she had kissed him she suggested that George and Adam went into the front room.

‘You can do a puzzle,’ she told them, ‘while I talk with Auntie Dolly in the kitchen.’

Once in the kitchen she closed the door, took a deep breath and faced her visitor.

Dolly, pale with a spot of colour on each cheek, held up her hand. ‘You don’t need to say it,’ she said. ‘I know! I’ve worked it out. I know about my husband and yours.’

‘They’re one and the same!’

‘Yes. Two sides of the coin.’

‘It’s unbelievable, but . . .’ Lydia shook her head. ‘There is no other explanation.’

‘I don’t know what to feel,’ said Dolly. ‘It doesn’t feel real. How could he do this?’

‘I know. I love John and hate him at the same time.’

They regarded each other helplessly, and then Lydia stepped forward and put her arms round Dolly and they clung together, dry-eyed.

Dolly drew back at last and sank down on to a chair, and Lydia noticed that the kettle was boiling and that two mugs waited on the table. She made the tea in silence, adding a cup and saucer for her father and a glass of milk for Adam, both of which she carried into the front room. When she returned she said, ‘Father knows. He wasn’t surprised. Took it rather well, in fact.’

‘But he’ll be worrying inside.’

‘Yes. Would you like a biscuit?’

‘I couldn’t.’ Dolly sighed. ‘I feel a bit sick. It’s the shock . . . Your son’s a wonderful little chap. At least you’ve got him.’ Her voice shook.

‘You’ll have a child soon, Dolly.’

‘I wish I wasn’t.’

‘Oh, don’t say that! Whatever his father has done, it’s not the baby’s fault.’

Despair was settling over them both like a cloud.

‘He’s been trouble all his life,’ Dolly admitted. ‘Pinching stuff from the shops, breaking windows, fighting. Ma used to say he should move into the police station – he spent so much time there. She was always warning me and Mave about him, and then what do I do? I fall for him and get myself knocked up with his baby! What does that make me?’

‘Did you really love him?’ Lydia did not know which answer she was hoping for.

‘I suppose so. He’s got that air about him. Devil may care! He’s always been exciting.’ She stirred her tea and picked out a stray tea leaf. ‘At least you were properly married. Weren’t you? In a church, I mean?’

‘Yes, but he said his name was John Daye, so if it isn’t . . . If it’s Donald Wickham then I simply don’t know where I stand!’ She sighed heavily, one hand to her chest, which had started to ache. ‘I almost wish that Mr Phipps had stayed out of it all. It all started when he offered to come to your house and try to find out about the PSD. It all seemed to go wrong after that.’

Dolly rolled her eyes. ‘I expect he meant well, although you can never trust a copper!’

‘Looking back I can see what was happening. The money was coming from the robberies, and he let me think he was doing his duty for the country. That he was a hero. And I trusted him.’

‘So did I, but I should have known better! I grew up opposite the family. They were always trouble. His mother got the sack for stealing from the lady where she did the cleaning. His pa ran off years ago and left them.’

‘Do you think circumstances are a good enough excuse?’

‘Not really, but . . .’ She shrugged. ‘Well, you know . . . setting his sons a bad example.’

Lydia bridled at the suggestion. ‘I certainly don’t assume that Adam is going to follow in his father’s footsteps!’ She was mortified to hear her voice rising and made a conscious effort to lower it. ‘I shall make sure Adam never knows. I shall keep the truth from him. Pretend that John died in an accident or of an illness. That will be the kindest thing I could do for the poor little man. How could I let him grow up knowing his father was a thief and a murderer?’