Consequences Page 20

  ‘Yes, I suppose it did,’ she agreed.

  ‘He’s obviously not with you tonight.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So should I address you as Miss Stokes – or Lady Chesterton?’

  ‘Oh, do call me Kate. You’re from Brierley Hill, and Brierley Hill folk don’t stand on ceremony.’

  ‘Thank you, Kate,’ he said with a delighted laugh. ‘I’m Benjamin. I was about to say, Kate, if I were married to you, I think I’d tend to stay a little closer to you, especially after a show.’

  She shrugged dismissively. ‘But you’re not married to me.’

  ‘No. Presumably, your husband doesn’t mind you still working on the stage?’

  ‘We agreed before we married that if I wanted to keep working, I could.’

  ‘So how often do you get together?’

  ‘Often enough,’ she said indifferently. ‘We have a house in London. That’s where I stay when I’m working. My husband comes down from Norfolk when he can.’

  ‘But not today.’

  ‘No, not today. Nor tomorrow either, for that matter.’

  ‘Pity,’ he commented. ‘For you, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ she confessed. ‘I’m hardly a clinging vine. I like doing what I want to do. I like freedom and fun – and there’s plenty to be had in London.’

  ‘Look, we’re here already,’ he announced, as the hansom joined the queue to unload at the Savoy.

  ‘I told you it was no distance.’

  ‘You were right,’ he laughed, feeling more confident with this youthful embodiment of feminine sophistication. ‘Let’s not bother to wait. We’ll jump out straight away, shall we?’

  He opened the door without waiting for the driver to do it, and stepped down, then held out his hand to steady Kate. She thanked him, and he paid the fare. When they strolled into the Savoy, he led her to the American Bar.

  A straight-backed waiter, seeing a well-dressed young couple enter, ushered them with extreme politeness and tact to a table in a quiet corner of the warm, sumptuous saloon. He took her coat, gloves and fur stole, and asked what they would like to drink.

  ‘Champagne?’ he asked Kate.

  ‘Ooh, yes please,’ she replied. ‘Piper-Heidsieck is my favourite.’

  ‘A bottle of Piper-Heidsieck, please, my good man.’

  The waiter bowed and was gone.

  ‘So how long are you in London, Ben?’ Kate asked, feeling at ease in the embracing warmth of the Savoy.

  He noticed her hands, soft, smooth and beautifully manicured. ‘I go home tomorrow.’

  ‘What brings you to London in the first place?’

  ‘Oh…’ He grinned, holding his hands out in a gesture of openness. ‘The small matter of my divorce.’

  ‘Divorce?’ Kate sat bolt upright with curiosity. ‘Goodness. I don’t think I ever met anybody before who’s been divorced. Tell me about it.’

  ‘The case was held in the Royal Courts of Justice today. Ever been there?’

  ‘I’ve been past it.’

  ‘Immense, beautiful building,’ he said smoothly, as if he were the most knowledgeable architectural authority on the planet. ‘Most impressive.’

  ‘No, don’t bore me with the building,’ she protested, her refined accent beginning to lapse; after all, you can take the girl out of Brierley Hill, but you can’t take Brierley Hill out of the girl. ‘Get to the juicy bit. Is your divorce the latest bit of Brierley Hill gossip?’

  ‘It soon will be.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘My wife had an affair.’

  ‘’Struth.’ Kate was rapidly reverting to her Black Country roots in her manner of speech, which told she was feeling relaxed; she had no need of airs and graces with this man. Brierley Hill folk did not adopt airs and graces.

  ‘And she had a child.’

  ‘By the man she was having a fling with, I suppose?’

  ‘Spot on, Kate.’

  ‘’Struth, that must’ve been hard to take,’ she said. ‘D’you still love her?’

  He shook his head. ‘Well, I used to. Or I thought I did when we first met – when we first got married. But we’ve drifted apart – one thing and another. Anyway, she met this other chap – at my house, actually.’

  ‘That’s a bit rich, eh? Falling for somebody who comes to your house.’

  The waiter delivered the champagne and two crystal flutes on a silver tray. He posed the bottle in front of Benjamin for inspection, then, on Benjamin’s nod, deftly readied the cork. It popped ceremoniously, alerting everybody in the saloon to the fact that Benjamin was clearly trying to impress his delightfully pretty companion. It appeared, from admiring smiles and gestures, that several people in that room might have recognised Miss Kate Stokes, the shining star of the vaudeville stage.

  The waiter poured the champagne and left them.

  Benjamin raised his glass. ‘Here’s to you and In Town. Wonderful show.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She took a sip from her glass.

  ‘As a matter of fact, Kate,’ Benjamin said, continuing where they had left off, ‘I believe you know the chap who my wife had her affair with.’

  ‘Do I? What’s his name?’

  ‘Algie Stokes.’

  ‘Our Algie?’ She choked momentarily on her champagne and put down her glass. Her hands went to her face in astonishment. ‘Hey, wait a minute…I seem to remember…you invited him to dinner at your house one night. He’d got nobody to go with ’cause his regular sweetheart wasn’t about, so he asked me to go with him instead, but I couldn’t. I was courting a chap called Clarence Froggatt at the time, you see, and that night he was taking me to some do.’

  ‘Algie asked you to go?’

  ‘As his companion. Fancy, I would’ve met you before if I’d gone…I’m trying to remember your wife’s name, I’m sure he must’ve mentioned it…’

  ‘Aurelia.’

  ‘Aurelia. I don’t think he mentioned that name. I wonder if I ever saw her.’

  ‘There’s no mistaking her. She’s certainly a good-looking girl – nearly as good-looking as you.’

  ‘Ooh, flattery, Ben Sampson.’ She grinned appealingly. She was certainly warming to this personable, decent-looking Brierley Hill factory owner who had just got himself divorced.

  ‘As a member of the Brierley Hill Amateur Dramatics Society you must have known her father. He was a leading light.’

  ‘Who was that, then?’

  ‘Murdoch Osborne.’

  ‘Oh, my Gawd!’ Her hands went to her face again, as if to hide her blushes. ‘Murdoch was your wife’s father?’

  He nodded, grinning. ‘There’s more. Before my wife’s affair came to light, Algie married her half-sister.’

  ‘Gordon Bennett,’ she exclaimed, pronouncing a cockney saying she’d picked up from one of her local chorus line friends. ‘Who’s that then?’

  ‘Marigold.’

  ‘Oh, Marigold? How can she be Murdoch’s daughter as well?’

  ‘She was born out of wedlock. By his first wife’s sister. Didn’t you know that Marigold is Murdoch’s daughter?’

  ‘I hadn’t a clue. All this must’ve come to light after I left. So Algie married her?’

  ‘He did. But not till after she’d had his child.’

  ‘I had no idea.’

  Benjamin was enjoying this. Clearly, Kate too was flabbergasted, and he had won her total attention.

  ‘See what I’ve been missing all the time I’ve been in London? All these juicy goings-on. You do know my family disowned me?’ she said.

  ‘I understand there was some family disagreement,’ he responded, ‘but I don’t know what it was about.’

  ‘Oh, they didn’t want me to go into acting as a profession. It was Murdoch Osborne who pushed me into it. He defied my mother – he was married to my mother for a short while, you know…’

  ‘So I believe. He committed suicide, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, the daft sod. A bit soft in t
he head he was, I reckon. Anyway, what happened to Clarence Froggatt?’ she asked, diverting him from more questioning about Murdoch Osborne. ‘I take it you must know Clarence?’

  ‘Clarence married Harriet Meese – last year.’

  ‘He never! Did they have to get married?’

  ‘To Harriet?’ Benjamin laughed at her candidness. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Fancy. Harriet’s done well for herself. But as regards our Algie, I take it he don’t work for you anymore, if he’s been having it off with your wife?’

  ‘Oh, Algie not only poached my wife, but he poached some of my workers as well. He started up his own business making bicycles.’

  ‘The tinker! That don’t surprise me, though – he was always mad on bikes.’

  ‘He’s been in London for the divorce case. As co-respondent he was here with my wife.’

  ‘Well, he never came to see me,’ Kate said. ‘Not that I would expect him to. Even so, I bet he knew I was at the Gaiety. It’s advertised in all the Sunday newspapers.’

  So the conversation went on, into the small hours. They finished the champagne and Kate, feeling tired, decided she must regrettably leave. Benjamin, in turn, decided to be ever chivalrous and accompany her in the cab to her house in Belgravia, and she welcomed the offer.

  As the clatter of the horse echoed through London’s deserted streets, their conversation continued as it had developed in the Savoy, affable and intimate.

  ‘I’ve had a lovely time, Benjamin,’ Kate declared, reverting to the well-spoken actress as the cab pulled up outside the house. ‘Thank you for looking me up and for looking after me. Is it likely you’ll be in London again soon?’

  ‘Oh yes, very likely,’ Benjamin responded. ‘Business, you know.’

  ‘Then do let me know when. It would be lovely to meet up again.’

  ‘For dinner, maybe,’ he suggested.

  ‘Why not? Dinner would be lovely.’

  He could hardly believe it. ‘How should I let you know when I’m due?’ he asked, heartened.

  ‘Write to me.’ She opened her reticule and fished out a small notepad and a blacklead pencil. ‘I always carry a notebook and pencil,’ she claimed as she wrote down the address. ‘I find it so useful for making notes on how we can improve the shows.’ She tore out the slip of paper and handed it to him. ‘Don’t you forget, now.’

  ‘Thank you, Kate,’ he said, accepting the note. ‘I won’t forget.’

  She leaned over and planted a kiss on his cheek before she stepped down from the cab, and waved to him as she headed for the front door of the large, porticoed four-storey terraced house.

  * * *

  Chapter 18

  During the train journey from London, Algie and Aurelia sat opposite each other, sharing the compartment with several other passengers, occasionally flashing smiling glances between them. Now, during these prolonged unspeaking periods of their journey home, a similar thought was drifting through both their minds: what happens now?

  Aurelia’s domestic circumstances were wrecked. At some point, she would have to visit Round & Round again, to discuss and arrange the potentially ticklish question of access to Benjie. If she were allowed to have him only at weekends that would be at least something. To stand any chance of achieving it, however, she must first find somewhere to live. Benjamin, surely, would be beholden to pay her alimony, so enabling her to afford it. In that respect, she began to liken herself to Benjamin’s paramour; trapped in a meagre back-to-back in a working-class area of Dudley, a kept woman, but in her case there for the convenience of gratifying the sexual incontinence of Benjamin. She dismissed the comparison at once. It would be different for herself; she would not be a kept woman. At this point, she turned and looked admiringly into Algie’s eyes again, and he beamed back, smiling, unaware of her musings; he quite simply thought how beautiful she looked.

  After the train journey, the cab first dropped Aurelia at Holly Hall House.

  ‘Is he likely to be here?’ Algie asked, meaning Benjamin.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Aurelia replied. ‘He’ll either be at the works, or he’ll have gone to see Maude – that’s if he’s back from London.’

  ‘I’m thankful he wasn’t on our train.’

  ‘No more than I am.’

  The cab driver jumped down from his perch and reached for Aurelia’s travel bag from the roof then opened the cab door, and she stepped out onto the gravel. Without looking back she headed directly for the front door.

  ‘Badger House, Kingswinford,’ Algie called to the driver.

  As the cab swung round, Algie turned to catch a last glimpse of Aurelia as she was entering the house, and his heart went out to her. She was a woman with nothing now and nothing to look forward to, save for her enduring regard for him and the child they had created. It troubled him the more that the reason she had nothing was because of him. Thus, he felt an acute responsibility for her, and for the child they had produced between them.

  Of course, he was still in love with Marigold. He loved his little daughter Rose, and his next child due in a few weeks’ time he would care for equally. They too were a permanent responsibility, and as he had told Aurelia, his family took precedence. He could not forsake them, he would never forsake them. He had no desire to see inside another divorce court for the sake of a revived affair with Aurelia.

  So here he was, content with his wife and the domestic set-up that embraced them both, but having to suppress a re-emerged partiality for his wife’s half-sister. He adored them both, but now it struck him that this two-sided adoration was manifested in two different ways. He desired Aurelia sexually, and her feelings for him he found alarmingly gratifying. But it was lust, pure and simple. And he realised that lust would fade and die once it had run its course.

  With Marigold it was different; he regarded her as his equal, she was his partner in life and in living, she was the mother of his child, the keeper and organiser of his household. Yet he desired her too. He was comfortable with her, he enjoyed their bedtimes, though familiarity had rendered their lovemaking less frenetic and less frequent, but no less enjoyable. She was no less lovely than Aurelia, simply less urbane, unalike in ways and demeanour. Marigold saw to his meals (when Clara was not taking control), she did his laundry, ironed his shirts, she shared his everyday traumas and triumphs.

  Before he knew it, the cab had drawn up outside Badger House. While the horse scraped its hooves on the hard ground, and blew gusts of steamy breath from its nostrils into the cold winter air, he paid the driver and retrieved his travel case. As the driver reined the horse to turn the cab round, Algie ambled to the front door and opened it. First he saw Rose, tottering into the hallway on unsteady little legs in her short, frilly frock. The sounds from the front of the house had alerted her to his return, and she was determined to be the first to investigate. Algie put down his case and, to her wide-eyed chuckle of infancy, he swept her up in his arms.

  ‘My baby,’ he whispered as he nuzzled his face into the tiny bodice of her dress. ‘Daddy’s home.’

  ‘Daddy cold,’ she complained, struggling to escape the chill of his topcoat attacking her warm skin.

  Marigold appeared, somewhat dishevelled from her domestic chores, her lump prominent on her belly. She smiled at him, with some uncertainty he thought, and he suspected she must have worried that being away with Aurelia might have been too much of a temptation. She approached, and shifting Rose to one arm, he embraced her reassuringly with the other, kissing her as she offered her lips.

  ‘You’re cold,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t say. It’s freezing out. How’ve you been?’

  ‘We missed you.’

  ‘I missed you. Mother all right?’

  Marigold nodded, happy to be in his embrace again. She was comforted to see him looking exactly the same as when he left, as if London and his London experience might have changed him. ‘She’s upstairs, dusting. So how did it go, the divorce and all that?’

 
‘As expected. Benjamin got his decree nisi…and custody of little Benjie.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ she said resignedly. ‘It’s no less than we expected.’

  ‘That upset Aurelia more than anything.’ He let go of Marigold and put Rose down, whereupon the child tottered away. Marigold took his hat, and he draped his coat and scarf over the newel post. ‘Make us a cup of tea, eh, sweetheart, and I’ll tell you all about it.’

  She nodded and smiled, and he followed her into the kitchen. A fire was burning brightly in the range and Marigold swung the kettle over it on its gale hook. He warmed his cold hands.

  ‘You can bet she’s upset if that swine’s got custody,’ she remarked.

  ‘She was a bit weepy.’ He sat down on a stool, watching his wife. ‘But who wouldn’t be?’

  ‘I’d better go and see her,’ Marigold suggested. ‘Maybe tomorrow.’

  ‘Good idea. She’ll appreciate your support.’

  ‘So when did the case finish?’

  ‘Just before dinner time today.’

  ‘I’m glad you came home today then.’ She reached in a cupboard for the teapot, her back towards him, but looking at him over her shoulder.

  ‘We could’ve stayed overnight,’ he admitted. ‘But I wanted to get back to you.’

  Marigold’s smile reflected her relief.

  ‘Besides, Aurelia was tired, and still upset – drained after the ordeal of being in the witness box, with all eyes on her.’

  ‘That must’ve been horrible.’

  ‘She said it was. And Benjamin’s lawyer made sure of it.’

  ‘Poor Aurelia. Did you have to go in the witness box as well, Algie?’

  ‘No, thank God.’ He stood up again. ‘Oh, and we passed the Gaiety Theatre where our Kate’s performing,’ he went on. ‘There were pictures of her, her name in big letters.’

  ‘But you didn’t see her?’

  ‘I had no inclination to see her. She doesn’t come to see me.’

  * * *

  Next morning at breakfast, Marigold said, ‘Shall you get a newspaper today? I bet there’ll be something in about Aurelia’s divorce.’

  ‘You can be sure of it,’ he replied. ‘I’ll be sure to buy one just to see what it says.’