A Mother's Love (40 page)

She’d had a bad dream the night before, thinking him about to burst into her bedroom. She had come to her senses with a start in the very act of pushing him backwards down the stairs. It reminded her that she was getting older, must one day die, and she was petrified at what would happen to her when that time came. Would Will be waiting? Was that what Hell was: meeting someone or something you feared and loathed most in life, to spend eternity bound to that person or thing?

Harriet shuddered. She needed desperately to shut out the ghastly certainty. A sip of her medicine would help. But to have to ask Mum or Aunt Sarah to give her money to buy some – it was unthinkable. And pride wouldn’t let her beg Sara to allow her an advance out of her wages. Instead she must lie here and suffer, alone. At times she was so terrified at being alone. This looked like being one of those times and she couldn’t, dared not, stay up here alone, not today.

Slowly, Harriet got up, washed her face and with trembling hands tidied her hair as best she could, trying to ignore the grey streaks, then went carefully downstairs to present herself. If only Jamie were here.

James gazed down into the quad from the dormitory. It was Sunday. A few boys were wandering around, but most of those who hadn’t gone home this weekend were somewhere inside the building out of the sharp January wind.

He hated weekends – wished he could be at his grandparents’ – that lovely rambling house where he even had his own bedroom for when he stayed. But he couldn’t have gone there this weekend, having only just come back from spending Christmas and New Year with them.

He could have gone to see Mother, perhaps. It wasn’t all that far away. But he hated her slobbering over him as though he was a little boy instead of sixteen this year. ‘Are they treating you well enough at school, Jamie dear?’ He wished she would learn to call him James. If his chums at school could hear, he’d be a laughing stock.

Not that he had many chums. They always seemed to shy away, leaving him to find new chums – jealous, probably, because the moment he began to tell them about how his grandparents doted on him and how he could get anything he wanted from them, they seemed to lose interest. The same thing happened when he asked anyone for a loan to tide him over. Boys were always borrowing from each other, but somehow no one obliged him.

He never told those at home how he’d hated school: the bullying in his first and second year, having to fag for the sixth formers. Now almost a sixth former himself, tall and gangling, he too could bully, demand errands. But he had no real friends to boast to. Lessons were different. He always did well, and his tutors were lavish in their praise. It was only at weekends that he felt lonely. He was glad when Monday came and he could shine.

Sara longed for Monday. At work she could be herself, forget who she had to be at home: the child dictated to by her mother’s whims, living on her grandmother’s charity, watching her manners in someone else’s house – it was still someone else’s house even after a year living there. She was aware of being a guest, and as such felt she had always to be on her best behaviour. Oh, how she longed for Monday, to be herself.

March 1913: only a month to go before she’d be nineteen. A journalist, one of only a handful in the country. Some newspapers were employing women, but mostly in mundane roles – typewriting, filing and general duties – all single ladies; once married they were dismissed. At least in one small way the suffragettes were reaping some harvest.

Sara had interviewed some of those suffragettes; had heard so many tales of their exploits: their daring bombing of church property, of railway stations, empty houses; the price they paid for it with their imprisonment, going on hunger strike and enduring forced feeding. At times she almost felt herself to be one of them, having to endure the snubs and taunts of men whose world she had invaded.

No longer assigned to little charity fetes, she had to jostle with other reporters, determined not to be pushed aside by them. All in all she felt she stood up well; she even enjoyed the fray, the proving of herself, for all the bruised arms and crushed hats she sometimes collected on the way to getting a story.

What did irk her was that she was never once rewarded with a byline of her own for all her pains. A woman, she wasn’t considered even a tiddler in the small pond of the
Graphic
, her name being kept strictly off her stories. Sometimes, indignant after losing a battle to have her name shown and being told it wasn’t good for the paper, she wondered if she might not be better appreciated in some other, more forward-looking newspaper; once or twice she was on the verge of handing in her notice and taking that chance. Yet something always stopped her. She wasn’t sure what. Not lack of courage, she knew that, and she told herself that it had no bearing on Jonathan, though a small voice would come back that it had everything to do with him, that working on another paper without him around would somehow not be the same.

Thursday, seven in the morning: the newsroom was already buzzing, day staff taking over from night staff, alive with everyone building up to the next edition. Involved within minutes of arrival, Sara forgot that today was her nineteenth birthday, and so was taken by surprise when Jonathan came over and said casually, ‘I take it you’re not doing anything special this evening? Your birthday, isn’t it?’

She shrugged, unoffended by what she saw as one of his vaguely taunting remarks. ‘If you mean am I celebrating it, I never celebrate people’s birthdays. Why should I want to bother with mine?’

Engaged in scanning a rival paper for something which might be competing with the
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, rustling through the broad sheets, he didn’t look up. ‘Thought some of us might take you out for dinner.’

‘Some of us?’ She stared, halfway through pulling together the two parts of a report she was typing up.

‘Us – me – a few of us.’

‘You?’

He straightened, hazel eyes regarding her quizzically. His steady, undaunted gaze could quell most people, even his superiors, but it did not quell Sara.

The regard she felt for him, part grudging attraction and part lurking respect, always with an ever-present sense of provocation, made her determined not to bow to his natural dominance, suspecting that he in turn respected her ability to stand up to him. She took in the brown, slightly wavy hair that refused to acknowledge restrictions of brilliantine to keep it combed flat, waywardly finding its own parting; the smooth, slightly sallow cheeks; the thin straight nose; the way the well-cut moustache gave a downward sardonic curve to the lips. Her own lips took a cynically curving upward path.

‘You mean
you
want to go with us?’

The hazel eyes glowed. ‘How many more questions? Just say yes.’

Stunned, she agreed, saw him nod tersely. ‘Wear something deserving of a bottle of champagne. I’ll pick you up in a taxicab at eight-thirty.’

No more was said. She pushed away the feeling that the invitation might not be genuine, that later he might call it off, saying his plans had changed. But as she left at the end of her day and he called after her, ‘Eight-thirty, then,’ she had to go along with it, or look foolish doubting him and not being ready.

She said little to anyone at home. In a biscuit-coloured evening dress that emphasised her dark hair, the narrow tube-shaped skirt and small cape suiting her tall, slim figure, she caught her mother’s querying, accusing gaze as she passed the open bedroom door.

‘You never said you were going out?’

She paused and looked at the small sad face regarding her from the dressing table. ‘It’s a birthday celebration.’ Did she see her mother shudder?

‘Yes,’ came the soft, tremulous voice, as though the woman’s mind was miles away. ‘Nineteen years ago – can I ever forget the day you were born?’

‘I thought you had.’

She hadn’t meant it to sound so embittered. The expression in her mother’s grey eyes seemed to be wandering on another plane.

‘No, I never will.’

It was a most pleasant evening. Surprising, too. Taken to the Waldorf Restaurant off the Strand, a woman among four men – Jonathan, Wilfred Saunders, a sub-editor, Alf Peters, a reporter like herself, and Duffy – Sara found herself wined and dined and danced with.

Jonathan didn’t dance, keeping somewhat aloof, as often he did, but as a surprise birthday cake was brought in halfway through the evening, the orchestra playing a celebratory tune, she thought she saw a tempering in that brittle gaze of his; felt her heart flip a little, surprised that it should.

He was a different person. Indeed, all evening there had been no sarcasm. There was even a certain gentleness to his smile that made him look far more handsome than in their workplace, with its ever-present haste and his ever-present cynicism, ever allowed her to see. The feeling he promoted in her now, she curbed swiftly, intuitively trying not to examine the reason.

Bringing her home in a taxicab, he was quiet and so was she. As the vehicle drew up, he smiled at her suddenly. ‘I hope you’ve had a good time, Sara.’

Taken off guard, she began, ‘I’ve had a wonderful time,’ and at that moment became aware that he was leaning towards her.

Unsure how to respond, she thought his face, unguarded as it was tonight, was as near handsome as anyone’s could be; but was aware too that apart from knowing him at work, she really knew nothing of him. He never spoke about himself, his life, his family if he had one. She saw in him the kind of person who needed to be private, and put it down to his being one of those born with a mistrusting nature, or maybe, as she herself had been, born into mistrust with much of it rubbing off. Whatever, she had realised a long time ago that they were of a kind, salt and salt; as such the one could never dissolve into the other but, as she saw it, would forever rub grain against grain.

Now, this evening, here was a different side of him. Sara’s head reeled. Was he about to kiss her? Did she want that? Long ago, she’d made a vow. So strong had it been then. How strong was it now? Even as she made ready to receive the kiss she knew was on his lips, the vow made as Matthew’s coffin sank to its resting place, descending like a shield of steel; made her stiffen, move back from him.

Her eyes focusing sharply, she saw his expression, the look of someone whose face had been slapped. As though in a single movement, he leaned back and with a stiff smile, said slowly, ‘I’ll see you in the morning, Sara.’

‘Yes, see you then,’ she echoed, angry with herself, angry with him for not pursuing. ‘Thank you for a very nice evening.’

‘You’re welcome,’ came the formal reply as she let herself out.

It was as though that night had never been. Jonathan went back to his old self again, a little quieter maybe, avoiding her. She was her usual cold, efficient self; also quiet, subdued. He wouldn’t know the ache she felt for what could have been. And yet she couldn’t break those links she had forged for herself at Matthew’s graveside, links too well made to break, even if she’d wanted to.

So went the year. There was no offer from Jonathan of a birthday dinner on her twentieth. No opportunity ever again to be as close to him as she had been, or almost been, that evening the previous year.

James was to go to Oxford next year. Henry Craig had been as good as his word, deciding on Saint Edmund’s, the college his son had gone to. James’s every need was indulged by his grandparents, whilst still not one penny ever came his mother’s way.

That did not seem to touch her any more. On the rare occasions he came home between terms to see her, boasting openly to her about what he screwed out of them, she’d merely laugh with the delight of having him near her, would pounce on and coddle him as though he were still a small boy.

She still persisted in calling him Jamie – a name he now loathed. It was obvious to all but her that he couldn’t wait to get back to school out of her clutches, his boredom plain to see.

‘If it wasn’t a duty,’ he told Sara, his narrow, handsome face sullen, ‘I’d never come home again. I hate it here.’

Sara nodded, regarding him without affection.

He had made a life for himself, although the spoiling he’d had as a child had left the young man wishing angrily for independence while still needing the indulgence of adults. His grandfather did indeed indulge him. Never saw him short of cash, he told Sara, adding that he often stayed with his grandparents between terms and did well out of it.

‘Always good for a few bob,’ he said with a beautiful smile and a deal of pride in his ability to wangle himself a bit extra on top of the already decent allowance they’d so generously granted him.

Sara saw how they would fall for his charms. James was charming. He looked so like his father. The similarity, however, ended there. He saw no ill in expecting the world to owe him a living, and could be sullen when it refused to do so. Matthew might have spent unwisely, and borrowed heavily from banks with the means to lend, but he had never begged a penny off anyone close to him. He had stood on his own two feet, despite a father who would have helped him, Sara was sure, had he gone cap in hand with promises to bend the knee.

Matthew had never bent the knee. Sara still experienced that flood of loving admiration whenever these thoughts came to her. Even now she could still forgive him the loss of all they’d had. No one would ever take his place. No one would ever come up to what he’d been. It saddened her that James had not inherited that generous, loving, stalwart nature.

She couldn’t like James, no matter how she tried. Perhaps it was because he was merely her half-brother, or perhaps his very resemblance to Matthew tore her heart so that she resented him for those looks that prompted such a rush of memories.

In the May of 1914 Mary died. After another, massive stroke that snatched away her senses so completely that she lay supine and staring, three days later, mercifully, she was taken from them.

Her daughters came to cry over her, see her decently buried, then to turn their eyes to the more immediate business of her will.

Harriet had no interest whatsoever in any will. At the graveside, supported on either side by her two brothers, she wept copiously into John’s shoulder while George ineffectually patted her back. Their respective wives stood tearlessly by. Not being kin by blood, they felt no depth of emotion, and the deceased had after all been ripe in years, it seemed to those hardly into their middle ones.