Beyond the Veil of Tears (16 page)

After the birth of her daughter, Angeline lay for almost a month hovering between life and death. Unaware of her surroundings or the daily visits of the doctor, she lay as
still as a corpse being cared for by the nurse Oswald had hired on the advice of the doctor. Myrtle had been sent packing by a furious Oswald immediately after the miscarriage. He had threatened
the maid with dire consequences if she repeated her assertion that he had struck his wife and caused the death of the child.

Heartsore and desperately worried about her mistress, Myrtle had left the estate on a bitterly cold, frosty morning, and made her way to Hector’s house to see Albert. It was his sister who
opened the back door at her knock, and when Myrtle dissolved into tears on the doorstep, she saw a different side to Olive Upton. Within five minutes she was sitting at the table with a cup of
strong sweet tea and a plate of hot buttered girdle scones, with Albert on one side of her and his sister on the other.

Olive made her drink the tea and eat two of the scones before Myrtle told the full story, and as Myrtle was near to a state of collapse herself, she didn’t argue. She was crying again as
she finished relating the sorry tale, and Albert had his arm around her as he said to his sister, ‘We must tell the master. He’s her uncle, after all.’

Olive, shocked to the core, nodded. ‘That poor lass, and the bairn, too. A little girl, you say she was?’ she added to Myrtle. ‘And you think he hit Miss Angeline?’

‘I’m sure of it, but I could tell the doctor isn’t about to say so. He knows which side his bread is buttered.’

‘What about the housekeeper?’

‘She’ll say nothing. She’s frightened of Mr Oswald – they all are – and with the mistress at death’s door, she can’t say what happened. And the baby . .
. ’ Myrtle turned and buried her face in Albert’s chest, her shoulders shaking. ‘I can’t bear it.’

It was decided that Mrs Upton would go and have a word with Angeline’s uncle and put him in the picture, and then call Myrtle if he wished to speak to her.

Hector was sitting in his study staring at the mountain of bills on his desk, most of them pressing. Several of the tradesmen had made it clear they would supply nothing more
until their accounts were settled in full; the bank was threatening to foreclose; and he had no money to pay Mrs Upton’s and Albert’s wages, which were already overdue by some weeks. He
was ruined. He sat, his head thudding. His gambling had got more and more reckless as his debts had mounted; he knew it, but he hadn’t been able to stop. It would all have been so different
if Golding had come through on his promise to help him after the marriage.

Hector stood up abruptly, walking over to stand at the window, but without seeing the garden, clothed in sparkling white. The humiliation of that meeting, shortly after the newly-weds had
returned from their week in London, would be with him till his dying day. He had waylaid Oswald at the club rather than go to the house where Angeline would be present, and right away he had sensed
that Oswald was going to make things hard for him. What he hadn’t expected was that Oswald would deny any knowledge of their arrangement. What he should have done was cut his losses at that
point and walk away with a shred of dignity intact, but he had argued his case until he had been reduced to begging Angeline’s husband, practically on bended knees.

Hector ground his teeth together, his hands clenched at his side. And Oswald had laughed at him. Taken great delight in it, too. Oh yes, great delight.

He had known then he would never be able to face Angeline again. Hector turned, looking at the mound of papers on his desk. His humiliation was too deep, too raw. He had betrayed his
brother’s trust in him and had sold his soul to the devil, because if ever the devil took human form he was there looking out of Oswald Golding’s eyes that night.

The knock on the study door brought him back to the present, and when his housekeeper opened it after he had called ‘Come in’, she found him sitting at his desk once more.

‘Sir, Myrtle – Miss Angeline’s maid – is in the kitchen, and she’s in a sorry state.’

Hector raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

‘I’m sorry, sir, but it appears Miss Angeline has lost the baby she was expecting and, well, I don’t know how to say this, sir, but Myrtle thinks Mr Golding struck her and
that’s what caused the miscarriage.’

‘
What?
’ Hector half-rose from his chair and then sank back down again, staring at his housekeeper. ‘Send her in to me.’

Myrtle was puffy-faced and red-eyed when she was ushered into Hector’s study by Albert’s sister moments later. After signalling for Mrs Upton to leave them, Hector surveyed the girl,
whom he knew to be loyal to his niece. ‘Pull up a chair’ – he gestured towards two straight-backed chairs standing against the far wall – ‘and tell me what you know.
What you
know
, Myrtle. And think carefully before you speak. Mr Golding is a powerful and influential man, and the allegation you made to Mrs Upton is an extremely serious one.’

‘I know that, sir.’ Myrtle sat down after she had placed the chair opposite the desk, but she did not relax, keeping her body stiff and her chin raised. ‘And if you’re
asking me if I saw him hit the mistress, no, I didn’t. But he punched her in the face, as sure as eggs are eggs. I was born near the docks in Monkwearmouth, and I know what a woman looks like
when she’s been bashed like that. No fall against a chair could do what he did to her.’

Hector made no comment on this, but said quietly, ‘Are you saying Mr and Mrs Golding were not on good terms before this incident?’

‘The mistress came back from the week in London after the wedding a changed woman, sir. And no, they were not on good terms, but it wasn’t Miss Angeline’s – Mrs
Golding’s – fault. No one could have been happier on their wedding day than the mistress. But Mr Golding,’ Myrtle’s lips came back from her teeth for an instant as though
she was smelling something foul, ‘he’s not what he seems, sir.’

Myrtle paused for a moment, taking a deep breath and trying to control her voice as she said, ‘The result of him bashing her was that she lost the baby, and when I left this morning the
doctor didn’t know if she was going to be all right. Mr Golding wouldn’t let me stay, not after I’d said to the doctor that he’d hit her and . . . and shouted at
him.’

‘You shouted at your employer?’

Myrtle’s chin rose higher at the disapproval in Hector’s voice. ‘Aye, I did, and I’m not sorry. Miss Angeline didn’t want him near her, after what he’d
done.’

‘What you
think
he did.’

She was going to get no help for Miss Angeline here. Throwing caution to the wind, Myrtle stood up. ‘Everyone at the house is frightened of Mr Golding, so you won’t get the truth
from any of them, but he’s a fiend when he wants to be and he’s no gentleman, I tell you that. If Miss Angeline dies, he’s killed her. She didn’t deserve to be treated like
he’s treated her from the day they got married, not Miss Angeline.’

‘All right, all right, calm yourself. Tears will help no one.’

‘And he killed the babbie. A little lass, she was, and perfect, but she came too early, thanks to him. The old master and mistress must be turning in their graves at the thought of Miss
Angeline being married to him.’

‘
That’s enough!
’ Hector was at a loss to know how to deal with a hysterical female.

‘It’s wicked . . . wicked.’

Glancing with distaste at Myrtle, who was now beside herself, her nose running and mingling with the tears streaming down her cheeks, Hector rang the bell for Mrs Upton. In truth he was both
astounded and horrified at what he had heard, but he still found it difficult to comprehend that a man of Oswald Golding’s breeding would hit a woman, let alone his pregnant young wife. The
man was a bounder and a liar – something he knew to his cost after all – but this was something entirely worse, and the maid must be mistaken. But something had happened, and it was
clear Angeline was in a bad way.

When Mrs Upton put her head round the door, he said briskly, ‘Take Myrtle to the kitchen and give her a hot drink. And tell Albert to bring the carriage round.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Olive looked at Myrtle, who now had her hands covering her face and was crying so loudly it was enough to waken the dead. Raising her voice above the din, she felt
impelled to ask – although she would never normally dream of doing so – ‘Where shall I say you want to go, sir?’

‘To the house.’ Hector didn’t have to say which house; they both knew there was only one in question.

As Mrs Upton led Myrtle – who was crying even more loudly, if anything, at this unexpected turn of events – away, Hector shut the study door and stood with his eyes closed for a
moment. If only half of what the maid alleged was true, he was likely to get short shrift from Golding, and in spite of himself his stomach churned at the thought of facing him again. He
hadn’t been back to the club since the ignominy of that last meeting, when Oswald had held him in such contempt, and their paths had not crossed in the last two years. His shame had prevented
him seeing Angeline when she had called at the house shortly after his altercation with her new husband, and as the weeks and months had gone by, it had seemed impossible to bridge the chasm.

No, he must be honest here, he thought, opening his eyes and straightening his shoulders. He hadn’t
wanted
to see his niece. He would not have known what to say to her because he
couldn’t have voiced the real reason he had quarrelled with Oswald. He had taken the easy way out, even knowing that Angeline would have been distressed and deeply hurt by his rejection of
her. He had delivered her into Golding’s clutches and walked away, that was what it boiled down to, although in his own defence he hadn’t imagined for a moment that the man would
ill-treat her.

When he walked out onto the drive, Albert was waiting, standing by the open door of the carriage.

‘Bad business this, sir,’ said Albert soberly.

‘Yes, indeed, but let us not jump to conclusions until we have established the facts.’

Albert said nothing as he shut the carriage door after his employer and climbed up into his seat, lifting the horses’ reins, but inside he was shouting, ‘
Jump to conclusions!
Jump to conclusions?
’ Myrtle had told the master the facts in plain English. What more did he want? And why did he think Myrtle would put herself in the position of losing her job
– a job her family relied on to keep them out of the workhouse – if every word wasn’t the truth? But then again, there was none so blind as them that didn’t want to see. If
blame was to be apportioned regarding this whole sorry affair, the master should be standing right there at the front of the line.

The sky had clouded over in the last hour and a few desultory snowflakes floated lazily in the morning air. Albert looked up at the thick grey clouds and clicked his tongue for the horses to go
faster. They were in for a packet; he could smell the coming snow and he didn’t fancy making the journey back from the big house in the middle of a blizzard. He wanted to get back to Myrtle,
too. She was in a right old state about Miss Angeline and the baby, and worrying about how she was going to tell her mam that she’d got the push. He could understand that. The first time
he’d gone home with her to the four-roomed cottage in Monkwearmouth, he’d had to hide his shock at the way the family lived. Not that the place wasn’t clean – he’d
been amazed at how spotless it was, considering her mam had her hands full with the bairns and the washing she took in – but it was tiny. The front room, into which you stepped from a square
of hall that allowed only for the opening of the door, held a double brass bed and a rickety wooden cot. Here Myrtle’s parents slept with the latest baby. From what Albert could gather,
Myrtle’s mother seemed to give birth every eighteen months like clockwork. Upstairs, the two small bedrooms had straw mattresses lying on the floorboards for the rest of the children –
girls in one room, and boys in the other – with a line of nails driven into the wall for their clothes.

The family lived in the kitchen, which had a fireplace with an open black range, a kitchen table with an assortment of old chairs round it, a rickety dresser and a number of shelves down one
wall. On either side of the fireplace in the two alcoves were more shelves with a cupboard beneath. The tap for water was at the bottom of a communal yard, which served a number of houses, along
with a privy and wash house. Their existence was hand-to-mouth and the rent man was a constant spectre.

Since Myrtle’s father had fallen ill, another son had left school and started work at the Wearmouth Colliery, but that was still only two wages coming into the house to support a family of
twelve, counting the new baby who was only a few months old; and the few bob Myrtle’s mother earned from taking in washing went nowhere. They needed Myrtle’s money. Albert bit his lip.
And Golding had dismissed her without a reference, which would mean she’d have to take any menial work she could find. For two years now, since she’d become Miss Angeline’s
personal maid, Myrtle had been earning double what she could expect anywhere else – Miss Angeline had seen to that. And every Sunday afternoon when he met her at the bottom of the drive of
the Golding estate to walk her home to see her parents, Miss Angeline always made sure that Myrtle had a bag of food to give to her mam. And not bread or tatties, either. A cooked ham and other
bits one week; a side of best beef and a bag of sugar another – in all the time Myrtle had been at the big house, Miss Angeline had never forgotten. And now the poor lass was at death’s
door.

Albert sighed heavily and then geed up the horses, which were apt to dawdle, given half a chance.

He felt sick to his stomach about what had happened to Miss Angeline, but he had to admit another part of his mind – perhaps the greater part – had been chewing over what this new
state of affairs would mean for him and Myrtle. He couldn’t see her family reduced to going to the workhouse, and without the generous wage she’d been earning that’s what this
could mean. The money he put aside each month towards the smallholding that was his own and Myrtle’s future was now a tidy sum, but he couldn’t in all conscience hold onto it and see
Myrtle’s heart broken. He was going to have to subsidize whatever Myrtle could earn, and put the dream on hold. By, he could swing for Golding – he could straight.