Oh . . . Sarah took off her felt hat and smoothed back a wisp of hair from her forehead, sagging back against the hard seat and shutting her eyes. She had promised to take care of Rebecca, and take care of her she would, whatever that entailed. It was a poor sort of love that compromised when the going got tough, and Rebecca needed to know the burden wasn’t hers alone. They would get through somehow, whatever happened with regard to the baby. And on that thought, with the train wheels droning a soothingly monotonous refrain, Sarah fell immediately into a deep sleep which lasted the remainder of the journey to King’s Cross.
Sarah kept nothing back when she related the outcome of her trip to Lady Margaret. She hadn’t had time to go into detail about Rebecca’s circumstances before she had left so hurriedly for Sunderland the previous week, but on her return she told Lady Harris’s daughter-in-law the full facts.
‘The poor girl. The poor
poor
girl.’ Sarah and Lady Margaret were in the morning room, and now the older woman leant back in her chair as she shook her head slowly. ‘Man can be the noblest or the very basest of creatures, Sarah.’
‘I know which kind Willie Dalton was, Lady Margaret.’
‘Quite. And having lived with Sir Geoffrey for some years I feel I know a little of what your friend has suffered, although of course her situation is a hundred times worse than mine has ever been. He called Lady Harris twice last week, incidentally, and she refused to take the second call; the first one was not pleasant.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Not for me, I hope,’ Lady Margaret said bluntly. ‘For his mother perhaps. I confess I would be heartbroken if William were to behave in such a fashion when he is grown.’
‘I don’t think there is any chance of that, Lady Margaret.’ Sarah thought of the serious little boy who already, like his sister, seemed a lot more outgoing since his father had not been in residence in the house. Lady Margaret had confided that her husband had been a harsh father, and an erratic and unfair disciplinarian, often frightening and confusing the children.
‘No, neither do I.’ Lady Margaret smiled before she added, ‘I shall certainly try to temper discipline with love, too much of one without the other ruins a child. Geoffrey had little of the former and I had none of the latter. Perhaps if I had valued myself more at the beginning of our marriage things would have been on a different footing.’
She was talking to Sarah as she would to an equal, now a regular practice when they were alone, and Sarah responded in like fashion as she said, her eyes twinkling, ‘Or perhaps you wouldn’t have married him in the first place.’
‘True, true.’ Now they were both laughing, but in spite of Lady Margaret’s smiling face, Sarah recognized an emotion lying deep in the blue eyes that she identified with. It was loneliness. Lady Margaret had been born with the proverbial silver spoon, and she in the worst of Sunderland’s slums, but loneliness was no respecter of persons.
It was Sarah who leant forward now and said, ‘You only wanted what most women want, a husband and family. I want that myself, the more so for not having known family life as a child.’
‘Is that so? I understood you spent some time in a children’s home, Sarah, but I didn’t know any details.’
For a moment Sarah didn’t know whether to turn the conversation into other channels. She had mentioned Hatfield briefly at her interview with Lady Harris, but Lady Harris had asked no questions and she hadn’t volunteered anything further, and now she was conscious of thinking that she didn’t want Lady Margaret to look at her any differently if she told her of how she had been placed at Hatfield and the circumstances of her birth and childhood. The shame and sadness which always accompanied thoughts of her beginnings were as keen as ever, but that aloneness that stared out of Lady Margaret’s face pulled at her. She took a deep breath and began talking.
Lady Margaret swallowed deeply when Sarah finished speaking, and her voice was soft when she asked, ‘And you still don’t know who your mother is?’
‘No.’ Sarah shook her head slowly. ‘I have no idea who she is or where my natural family are; even if they are alive or dead. The war hit Sunderland very hard, there were whole communities wiped out.’ It was something which had haunted her for the last few years, and this was evident in her voice when she said, ‘But I still want to try and find the people I came from, even . . . even if they don’t want me. I’d just like to know my real surname, something, anything. I feel like there’s no foundation somehow, I can’t explain it. I look in the mirror and my face stares back at me, but it’s just me. I’m not
like
anyone.’
‘Oh, my dear.’ Lady Margaret swallowed again. ‘I understand, I do understand. Undoubtedly the circumstances are different, but I used to wonder how I could possibly have come from my parents. I still do in fact. But . . .’ She paused, and now her voice had a bright positive note to it as she said, ‘But thanks to your bravery in confronting my husband I am actually learning to like myself a little. It’s a good feeling, Sarah.’ She smiled suddenly, adding, ‘And I like to think we have become friends?’
It was in the form of a question, and Sarah returned the smile, her voice warm when she said, ‘Of course, Lady Margaret. You know I’ll always serve the family to the best of my ability—’
‘No, no.’ It was sharp but not offensive, and immediately followed with, ‘I don’t mean that, Sarah, not at all.’ Lady Margaret rose, walking across the room to stand by the fireplace, and she turned, saying, ‘No, I haven’t explained myself very well. I would like you to think of me in the same way you do Maggie and Rebecca and . . . ?’
‘Florrie.’
‘Ah yes, Florrie. Yes, that is what I would like. Do you think you could do that?’
Sarah didn’t hesitate when she said, ‘Yes, I could do that.’
‘Good.’ Lady Margaret smiled again. ‘I think there are very few people who go through life and meet even one good friend, you know.’
‘You’re probably right.’
‘And one thing is for sure, Sarah.’
‘Yes?’
‘Whoever your mother is, be it fishwife or duchess, she could not fail to be proud of the person her daughter has become.’
Chapter Seventeen
‘I’m sorry, but I still cannot understand why you felt it necessary to go running up there after this girl as though she were a bitch on heat.’
‘
Vanessa
.’
Rodney’s tone of voice brought Vanessa Mallard’s head higher, and then she raised her eyebrows coolly, her perfectly modulated voice cold and clear as she said, ‘If the simile offends it’s just too bad, Rodney, because that is exactly how it looks to me. The least she could have done was to make contact with you before she left, instead of making such a drama of it all.’
Why, oh why, hadn’t he rung first to make sure Richard was already home, before he had arrived at their house for dinner? He always did, or almost always, but he’d had other things on his mind tonight - the main component of which was featuring in this present conversation.
He had seen Sarah twice since her return from Sunderland, and then only when he had called round at the house on his way home from the surgery. His more formal invitations to a meal out and the cinema had been politely, but firmly, refused. Always with a cast-iron excuse, he reminded himself now with a trace of frustrated irritation, but refused nevertheless. But he just couldn’t seem to let go. It would be the sensible thing to do, the logical, and he was a man who had always prided himself on being logical, but such was this feeling that had grown and grown - perversely, it seemed, the less he saw of her - that sense and logic had flown out of the window. And now Sarah was thinking she might leave London altogether and move back up north in the summer over this affair with Rebecca. He could accept that a young mother and child might find it difficult to live in the two rooms Maggie and Florrie occupied, and no doubt it would prove something of a strain for the two older women as well, but the thought of Sarah taking on the responsibility for Rebecca and the baby made it difficult for him to sleep at night. It would be too much for her, damn it. And now Vanessa had the bit between her teeth again . . .
‘It wasn’t a case of making a drama out of anything, Vanessa, as well you know. Sarah had just been informed that her dearest friend was seriously ill after being beaten to a state of unconsciousness by her husband. Why should she spend valuable time trying to track me down? Talk sense, woman.’
‘Don’t “woman” me, Rodney. He does that and you know I hate it.’
‘Then don’t be ridiculous.’ He ignored the reference to Richard, he had already had as much as he could take tonight, and he’d only been in the house five minutes. ‘And anyway, what Sarah does or does not do is of no consequence to you.’ He had been about to say, no business of yours, but knowing Vanessa as he did - and with Richard expected home any minute - it wouldn’t have been wise to push her that far.
‘Yes it is, when it affects an event I had been looking forward to for weeks.’ She eyed him coldly, her mouth tight, as she added, ‘As well you know.’
‘Vanessa, I had already told you and Richard that I wouldn’t be seeing the new year in with you; Sarah being called up to Sunderland was incidental. Besides which, this happened all of six weeks ago now. Can’t you let it drop?’
Vanessa shrugged elegant shoulders. ‘I don’t appreciate being let down, so give me one good reason why I should make things easy for you.’
‘
Give me strength
.’
‘I could give you a lot of things, Rodney, but you seem determined to hang on to some outdated concept of right and wrong. You want me, you have always wanted me, you just haven’t the guts to follow through, have you?’ Her head tilted slightly, her silky hair swinging across one pale cheek as she said, ‘You have committed mental adultery with me from the very first night I married Richard. You know it and I know it.’
He looked at the exquisitely beautiful face, which was as perfect and as cold as a sculpture in fine marble, and found it the very antithesis of Sarah’s warm, vibrant loveliness. How could he ever have thought himself to be in love with her? He must have been mad. And it was in that moment, when he acknowledged the end of his obsession with this woman who had haunted him, in one way or another, for years, that his brother’s voice just behind him said, ‘Is that true, Rod?’
It was his worst nightmare come true, but as Rodney swung to look at Richard standing in the open doorway, Vanessa laughed, a tight brittle sound that had no humour in it at all.
‘Eavesdroppers never hear anything good, Richard, you should know that.’
‘This is my home, Vanessa, and I’m entitled to go where I please in it.’ Richard’s face was white but his voice was steady as he looked at his wife.
‘Your home.’ She curled her lip as she glared at the man she loathed, but before Vanessa could say anything more, Richard spoke to Rodney.
‘Well, Rod? Do you want her?’
This macabre little tableau had been played out in his darkest moments from the first time Richard had announced his intention to marry Vanessa, and now a grim sense of
déjà vu
filled Rodney’s mind. He didn’t want to lose Richard. Oh, God, if you are up there, listen to me. I don’t want to lose him.
‘Tell him, Rodney.’ Vanessa’s voice was of a quality that could have cut through steel. ‘Tell him the truth.’
Rodney took a breath, looking Richard full in the face as he said, ‘No, I don’t want her, Richard,’ and then, as Vanessa spoke his name, he turned to her. ‘That’s the truth, Vanessa, and at the bottom of you you know it, don’t you? You’ve known it for some time.’
She stared at him, standing very still before saying, ‘I don’t believe you, you have loved me for years - we’ve loved each other for years.’
‘You don’t know the meaning of the word.’
‘Oh, and you do? Since you met your little slut of a housekeeper, I suppose?’
‘That’s enough, Vanessa.’
‘Enough? I haven’t even begun!’
‘Vanessa, admit defeat.’ Richard’s voice was amazingly steady. ‘He doesn’t want you, but I am sure it won’t take you long to find someone who does. You’ve had enough practice over the years, haven’t you?’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t want to have to spell it out but I will if you make me.’