He sat for an hour or more while the sun moved across the sky and the shadow cast by the trees crept over him and dappled the water in shades of pale blue and grey. Copper blew noisily through her nostrils then stamped her feet impatiently, shaking her bridle as though to say what the hell did he think he was up to hanging about in this place and her longing to be free and galloping across the fields.
“All right, lass, all right, I know you want to be off so let’s have a good gallop and then make for home. I’ve some papers to go over with the old man so we’d best make a move.”
He raced through field after field, going north, taking hedges and fences and even five-barred gates as though they were no more than a foot high, tearing on until great drools of spittle fluttered and trailed from Copper’s mouth, her heart pumped and her flanks heaved. As they galloped over a rocky stretch at a place called simply Hill Top, her hooves dashed like great hammers against an anvil, sparks flying. It was as though devils were after him, devils of remorse and guilt and sadness, for he knew he had used innocent little Evie Edward for his own pleasure and yet had not been asked to pay for that pleasure, as she was paying. It was a man’s world his father was fond of telling him, but surely a modicum of compassion . . . Dear sweet Jesus, was he never to let up on himself? Was he never to forget sweet Evie and get on with his life as his father had advised? He must and, he supposed, he would in time but it was bloody hard. Why could he not just put it behind him, forget Evie and her predicament, which after all, he was putting right as far as money was concerned, and let up on himself?
He arrived in the stable yard an hour later. Charlie ran to take Copper and on his face was a mixture of emotions, the first being massive disapproval, for what man, what horseman would treat an animal as the mare had been treated.
He spoke up before thinking. “Nay, Master Josh, what in hell’s name ’ave yer done ter’t beast. Poor lass . . . poor lass. Look at ’er, she’s all of a dither and can yer wonder. I’m surprised at yer, I really am. I thought yer knew better. Come wi’ me, my lass,” he said tenderly to the mare, then, as though Josh’s treatment of the animal had taken all thought from his head, but which had now returned, he turned from the mare and faced his young master. Another expression had come to replace the first, one that Josh could not read.
“What’s up, Charlie? Apart from Copper, I mean, for which I’m truly sorry. I just got carried away and kept on going. I’m sorry.”
“Eeh, Master Josh, there’s such a to-do up at th’ouse.” Charlie shook his head in what seemed to be sad bewilderment, a bewilderment that his own simple soul could not unravel.
“A to-do! What sort of a to-do?”
“Yer’d best get up theer, Master Josh. Eeh, I’m that sorry . . .”
“Sorry? What the devil for?”
“Nay, ’tis not fer me ter say, sir. ’Tis not my place.”
“Bloody hell, man, you’re beginning to alarm me.”
Charlie shook his head sadly then turned away and began to lead the exhausted horse back towards the stable and Josh had no choice but to let him. He began to run. He was himself soaked in sweat, his hair sticking about his forehead and ears in wet spikes. His shirt clung to his back and chest and even his breeches were sweat-stained. Should he go directly to his room, which had been his first choice, get washed and changed before facing whatever “to-do” had taken place in his absence or should he go straight to his father’s study, for if some drama had exploded while he was out his father would know all about it? He did not want to upset his mother if . . . if what? What could have happened in the few hours he had been riding like a whirlwind so to distress even the bloody groom, for goodness’ sake?
His boots clattered across the cobbles in the yard. The door to the kitchen stood open to let out some of the heat, for the preparation for the evening meal was well under way, but as he almost ran into the enormous room which was always filled with some activity, even if it was only Cook making work for idle hands, as she called it, he was struck full in the face and chest by the absolute lack of any movement or sound. The maidservants were in a huddle, some with their arms about one another as though for comfort, one or two weeping silently and the most terrible fear gripped him, for surely, while he had been out trying to rid himself of his own ghosts, death had come into the house and helped itself to one of the household.
“Dear Lord,” he whispered. No one heard him say the words but as one they turned and looked at him, their faces blank and shocked, even that of Mrs Harvey who, he would have said, had no feelings at all. Cook leaned with what appeared to be a great weakness against the enormous dresser where the everyday crockery was kept and with her face pressed into Cook’s full, maternal bosom a little girl sobbed and sobbed. But all with no sound.
“What is it? Dear God, what has happened? Mrs Harvey . . . Cook . . . what . . .”
Mrs Harvey found her voice but it sounded hollow and toneless.
“You’d best go through to the study, Master Josh. Your father’s there and . . . your mother.”
“But won’t someone tell me what’s happened. It’s . . . it’s not Arthur, is it?” His young brother was away at boarding school but perhaps some awful thing had happened to him, word reaching his father while Josh had been galloping about the countryside filled with his own self-pity.
Cook lifted her head from that of the little girl – was she the scullery-maid? – and spoke sadly.
“No, lad, not Master Arthur.”
“Thank God. I’ll go and . . .”
“Aye, Master Josh, you go an’ . . . well, your pa’s waitin’ for you in the study.”
He strode across the kitchen, aware that one or two of the maids scurried to get out of his way as though afraid he might touch them. As he opened the door that led into the passage and the front of the house he noticed there was a basket on the table over which several of the housemaids were beginning to hover. With the part of his mind not harrowed by fear he wondered what was in it to arouse their strange interest.
Two days later he announced his intention of going to the funeral, though his father threatened him with the hobs of hell if he went.
“Can you not see, lad, that it’s an admission of guilt if you go.”
“I
am
guilty, sir. I killed her. She was bearing my child when she died and I can do no more for her than go to her funeral.”
“But what will folk think, lad?” his father pleaded. “What of your mother and sister?”
“Don’t threaten me with that again, sir. I’m sorry if they are to be made to feel social outcasts just because . . . Sweet Jesus, will you listen to me? I was going to say just because a working girl has died, as though she were nothing. We . . . I did her a wrong and if the admitting of that wrong is to hurt me then so be it. I . . . I have a son.”
“And that’s another thing. An illegitimate child can’t stay here under the same roof as decent folk.”
“He’s three days old, sir, and can harm no one and as for his being illegitimate I shall adopt him and make him my legal son.”
“Goddammit, I won’t have this, I won’t. Your mother is on the verge of a breakdown and your sister won’t come out of her room for the shame of it. You realise it’s all over Manchester by now.”
“You must do as you think fit, sir, as I must. Mrs Cameron has found me a nurse.”
“Mrs Cameron?”
“Your cook, Father, who was friend to Evie Edward and—”
“The bloody woman will be sacked.”
“For what? For finding someone who can feed the child who would surely die like his . . . like his mother if . . .”
He nearly broke then, the youth who had grown up overnight and become the man. He wore black. His face was gaunt and haunted, even the warm amber tones of his skin, put there by his outdoor pursuits, seeming to have faded. His eyes, a soft smoky grey once, had become flinty, deep, his feelings hidden, his grief hidden, his guilt, which racked him hour after hour, hidden from those who could not understand his madness.
From that appalling moment when he had entered the study to find his mother wilting in hysterical tears and his father like a man demented, he had been the same. When he was told that gentle Evie Edward had died of a haemorrhage, the tide of which her own experienced mother could not stop, he had for a moment gone wild, flinging himself dangerously against hard objects in the study until even his father had been afraid. His mother had screamed and Billy, one of the grooms, had been sent hell for leather for the doctor. Wrapped tenderly in a basket, his rosy, pursed lips sucking hopefully on nothing, Evie’s son,
his
son, lay where his maternal grandfather had laid him on the kitchen table, to the consternation of the kitchen-maids.
“Theer’s nowt us can do fer ’im,” he said, absolutely no emotion in his voice, though his face was grey with grief, “so I reckon ’is pa’ll ’ave ter see to ’im.”
Without another word he had turned on his heel and left and though Edmund Hayes had sent Jack from the stables to fetch him back he had refused to come and that was that.
“If you keep this child it will kill your mother, you know that, don’t you?”
“I don’t believe that, sir, and if he offends you I shall arrange that he and I will live elsewhere.”
“Christ, Josh!” His father was appalled. “You can’t do that to us, you can’t. Keep the boy by all means but put him with some decent woman who will look after him. You can visit when you want and though it will cause talk . . .”
“I mean to have him with me, sir,” his son said quietly. “I killed his mother and surely every child deserves one parent. He is a healthy lad, so the doctor, whom I took the liberty of asking to look him over, tells me, and he is handsome too.” There was an astonishing expression of pride in his voice. “If you won’t allow me to put him in the nursery upstairs . . .”
“
What!
” His father’s bellow could be heard all over the house and Clara, the kitchen-maid who was nursing the baby by the kitchen fire, pulled the blanket up protectively about his head which was covered in tiny whorls of dark brown hair. For the moment, and Edmund Hayes had made it very clear it was a temporary thing, the child was spending his nights in his basket beside Clara’s bed and his days beside the kitchen fire, the wet-nurse, who had several bairns of her own to see to as well as her new babe, coming in every four hours to feed him and he seemed to be content enough. Well, there were enough of them to nurse him, weren’t there, Cook said, and all fighting with one another over who was to hold him whenever he so much as whimpered.
Josh Hayes stood at the edge of the churchyard of the little chapel in Pendlebury where Evie Edward was laid to rest. He had not loved her, not as a man can love a woman, but she had left something of herself, beside her son, in his heart which no woman would ever dislodge. He stood almost hidden by the broad trunk of an ancient oak tree, for he did not wish to distress her family, but if they had turned and spat at him he knew he must be there to pay his last respects to the girl, she was no more than that, who, if he had not loved her, had loved him.
When they had all gone he moved slowly through the steady drizzle to stand beside the raw earth of her grave, his head bowed, his face drenched with what could have been rain but was not. For several minutes he stood, then, raising his head, he let the rain wash across his face before turning towards his mare whom he had left tethered in the lane.
12
They called her Kitty. Well, Jennet and the girls did, for Nancy said they must do as they pleased since she was far too busy to be bothering with christenings and the like. Of course she’d
be
there, she said impatiently, if Jennet wanted to arrange it, Jennet being quite horrified at the idea of the child not being made known to God, but with the journey to Oldham to be fitted in and the machines they meant to hire to be installed she was run off her feet as it was. It took up time she could barely spare just to feed the infant, which she felt compelled to do, since she had enough milk to nourish every newborn in Angel Meadow, she said, somewhat bitterly, but it was not long before Kitty Brody and her feeds were determined by the needs of her mother and not the other way round. If Nancy could not be there she drew her milk from her breasts with a pump, the milk then being put into an infant feeding-bottle with an india-rubber teat, all purchased from a good druggist in Deansgate, and one of Kitty’s other “mothers” fed her. She was not what you would call a placid baby, but she took the teat or the nipple with great forbearance, which astounded her mother in view of who her parents were, in particular Mick O’Rourke who had a temper on him that could turn nasty, as Nancy knew to her cost, and she herself was no shrinking violet.
For a moment, when the name of Kitty was suggested, Nancy had looked quite haunted as though the ghost of her poor mam had come back to grin drunkenly at her, then she shrugged, for it was as good a name as any, she supposed.
From the first she could find nothing in her to give to her child, except the sustenance of her milk, that is. How could she, she asked herself, when she remembered the way in which the baby had been conceived and who her father was. She hated Mick O’Rourke with a venomous loathing that grew inside her, blocking the way along which her maternal and protective love might have flowed. She knew she was damaged in some way by it. She knew it was not normal for any woman to feel the total indifference for her child that she felt towards Kitty. Even her own mam, drunken whore that she had been, had loved her and Rosie and Mary, protecting them as best she could from the filthy hands of the men who had grabbed for them, doing her best to feed them and clothe them and warm them in the depth of the dark Manchester winters. Not that Kitty would suffer as she and her sisters had suffered, for she was petted and pampered like a little princess by her Aunt Mary and by Jennet. They adored her and fought with one another over who should pick her up if she cried – which was often – and she thrived on it, not really caring who her mother was, since she had two others. A child needs love to grow. It needs nourishment and that Nancy gave her in abundance but the love she received came from elsewhere.