Consequences Read online

  ‘You should think about it, Benjamin. But afterwards, when you’ve left here, eh?’ She slid on top of him and began kissing him ardently.

  * * *

  A couple of hours later the growler conveying the Stokeses and Aurelia turned into the drive of Holly Hall House and drew to a halt. The driver jumped down and deferentially opened the carriage door.

  ‘Algie, why don’t you see Aurelia safely inside?’ Marigold suggested.

  ‘All right,’ he agreed at once, and made to follow her.

  ‘No, please don’t trouble yourself, Algie,’ Aurelia replied, her voice insistent as she leaned forward to make her exit. ‘I only have to walk through the front door, as I have thousands of times before.’

  ‘If you’re sure…’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. In any case, Jane will still be up.’

  ‘Goodnight, then.’

  ‘Goodnight each.’ She stepped down from the cab, lifting the hem of her dress.

  ‘Goodnight, ma’am.’ The driver shut the cab door behind her, clambered back to his seat and flicked the reins. Out of habit he touched his hat, but in the darkness it went unnoticed.

  Aurelia stood and watched the growler turn and transit the driveway to the crunch of gravel beneath its wheels. She had enjoyed the day, enjoyed the company of Marigold, Algie and the Meese girls, the gaiety and good humour of the wedding. Returning home was an anti-climax. The feeling of loneliness enveloped her again, more intensely now. Returning to this mausoleum, to Benjamin, was so thoroughly depressing. Why could she not be returning home to the warm embrace of a man she loved? She was desperate for happiness, for contentment, for a settled life, to be free of this soul-destroying misery and uncertainty. Her concern was not just for herself, but equally for her children. What future did they have, brought up in a marriage that was devoid of affection but rich in hostility? The love she had been prepared to give Benjamin, the marital support, was all wasted on him. She was not appreciated, not understood, betrayed, disregarded. Worse, she was manifestly scorned.

  The night was humid and a warm breeze wafted sultrily through the canopy of the elms. She turned away with increasing despondency from the departing growler, and gazed at the house. Despite the warmth outside, inside it would remain cold and soulless, as if all the history and life the place had previously seen and contained had evaporated without trace. She longed for the day when she might never have to return to it. Yet it seemed destined to be her quarters for the rest of her life. As soon as she opened the door and went inside, her melancholy returned.

  The maid had indeed waited up, and declared that no sound had come from upstairs where the children and their nanny were evidently sleeping soundly.

  ‘Mr Sampson has been called elsewhere, Jane,’ Aurelia said, contriving to explain her return alone, ‘but I’m sure he won’t be too long. There’s no need for you to wait up. Please go to bed. I’ll brew myself some tea before I go up.’

  ‘Let me do it, ma’am,’ Jane felt obliged to offer out of sympathy, for she was well aware that all was not as it should be between her mistress and master, and that Aurelia was getting the worst of it. ‘There’s hot water in the kettle on the range. It’ll soon boil up again.’

  Aurelia smiled appreciatively. ‘No need, Jane. Please do as I say. I prefer to do it myself this time. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  ‘Very well, ma’am. Did you enjoy the wedding, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes, Jane, thank you.’ Aurelia smiled again, indulging the maid, content to recall the pleasant incidents and the conversations that had peppered it. ‘It all went off very smoothly and we had a lovely time. And the bride looked radiant.’

  ‘’Tis good to know, ma’am.’ Jane returned the smile and bobbed a curtsey before duly scurrying up the stairs to her bed in the attic.

  Aurelia made her way to the scullery and lifted the kettle to assess how much water was inside. There seemed sufficient, so she swung it over the glowing coals, hanging it from its gale hook, and then located a teapot.

  In that large house, although peopled also at that moment by a maid, a sleeping nanny and her two sleeping children, she felt acutely her loneliness. She sat and looked absently at the fading coals slipping in the grate that were gradually, degree by slow degree, heating the water in the kettle towards boiling point.

  Then she heard a sound conveyed via the chimney, unmistakably carriage wheels scrunching over gravel again. Soon after, a door opened and closed at the other side of the house.

  Benjamin.

  Maybe he would like some tea as well. He failed to appear in the scullery, however. Instead, he went upstairs, and she hoped he’d gone directly to bed. A floorboard creaked above her. She looked upwards as if she might be able to see through the plastered ceiling, then picked up the poker and gave the coals a stir, disturbing the kettle’s equilibrium. It swung gently on the gale hook and sighed, eliciting a thin gasp of steam through the swan-neck spout. Upstairs, a door opened and closed noisily. More creaking floorboards. Eventually, footsteps on the stairs again. Benjamin was on his way down. Was he looking for her? She braced herself. Why couldn’t he simply go to bed and leave her be?

  The door to the scullery opened and Benjamin, hand on the doorknob, his hair looking as if it had been freshly brushed, stood regarding her, expressionless.

  ‘So you ain’t gone to bed yet.’

  ‘I’ve not long got back,’ she replied. ‘I sent Jane to bed and decided to make myself some tea. Would you like some?’

  He closed the door, took one of the chairs at the other side of the table and sat facing her.

  ‘Thank you. I could do justice to a cup of tea.’

  Thank you. Glory be, he’d offered a thank you. What had she done to deserve such consideration?

  ‘Kettle’s nearly boiling. I’ll get two cups and saucers.’

  ‘Have we got any cakes or biscuits? I’m starving.’

  She found two jam tarts, put them on a plate and handed them to him. He devoured them avidly.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you something, Aurelia,’ he said as he put the plate on the table and rubbed his fingers free of crumbs.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. And I’d like a truthful answer.’

  ‘If it’s something I know about,’ she said, reaching into a cupboard, ‘then I’ll give you an honest answer.’ She retrieved a couple of cups and saucers, turned and placed them on the table. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘I’ve had my suspicions about you for some time – since before Christina was born,’ he said calmly.

  ‘Suspicions?’ Her heart thumped. As she spooned tea leaves into a ceramic teapot, her back was towards him, so he could not see the consternation in her expression or her reddening face. ‘What sort of suspicions?’

  ‘Well…’ He hesitated; trying to formulate his thoughts into words that he was determined to deliver in a tone of reasonableness. With any luck she might respond rationally, without argument and resentment. With reasonableness, he’d be more likely to get to the truth. ‘You left me, not so many months ago, Aurelia,’ he went on smoothly. ‘Why?’

  ‘You know very well why,’ she answered, likewise tempering an inclination to haughtiness. ‘Because of your affair with Maude Atkins. I failed to see why I should put up with it.’

  At last the kettle began to bubble and steam so she lifted it from the gale hook and poured the hot water into the teapot, her back still towards him.

  ‘And yet you came back.’

  ‘Because I was carrying a child.’ She gave the tea a stir, placed the lid on the pot, then reached for a tea cosy and covered it. ‘I realised within a few days after I left that I was with child. It was my duty to come back. I could hardly rob you of your own child. I could hardly rob the child of its father.’

  ‘Yes, I remember the occasion well enough. What I can’t remember, for the life of me, is the two of us coupling at the time you must have conceived.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be absurd, Ben
jamin.’ She poured milk into the two cups ready for the tea, which was steeping. ‘I agree it only happened occasionally, but of course we coupled. I suppose it was one of those times you’d had too much to drink and don’t remember.’

  ‘My suspicions are that somebody else fathered Christina,’ he declared.

  Their eyes met, but neither husband nor wife gave anything away in that expressionless, emotionless glance.

  ‘That’s a serious allegation, Benjamin.’

  ‘So it is. So come on, Aurelia. Out with it. Why else would you have left me in the first place, unless you’d had a better offer?’

  ‘I left you because I was desperately unhappy, because of your affair with Maude Atkins. As a matter of fact, I still am. I know you’re still very much involved with her,’ she added scornfully. Now seemed as good a time as any to let him know she was not as blind as he would like her to be. ‘I also know you fathered a child with her. I imagine you’re keeping them both somewhere. I suppose that’s where you’ve been tonight.’

  ‘Where I’ve been tonight is not in question,’ he replied dismissively, for keeping a mistress and fathering a bastard was his absolute right. ‘But I reckon there’s more to it than what you claim. You see, I reckon you’d been having an affair yourself, got pregnant and decided to leave me so you could go and live in sin with this person. But when this person realised you were pregnant he decided he wanted neither you, nor the responsibility of a bastard child, so he dropped you like a hot brick, leaving you no alternative but to come back here.’

  ‘That’s preposterous,’ she replied, with an aloofness that was becoming harder to maintain. It occurred to her that if that’s what he was really thinking, he was being very reasonable about it – quite unaccountably.

  ‘Aurelia, all I want is the truth.’ He was maintaining an unnerving calmness. With an open gesture of the hands, he added, ‘Just the truth…And the name of this other man.’

  She shrugged. ‘Always supposing there was another man.’

  ‘Give me his name and I’ll start divorce proceedings. You’ll be free. I’ll be free. It’s what you want anyway, isn’t it?’

  Aurelia lifted the tea cosy, took the lid off the pot and gave the liquid another stir, then began to pour. The offer of a divorce was inordinately tempting. Only in her wildest dreams…She would be free of Benjamin Sampson, free of his cold indifference, free of his soulless house. But in return she would have to give up little Benjie, and that she was not prepared to do. Nor would she, or could she, reveal and embarrass the father of Christina.

  ‘Even if there was somebody else,’ she replied coolly, handing him a cup and saucer with false aplomb, ‘do you honestly believe I would give you the satisfaction of knowing who it was? No, Benjamin, if it’s divorce you want, then the only way you’ll get it is by deserting me. Go and live with your precious lie-by and I’ll divorce you for desertion. That way I’ll stand a chance of keeping my children.’

  ‘Shall I tell you what I think, Aurelia?’ He sipped the hot tea circumspectly, and then put the cup down. ‘Shall I tell you what I firmly believe?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’ she replied with a huff of frustration and indignation. His manifest contempt for what he believed she had done, yet his utter lack of self-condemnation of his own extramarital transgressions outraged her.

  ‘I believe you had an affair with Algie Stokes, but only the Lord above knows what you saw in him. Furthermore, I believe you not merely had an affair with Algie Stokes, but that he also fathered Christina.’

  ‘Benjamin, how can you possibly think such a thing? It’s a ludicrous suggestion.’ She was trying desperately to remain unruffled.

  ‘I can think it because I watched the two of you together today in close conversation. You spent more time with him than was decent. You acted like clandestine lovers. You looked like clandestine lovers. I actually saw you kiss him. I saw the way you reacted to each other, your familiarity. Your movements, your gestures when you were together spoke louder than any words could.’

  ‘That’s preposterous, Benjamin, and you know it. Algie Stokes is my half-sister’s husband. You don’t for a minute think I’d cross her do you?’ It might be just the sort of reasoning that would satisfy him, she thought.

  ‘Ah, but…how long have you known Marigold to be your half-sister?’ he asked, prompted by a remarkable notion that suddenly struck him, but which he considered highly plausible now that it had.

  Aurelia shrugged. ‘I’ve known her from the day her daughter was born.’

  ‘Which was when?’

  ‘April last year.’

  ‘And how long after that was Christina born?’

  ‘In the August.’

  He recited the names of the months in turn, counting them on his fingers. ‘Five months.’ This was an enlightened argument and he intended to press it ruthlessly. ‘This means you conceived Christina about four months before Marigold’s brat was born. During that time, Algie Stokes had lost contact with her. Isn’t that so?’

  ‘My goodness, Benjamin,’ Aurelia exclaimed, unable to control her reserve, her anger rising. ‘That doesn’t prove a thing. You’re clutching at straws if you think that proves anything at all. You really do sound desperate for a divorce.’ She sipped her tea and replaced the cup in its saucer with a clatter.

  ‘But it makes sense,’ he proclaimed with an exuberance that suggested he might have just stumbled upon the meaning of life. ‘So, when Marigold was then reunited with Algie, you were left with little option but to wish the couple well, in a reunion that was rather untimely as far as you were concerned. Your only option as a result was to pass off the child you were carrying as mine. Maude has often reported to me that the days and nights I was away on business, you went out and didn’t come home till the next day.’

  ‘How would she know?’ Aurelia protested vehemently. ‘The nights she normally had off were the same nights that you were away on business. So she was in no position to claim any such thing. I’m not stupid, Benjamin. I know she was with you at least on some of those nights. I can only assume she must be a whole lot of fun in bed. Is she?’

  He did not reply.

  ‘Yet this is all about me and your accusing me of being unfaithful. So it is perfectly acceptable for Maude to have borne you a child – out of wedlock – yet you try and berate me because you think I committed the same sin as you. You’re a hypocrite, Benjamin Sampson. A hypocrite through and through.’

  ‘Hypocrite or no, I don’t see why I should be expected to keep a child that I haven’t fathered. Christina is not mine, Aurelia. Algie Stokes is Christina’s father as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘You’ll never be able to prove that, Benjamin.’

  ‘Oh, won’t I? We’ll see…And when I do, Algie Stokes can pay for her keep.’

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  For the first time in ages, Benjamin Sampson was thinking about his wife and not his mistress as he steered his horse and gig through Brierley Hill’s slurried streets. He was on a mission, a vital mission, and he drove resolutely, winding between steam tramcars and carts laden with the goods from the earthenware and glassware manufactories thereabouts. While the people and the people’s traffic went about their business, he was pondering angrily his wife’s betraying him. His soured reflections were scrutinising the deterioration of his marriage like separated souls drifting over the scene of a fatal disaster in which their bodies had been destroyed.

  Unfortunately, Benjamin, wrapped up in this extramarital adventure, was too blind to see the equivalent circumstances Aurelia shared with her late mother. He failed to see what Aurelia saw; that her situation was the same as her poor late mother’s; that of a woman trapped in a loveless marriage to an unrepentant philanderer. Benjamin could not comprehend that she had no desire to live her life in the gloom of marital misery as her mother had; that she would do all that an aggrieved woman could do to improve her lot, to find a way out. He failed to grasp her reasoning,
that what was good for the gander was also good for the goose…and that the quest for revenge might also have driven her to do what he now believed she had done.

  The failure of their marriage was undoubtedly Aurelia’s fault. Her failure to tolerate his harmless little intrigue. Her perversely taking a revenge lover and having that lover’s child in consequence, purely out of vindictiveness, was the catastrophic result.

  Well, now it was time to expose that lover and make plans for divorce, for it was vital that he rid himself of his wayward wife. Then he could be free to pursue a more contented life.

  * * *

  To the clip-clop of his horse and the creaks of straining leather, Benjamin drove past the Silver End station of the Great Western Railway on Brettell Lane, past a brickworks and a glassworks. Soon he arrived at an untidy smattering of ancient red-brick buildings, randomly built on the weed-infested earth decades ago. Two of the buildings had slate roofs, one of which sported a smoking red-brick chimney with a skew-whiff pot. A rusting tin roof crowned the third building, which was larger than the other two. A sign nailed over one of the doors read, ‘Ranger Cycles, Prop. Algernon Stokes, Esq.’.

  So this was the unimposing centre of Algie Stokes’s empire. Could such a paltry collection of shacks be the genesis of those bicycles that were also giving him cause for envy and grief in business? Algie Stokes had a great deal to account for where Benjamin Sampson was concerned. Not only had the man evidently made a cuckold of him, not only had he lured some of his best and most reliable workers away to work in this trio of shanties, but he was also stealing business from the bicycle manufacturing division of the Sampson Fender and Bedstead Works. It was time Algernon Stokes, Esq., proprietor of this forlorn mess, paid for his indiscretion. He was, after all, a mere dog to be kicked vigorously and damaged.

  He reined in the horse, stepped down from the gig and tethered the ensemble to a handy drainpipe. Having straightened his waistcoat and run his forefinger round the inside of his collar, he headed bullishly for the building that bore the sign.

  He thrust open the door and beheld two men at a bench manipulating metal tubes. One he recognised as his own ex-employee, Whitehouse, and nodded cursorily to the man.