Abbeyford Remembered (11 page)

Away from Abbeyford, away from all the squalor and hardship of her former life, away from the anguish of losing her brother, Luke, of seeing her mother weary and beaten, away from her brutish, obsessed father and with so much that was new to interest her, she found the pain begin to lessen and her natural vitality slowly reassert itself.

Carrie Smithson Foster was a survivor. She was strong and blessed with a natural zest for life that could not, would not, be beaten or bowed for long.

In the company of Lloyd Foster's jovial spirit, she could not remain locked in her private misery for ever, so resolutely she raised her head, accepted his gifts and determined to make the best of the situation. She could not forgive him or give herself to him willingly – but between them, on the surface at least, there was an uneasy kind of truce.

Carrie still slept alone and never troubled to enquire where, or how, her husband spent his nights.

Lloyd was true to his promise. He introduced her to a life she had never dreamed existed. True it was not the life of aristocratic Society – those doors were closed even to Lloyd Foster. But they found their niche amongst the middle-class, well-to-do, ‘respectable' Victorians. Carrie began to enjoy her new role, laughing secretly at the thought of the astonishment on the faces of these fine ladies if they knew of her past life – her impoverished childhood and harsh living. Now she mimicked their manner of speaking, their elegant way of walking, their affectations, yet she never lost her earthy honesty, her strength of will.

Yet, deep in her heart, she was lonely for sight of Jamie.
Gladly she would have forsaken all this luxury – and more – for one kiss from her lover.

“Now, you sit here at this table, me darlin', and I'll be fetchin' you some ginger beer.”

Carrie sat down at the table in the tea-garden to which Lloyd had brought her. It was April, over four months since she had left Abbeyford – and Jamie. Amidst the hustle of the tea-garden, Carrie felt the loneliness steal over her. She looked about her at the happy families – mothers in their beribboned bonnets, their wide crinolines spread about them, leaning down to tend their small children. The gentlemen in their pink shirts and blue waistcoats seemed to gravitate to one corner of the garden, where they smoked their cigars and leant on their canes, with their tall silk hats at a rakish angle.

“Here we are, me darlin',” Lloyd placed a glass of ginger beer on the table before her and a dish of winkles. “Now – you'll be all right for a moment, I just have a little business to attend to,” and, weaving his way between the tables, avoiding two boys chasing each other across the grass, Lloyd went to join the other gentlemen.

Carrie saw them greet him like a friend – he was obviously known to three or four of them.

It was a huge place where they were, on the banks of the river Thames. Far in one corner, Carrie could see a crowd clustering round a balloonist who was making ready to begin his ascent. She did not join the crowd but watched with casual interest from where she was sitting. The spring day was surprisingly warm here in the sheltered tea-garden. In her wide-skirted crinoline with its numerous petticoats and the close-fitting bonnet beneath which her hair was arranged into a neat chignon, she felt uncomfortably restricted and hot. In that moment she longed for the freedom she had known last summer, her black hair flying loose, her bare feet running through the long grass to the abbey ruins to meet Jamie.

Tears prickled her eyelids and she sighed. Now it could never be. She was here in London, dressed in fine clothes, trying to ape the lady, married to a man she hated.

But did she really
hate
him? Carrie turned her gaze to where her husband stood. At that moment he threw back his head and laughed at something one of the other men had said, a loud, infectious sound that caused those nearby to smile too.

He was certainly a fine figure of a man, a man any woman could be proud to marry – any woman but Carrie, whose heart belonged to another!

She turned her eyes away again and watched the balloonist as he rose, a little jerkily at first, above the ground. The crowd ‘oh'ed' and ‘ah'ed' and then he was soaring above their heads and drifting away from them across the Thames.

You are married to Lloyd Foster, Carrie told herself sharply. He treats you well and your life is more comfortable and luxurious than you had ever believed possible for the gypsy Carrie Smithson. You had better make the best of it! But her heart longed for Jamie to see her dressed in fine clothes. How much more worthy of being
his
wife she was now than she had been a year ago.

That evening, back in their hotel room, Lloyd suddenly said, “Now, me darlin', how would you like to be goin' to Paris?”

Carrie swung round to face him, unable for once to prevent him seeing the joy shining in her eyes. “ Paris? Do you mean it?”

“Now would I be jokin' about a t'ing like that?”

She put her head on one side and regarded him thoughtfully. “We'll be coming back, won't we?”

Lloyd Foster avoided her gaze. “Ah, well, now, an' that's a little difficult to be sayin'. You see, I've got to earn a livin' for us, haven't I now?”

Carrie's mouth tightened. “ I thought you'd made your fortune at the expense of others. Twisting people out of their inheritance by taking advantage of a drunkard seems to be your way!”

It was the first time they had spoken of it, although always it lay like a barrier between them.

“I'll not suffer your reproaches the rest of our lives,” he growled. Carrie said nothing and the silence between them grew as they glared at each other, challenging. Suddenly, as if unable to bear it any longer, Lloyd strode towards her and took her in his arms. His mouth was upon hers, his hands tearing at her clothing. For a moment she struggled, but he was too strong for her. He took her, not brutally as she had feared, but demandingly, possessively.

“You are
mine
,” he muttered against her cheek, “all mine. God knows how I've waited this long!”

Afterwards he left her abruptly without another word. She lay in the double bed, her emotions in a turmoil. She knew now what it must have cost Lloyd Foster these past months to stay away from her bed. Since that tentative approach the very first night when she had cringed from him he had never again made any attempt to touch her. Not until now.

Now, finally, as they had quarrelled openly his passions had boiled over and he could no longer hold back.

“Possess my body he may,” she promised herself, “ but my heart – never! He took me away from Jamie,” she told herself fiercely. But Lloyd is your husband, her conscience reminded her, and he has been good to you.

In Paris they stayed in a fine hotel. Lloyd took her dining in the best restaurants and courted her with gifts. “Didn't I say you'd be the fine lady, me darlin'? You're every bit as lovely as these Society ladies, so you are.”

Paris was a truly romantic city. Carrie was caught up in the whirl of the life there. Everything she saw she committed to memory and learnt from it, so swiftly that soon she was able to move in the middle-class society with ease as if she had been born into such circles and not bred in a mud hut, with bare feet and scarcely a wrap to keep her warm in winter!

She heard no news from England. Not of her family, nor of Jamie Trent. Though Lloyd came to her often now, many nights she still slept alone. Occasionally, she wondered where her husband went when he was not by her side.

He took her through France and, as winter encroached, they moved south until they reached Cannes.

Cannes was fast becoming a place where it was fashionable for the wealthy British to buy a piece of land and build a villa. Then when the English winter became too chill they could travel to their ‘winter resort' on the Mediterranean coast.

“Do you know,” Lloyd pointed out the villas to her as they drove by in a hired carriage. “ Do you know that they even have turf shipped from England – renewed every year if they need it. Can you imagine a fellow bein' rich enough to be able to do that?”

Carrie looked at the magnificent villas, white and shining in the sun, surrounded by groves of orange and lemon trees. “ No,” she said soberly, “I
cannot
imagine it!”

Lloyd laughed and put his arm about her slim waist. “Ah, me darlin', we'll be rich one day. You'll have everything you ever dreamed of!”

Carrie glanced down at the green silk crinoline she wore, at the fine gloves, at her feet encased in satin slippers. Already she owned more than she had ever thought possible. But how swiftly she would abandon it all to be back in her coarse skirt and bare feet, to be back in the abbey ruins in Jamie's arms.
That
was all she had dreamed of!

Lloyd rented a villa and they stayed in Cannes. Almost against her will, Carrie grew to love the pretty town nestling in a bay, the beautiful blue sea, the mountains. She blossomed in the warmth of the sun and in the clear air. Her thinness was gone, the pale, half-starved look. Her skin glowed with health and she matured from a young, passionate – yet undernourished – girl into a beautiful woman, serene yet somehow remote. Always, deep in her violet eyes there was a sadness.

“You know what dey'll be wantin' here, all these wealthy Englishmen, is a railway – a passenger railway from Paris to the south coast,” Lloyd said standing on the balcony of the villa overlooking the blue sea. He glanced back into the bedroom where Carrie was lying on the bed, fanning her face vigorously. It was the first time the word ‘railway' had been mentioned between them.

“Really,” Carrie's tone was non-committal, bored almost, as she flapped at an intruding mosquito.

“There's only about four hundred miles of railway in the whole of France,” he was saying, suppressed excitement in his voice. “And that's mainly for the carrying of coal.”

“Really,” Carrie said again and closed her eyes, not noticing the expression on Lloyd's face as he looked at her and sighed and then went back to gazing out to sea.

This life of high-living was all very well, he was thinking, but I'm beginning to miss me railways. He couldn't push the matter too far – not yet. He must give Carrie time to forget. But, some day, somehow, somewhere, he knew he must once again build a railway.

It was in his blood!

As the months stretched into years Lloyd Foster grew increasingly restless. Between himself and Carrie the uneasy truce remained. She was his wife in every sense now and yet always there was a shadow between them, the shadow of her love for another man and of Abbeyford and all its memories.

“We'll have to go back to Paris,” Lloyd told her. “That's the centre of things. We've been here in Cannes three years and I'm missing what's happening. Louis Philippe passed an Act in 1842 for the construction of a great network of trunk routes from Paris over the whole of France. I could be part of all that. Damn it – I
want
to be part of it!”

So back they went to Paris. Unfortunately for Lloyd, things did not work out as he wanted. For another two years he tried to find employment as a railway builder, but once again there was confusion in Paris and although a network of railways had been approved in theory, the actual construction was a different matter. Economic difficulties in France and the air of unrest, which at any moment might erupt into revolution yet again, made investors wary and the capital required for the railways was not forthcoming.

“Damn it all!” Lloyd burst out, striding up and down the hotel bedroom whilst Carrie sat at the dressing-table, arranging her hair in readiness for a ball they were to attend. “There's nothing here for me. The whole city is in a turmoil! They're never at peace, these people! Now, they're wanting to be rid of Louis Philippe!” He paused a moment and then said, “They're so wrapped up in their political intrigues, there's going to be no progress for the next year or so. There's no railways for me to build
here
! We'll have to look elsewhere. I must find work!” And he punched one clenched fist into the palm of his other hand.

Carrie stopped brushing her hair, her brush suspended in mid-air, and turned to look at him, suddenly interested. “You mean you've come to the end of your ‘ fortune'?”

Lloyd's laughter filled the room. “ Me darlin', there never was a ‘fortune'. How do you think I've made us a livin' these past five years, eh?”

Carrie shrugged. “I thought it was the money you'd made building railways in England. You always seemed a wealthy man.”

Again he laughed. “Ah, me darlin', there's still much you don't know about me. Where do you think I spend me nights when I'm not beside you?”

“I neither know nor care.”

The pain was fleetingly in his eyes, then he said. “ For your information, madam, the money which buys you all these fine fripperies,” his fingers touched the lace on her white shoulder, “comes from gambling.”

She swivelled round quickly on the stool to stare at him in amazement. “
Gambling
?”

“Aye, whilst you're sleepin', I've been playing at card-tables here and in Cannes, earning us a livin'.”

“Well!” Carrie was speechless. “
Well
!” was all she could say again.

“But I'm tired of it now. I've had enough of the high livin', the drinkin' and gamblin'. I want to get back to railways.”

Carrie's lips parted and her eyes shone. “If there's nothing here, then – then – we're going home? Back to England?”

Lloyd's eyes darkened with anger, his mouth became hard. “ No, I don't mean dat at all,” he said harshly, her joyful anticipation bringing back all the antagonism between them. “We're
never
going back to England, d'ye hear me?”

As the look of hope died in her eyes now, Lloyd's tone softened a little. “I've met this man, a captain in the British Army in India. Stationed at Calcutta, he is. He's been on furlough – enjoying himself in Paris,” he grinned. “ Well – he tells me they're planning to build a railway from Calcutta. There's a lot of wrangling goin' on, so it seems, but I've got used to that this past two years in Paris. He reckons if I was to get out there, maybe have a look at terrain, I could persuade the powers that be to hurry things along a little, y'know. Captain Richmond'll be at the ball tonight. Now, ye'll be nice to him, won't you, for my sake?”