The Colours of Love (36 page)

Caleb stared at Esther for a moment more, without looking at Monty again, and then thrust Joy into her arms. ‘Do what you want to do,’ he said flatly. ‘I can’t stop you.’

‘Well!’ Mrs Birch’s voice trickled like petrol on naked flames into the taut atmosphere. ‘What an attitude, I must say.’

Caleb shot the landlady a glance of such venom that she shut her mouth with a little snap, and then he turned and stepped down into the street. He didn’t bang the door behind him, but left it wide open, and as he walked away part of him was waiting for Esther to call him back. But she didn’t. He didn’t pause or slow down until he had turned the corner of the street, and then, when he was out of sight of the house, he began to shake. Leaning against the brick wall of a butcher’s shop, he ran his hand over his face, cursing Monty under his breath.

He hadn’t meant to leave Esther that way. He straightened, turning to retrace his footsteps, before stopping once again. Should he go back? He took a step forward, paused and swung round in a semicircle as a maelstrom of different emotions had him groaning out loud. He didn’t know what to do, for crying out loud. If he went back to the house there was a damned good chance he would punch Monty in the face, and he had enough sense left to know that would play directly into the other man’s hands.

And she had made her choice. He shut his eyes. He knew that. But he didn’t want her to think he didn’t understand.

Did he understand?
he asked himself in the next moment. And when the answer came, he muttered, ‘So why go back, then? What good will it do?

How long he stood there he didn’t know. It was dark now, the May night cool but not cold, but he was oblivious to his surroundings as his mind whirled and spun. And then, faintly, he heard the sound of voices and a car starting up. Walking to the corner again, he looked down the street just in time to see Mrs Birch hand Joy to Esther, who was clearly sitting in the back seat of Monty’s car, although he couldn’t make her out very well.

She was going right now. For a moment he almost ran down the pavement, but checked himself just in time. What a fool he would look, with his awkward gait and hobbledehoy bearing. Why give Monty more ammunition with which to prove to Esther that he was the better man?

Mrs Birch shut the car door and stood back on the pavement, and the next moment the car was drawing away. And in that second Caleb bitterly regretted not calling out or trying to see her. He stood in the shadows, calling himself every name under the sun, his hands bunched into fists at his side and his body tense. And then the sound of the car faded, the street became quiet once more and he was alone. In fact he had never felt so alone, not even when he was lying in a rat-infested trench in France, with his body lacerated with shrapnel and his best friend’s body, minus its head, stretched out at the side of him.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Theobald lay back against his heaped pillows, watching Dr Martin pack his black bag after the doctor had examined him. He wondered if the doctor was aware that he wasn’t as ill as he was pretending, but he rather thought not. The man was a fool, he thought dismissively. All quacks were. So full of their own importance it was easy to pull the wool over their eyes. And of course he
had
had a stroke; it just hadn’t incapacitated him as severely as he was making out.

It had frightened him, though. He shut his eyes as though he was too weary to keep them open, but behind the closed lids his mind was racing. And it was a warning to get his house in order, and that meant Esther returning to live as Monty’s wife. He found he didn’t want to leave this earth childless, and although Esther wasn’t his, with Monty’s agreement the Wynford name would be carried on. He wouldn’t simply turn to dust and be forgotten in a few years – not with his name alive. For a moment the panic that any thought of dying brought was strong, and as his heart began to race he silently told himself:
steady, steady
. He intended to live for a good few years yet.

‘I understand Mr Grant has gone to fetch your daughter, Mr Wynford.’

Theobald opened his eyes and nodded at the doctor, saying weakly, ‘I feel the need to be reconciled to her.’

‘Well, that’s good, that’s good.’ Dr Martin smiled briefly. ‘If there’s one thing the war’s taught us, it’s that life is too short to hold grudges, and family is all-important. I shall tell your housekeeper the correct dose of tincture, and so on, and I’ll return tomorrow morning. Try and get a good night’s sleep, Mr Wynford.’

Once he was alone, Theobald sat up straighter. The stroke had affected his left side, with the corner of his mouth slightly stretched upwards and the skin around his eye dragging a little, but he had more movement in his left arm, hand and leg than he had let on to Dr Martin. He wouldn’t put it past Esther to check with the doctor how serious his condition was. He felt rough, he told himself, in justification of what he was doing, but not like some of the poor devils he’d seen who had been taken by a stroke. The doctor had wanted him admitted to hospital, but Theobald was having none of that. He could string Dr Martin along; the hospital specialists were a different kettle of fish. His speech had been slurred initially, but already that was improving, so he’d have to remember to be careful about the way he spoke. All in all, it could have been a lot worse. He inclined his head at the thought. He’d got a mite too excited about what he was doing to Mabel’s little sister, that was the truth of it. It wasn’t often he got his hands on one as young as her: nine years old, but already being coached very ably by Mabel. He understood there were two more sisters – twins, of seven years old – and he’d promised Mabel a small fortune if he could be the first. The parents didn’t care, according to Mabel, not as long as their offspring brought home the money for their drink and drugs. Scum, the lot of them.

Theobald let himself relax against the pillows again; he mustn’t think of Mabel and her sisters for the time being. The stimulus was causing his heart to race, and Dr Martin had said that he had to rest and not exert himself in any way.

The doctor had given him a spoonful of the medication he was going to leave with Mrs Norton, before he had left the room, and now Theobald began to feel the powerful sedative taking effect. He shut his eyes, a feeling of well-being stealing over him, despite the circumstances. Esther would accompany Monty back here, he was sure of it. Women were a different species from men; they set store by deathbed reunions, and the like. It would take a hard woman to refuse the wish of a dying man, and although Esther was headstrong and difficult and contentious, she wasn’t hard. Or she hadn’t been, when she was growing up anyway. Too emotional and fiery by half of course, but at the time he had attributed that side of her personality to his own mother, who had been something of a tartar behind closed doors.

His lips compressed at the reminder of how completely he had been fooled, and then he shrugged mentally. No matter. He could still accomplish what he wanted, if he played this stroke card to its fullest potential. Esther back here, where he could keep an eye on her; her child deposited in a boarding school – a good boarding school, he wouldn’t stint on that, but he would make sure it was where she would be out of sight and mind, Switzerland perhaps, or Italy – and Monty jumping through whatever hoops he needed his son-in-law to jump through.

Theobald smiled to himself. He would see to it that this divorce idea was consigned to the past within weeks, or his name wasn’t Theobald Wynford.

He must have slept, because it was late evening when Dr Martin left and, when he next opened his eyes, Osborne was gently shaking his shoulder and saying, ‘Mrs Wynford-Grant is here, sir, and waiting to see you. They arrived last night, but it was decided not to disturb your sleep.’ Bright sunlight was streaming into the room.

‘What time is it?’

‘Half-past seven, sir. Mrs Norton dared not leave giving you your medication any longer. Dr Martin was most specific that it must be given exactly to his timetable.’

Theobald would have told his butler exactly where the good doctor could insert his timetable, but, remembering the part he was playing, he murmured weakly, ‘Thank you, Osborne,’ causing his butler’s mouth to drop open for a moment. In all the years he had worked for Theobald Wynford, he had never been thanked for one service that he had done for his master. As he said later to Mrs Norton in the privacy of her sitting room, ‘Long may the master be ailing, if this is the result.’ Neither of them was blind or deaf to what they termed ‘the master’s shenanigans’, either, and much as they would have liked to leave Theobald’s employ, they were both aware that at their age another position would be almost impossible to come by, especially with the sort of reference Theobald would be likely to give them. But maybe there would be an end to all that now, they agreed. And not before time.

It was twenty minutes later when Mrs Norton showed Esther into the room. Theobald had been washed and shaved by Osborne, and was sitting propped up in bed, looking as pathetic as he could manage. He had purposely refused any breakfast, although he was starving, knowing this would be duly reported back. He’d also refrained from adding a good measure of whisky, from the bottle he kept on his bedside cabinet, to his morning cup of tea, as was his custom. It wouldn’t do for Esther to smell alcohol on his breath.

As though it took tremendous effort, he murmured breathlessly, ‘Esther, m’dear. You came.’

Esther stared at the man she had never liked, even when she had believed him to be her father. One of her earliest memories was of Theobald barging about the house shouting and swearing and bullying the servants. He had been feared by every member of his household, including his wife, but his blistering verbal assaults and ranting and raving had never intimidated her. And he had known this. It hadn’t stopped him trying to break her spirit, however, on a number of occasions when she had lived under his charge. But he had never succeeded.

The thought brought her head up and raised her chin, and she looked every inch the grand lady, despite the ordinary clothes she was wearing, when she said coolly, ‘Yes, I came. I am sorry to find you so unwell.’

‘Come . . . come and sit by . . . me.’ Theobald was careful to gasp and mumble his words.

Esther hesitated. She didn’t want to approach the bed; in fact she didn’t want to be in the same room as Theobald, but she could hardly refuse such a simple request. And he did seem a shadow of his former self. Quietly she sat down in the armchair next to the big four-poster bed. ‘Are you in pain?’

‘Pain?’ For a moment he wondered what to say, and then decided to tell the truth. ‘N-no. Ju-just tired. Very tired.’ With a gasping breath that he was proud of, he slowly murmured, ‘Wanted to s-see you. Make things’ – he shut his eyes and opened them on a rasping sigh – ‘right between us.’

Esther wanted nothing more than to get up and run out of the room, and keep running until she was far from this place she had once called home. There was no doubt that he was ill, but something – and she didn’t know what – was making the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. Perhaps it was the spectre of death that she was sensing? she asked herself. Certainly something disturbing. She had questioned both Osborne and Mrs Norton before coming into the room, and both individuals had reiterated all that Monty had told her.

‘Dr Martin says he could go any time, ma’am,’ Mrs Norton had whispered, as though Theobald was capable of hearing her, downstairs in the breakfast room. ‘You can never tell with cases like this, he said. Some linger, and some go out “poof!” – like a light. Mind, some get better an’ all, ma’am, as I said to Dr Martin. My sister-in-law was told to let the Co-op know – they’d got a savings card with them, for their funerals – that our Bart was on his way out, when he had his stroke, but two months later he was back on his milk round. Mind you, he couldn’t hold the reins in his left hand like he used to, but old Tess, the horse, she knew the way round them streets without any encouragement. Lovely gentle thing, she was.’

Osborne had coughed discreetly at this point and so the story of Mrs Norton’s brother had ended, but it had left Esther uneasy. She had been told by Monty that Theobald was dying, and she wanted to make her peace with him and leave; nothing more complicated than that.

Theobald had thought very carefully about his next words and he had got them off pat. Slowly, his halting voice little more than a whisper, he murmured, ‘I’m sorry for the way I was when the baby came. It’ – he took a seemingly laboured breath – ‘it was the shock, and then Harriet saying what she did knocked me for six. The thing is’ – another tortured breath – ‘if I ever loved anyone, it was you. You . . . were my pride and joy, and to find out I wasn’t your father . . . ’ He forced moisture into his eyes. ‘But now I understand it isn’t just the conception of a child that . . . that makes her yours. It’s the looking after when they’re . . . here in the world. And I did that, lass. I looked after you.’

Esther swallowed hard. She felt completely out of her depth. This wasn’t the same man who had bellowed and bullied his way through life. Helplessly she shook her head. ‘It’s all right.’

‘You’re my daughter.’ Theobald was gratified to find he could squeeze out a tear. ‘In . . . in every way that matters.’

‘Don’t upset yourself.’ She couldn’t bring herself to touch him, but her voice was soft.

‘I need to . . . to make you understand.’

‘I do understand.’

‘And . . . and do you forgive me?’ he asked pathetically.

What else could she do but say ‘yes’? ‘Yes, I forgive you, and I know it must have been hard for you to hear the truth, but I do believe Mother thought what she did was for the best. She knew how much you wanted a child.’

Theobald closed his eyes, worried they might reveal his true feelings. ‘I know, I know and’ – feebly he looked at her again – ‘she wouldn’t have wanted us to remain estranged. Esther, will you stay until . . . until it happens? I . . . I don’t want to die without my family around me, and you are my daughter; that’s how I feel.’