Beyond the Veil of Tears (25 page)

Myrtle glanced across the fields to where a large river was shimmering in the sunshine as they came to the top of an incline, then they were ambling down the slight hill and the river was lost
to view. The afternoon was scented with the heady smell of May blossom and the wealth of wild flowers growing on the banks on either side of the road, and the sun was warm on her face. She took off
her straw bonnet and let the breeze ruffle her hair, shutting her eyes as she searched her mind for a way to help the girl who had been so good to her.

She mustn’t cry again, she warned herself as tears pricked behind her closed eyelids. It upset Albert, and really it did no good. Miss Angeline needed help, not tears, but she was at a
loss as to what she could do. It wasn’t as if Miss Angeline had any siblings or close relatives; even her friends and acquaintances had been Mr Oswald’s, like the Grays. Except . . .
Myrtle’s eyes snapped open as a thought occurred. The mistress had said something about Marmaduke Jefferson turning against him, because Mr Oswald had insulted his wife or something, the
awful night she’d lost the bairn. She’d said Mr Oswald had blamed her for it, that he’d had a falling-out with Mrs Jefferson. Even now, Myrtle’s lip curled at the thought of
the red-headed woman who had clearly been carrying on with Mr Oswald. Could she – dare she – go to Mr Jefferson and ask him for help? How would she even find out where he lived?

She continued to mull over the matter in her mind on the way home to the farm, which was situated west of Sunderland near Castletown, and the beauty of the spring day – the wide, high blue
sky, the trees swathed in blossom, the bluebells that were a thick carpet of pure cerulean in some places – added its weight to the conviction that she couldn’t leave Angeline to
languish in the grim confines of the asylum.

The sprawling, growing town of Gateshead was some six or seven miles behind them when eventually, two hours later, the road twisted and then divided. The main carriageway led on to a hamlet or
two, before the bigger village of Castletown.

Old Ned, the horse, knew exactly where he was going and was as eager to get home as his owners. He gathered pace as he clip-clopped down the narrow wooded lane, shaking his big head with its
flowing mane. After 200 yards the lane widened into a broader track and stretched gently downhill, and there, nestled in a small valley with fields containing a small herd of grazing cattle feeding
on lush grass, was the farmhouse, a huddle of small buildings clustered around it.

Albert pulled Ned to a halt as he always did on returning home when they reached this point. They both gazed at the farm, the same emotion of deep thankfulness in their breasts.
It was
theirs. All theirs. No one could take it away from them, and here they bowed the knee to no man.

Furthermore – and Myrtle sometimes pinched herself on waking in the morning to make sure it wasn’t just a dream – they had been able to bring her family with them, a double
blessing in view of the fact that her father had died shortly after they had negotiated buying the farm. The oldest two of her four brothers – Daniel, who was eighteen, and Terry, who was
fourteen and had recently joined Daniel down the pit – had been able to say goodbye to working in the bowels of the earth and were now Albert’s farm labourers, and twelve-year-old
Frederick would join them in the summer when he turned thirteen and was able to leave school, a day he was longing for, having an aversion to all things academic.

Sixteen-year-old Nell, who had been born with club feet and was a cripple, worked in the dairy on her crutches. She had been thrilled to be given an important job, after a lifetime of feeling
useless. Consequently the dairy was spotless and was already proving a significant asset to the farm. Many an evening Tilly, Myrtle’s mother, had to practically manhandle her daughter out of
the place. Tilly assisted with the copious amount of cooking and cleaning, and even the little ones – apart from James, who was only a few months old and still at the breast, and Lily, who
was nearly two – had their jobs to do when they were home from school.

It was still early days, and with every penny having been sunk into buying the farm and available stock, money was very tight, but all in all it was a supremely happy little family who lived at
Crab Apple Farm. The lads had been content to work for bed and board until Albert could afford to pay them a wage sometime in the future, knowing full well that Myrtle and their brother-in-law had
saved their mother and siblings from the horrors of the workhouse, and had taken the responsibility for the family off their shoulders. As Daniel said – frequently – who could put a
price on working in the clean, fresh air after being entombed in Hades?

Albert and the older lads had whitewashed the two farm cottages inside and out. They stood behind the pigsties and stables and hen coops. The two-up, one-down brick dwellings were soundly built,
and it had been decided the first would house Tilly and baby James in one bedroom, with the three older brothers in the other. Nell and her sisters lived in the second cottage, and again Nell had
taken to the role of housekeeper and governor of her small brood like a duck to water.

The farmhouse itself was in need of some attention, particularly the roof. Albert had designated this a priority when funds were available. The building was composed of a large kitchen and a
smaller sitting room, with another room off the entrance hall, which Albert was going to use as his study. Upstairs were four good-sized bedrooms, but three of them were in a very poor state. The
windows were barely intact, the floorboards were rotten and more plaster had fallen off the walls than remained. The state of the ceilings provided the reason – if one had been needed –
for the decay, but the fourth bedroom had escaped the ravages of the leaking roof and was habitable. Albert and Myrtle slept there, and for the moment Albert had decided to let sleeping dogs lie.
One day the farmhouse would be restored to its former glory and his children would occupy the derelict rooms that the former owner – who was childless – had let slip into such
disrepair. But for now every penny, every farthing, was needed to make the farm a success.

‘It’s beautiful.’ Myrtle’s whisper echoed his own heart. ‘We’re so, so lucky, Albert.’

‘Aye, we are, lass.’

She turned to him, catching his sleeve. ‘We couldn’t have got this without Miss Angeline. You do see that, don’t you? I have to do all I can to help her.’

‘Aye, lass, I know. Don’t take on.’

‘What she said the night she lost the baby, about Marmaduke Jefferson turning against the master an’ all – I feel that might be the answer. That he might help us.’

‘Golding’s not your master any more, lass.’ Albert’s voice was stolid. ‘And gentry turning against gentry and helping the likes of us is a different thing
altogether to them having some sort of falling-out.’

Myrtle said nothing when Albert tugged on the reins and the big carthorse obediently plodded towards the farm. Two of her sisters were sitting to one side of the track where it joined the
farmyard, playing with one of the farm cat’s kittens, and waved at their approach. Looking at their bright little faces, she said, ‘No one should be locked away like a criminal when
they haven’t done anything wrong, Albert. I don’t care what them doctors say. Miss Angeline is no more mad than you or I. It might do no good, I give you that, but I have to try to do
something, and the only thing I can think of is seeing Mr Jefferson. If I don’t, all this’ – she waved her hand at the farmhouse – ‘will turn to ashes. That’s
the only way I can explain it.’

‘You don’t have to explain it, lass. If you want to see this Mr Jefferson, that’s what we’ll do, all right? Now, now, no blubbering or they’ll think we’ve had
a row or something.’

Myrtle hugged him. ‘Thank you.’

‘Lass, I’d give you the sun, moon and stars, if I could. Getting you to see this Mr Jefferson is nothing.’

In the event, and to Myrtle’s dismay, it necessitated a trip to London. To Myrtle, the visit to the asylum had seemed like travelling to the end of the world, and the
thought of a long train journey to the capital and then finding the Jeffersons’ town house was more than daunting. But her enquiries had yielded the fact that the Jeffersons were away in town
and would remain there until the end of the season, whereupon the country-house parties would begin.

Much as she would have liked Albert to accompany her, she knew he was desperately needed at the farm and that an overnight stay in London would take him away for too long. Therefore she
staunchly insisted that she would travel alone, and Albert just as vehemently said she would not. A compromise was reached when it was agreed that Frederick would take some days off school and
accompany her. Two months away from his thirteenth birthday, Frederick was long and lanky and looked older than his actual age. Furthermore, the last years of having an ailing father and the family
living from hand to mouth had toughened him up and, as Albert said with some approval, he had an old head on young shoulders.

So it was that, one morning towards the end of May, Myrtle and Frederick waved goodbye to the rest of the family and made the train journey south. Myrtle had not tried to make an appointment to
see Marmaduke Jefferson, fearing she would be refused outright if she did so, so she left on the understanding that she had no real idea how soon she and Frederick would return, but hopefully they
would stay in London only for one night.

Frederick was as excited as a bairn on Christmas Eve as the train journey unfolded, but was trying hard to maintain the adult pose expected of him as Myrtle’s protector. Myrtle, on the
other hand, was in a state of quiet trepidation at what she might face at the journey’s end.

By the time the train puffed into King’s Cross station in London it was three o’clock in the afternoon. As Myrtle and Frederick alighted – Frederick carrying the carpet bag
with their overnight things, and the remainder of the sandwiches and cake they had brought with them and were saving for their tea – they looked about them in some confusion. The noise, the
people, the general hustle and bustle were more than they had encountered before and it was all overwhelming. Myrtle settled her straw bonnet more firmly on her head, smoothed her summer coat free
of the creases of the journey and slipped her arm through that of her brother. Albert had told her to find a taxi driver when she arrived at the station. ‘Smile prettily,’ he’d
said with a grin, ‘and tell him you can’t afford his cab, but need to know how to get to a certain street. Then you can get a tram there.’

Her brain whirling, she said to Frederick, ‘I think we both need a cup of tea before we do anything else, Fred. There’s a station cafe over there. Let’s go and have a sit down
and get our bearings, and then we’ll see about finding Lower Berkeley Street. We know it’s off Portman Square in the West End, so that’s a help.’

An hour and a half later they were standing outside the Jeffersons’ grand terraced establishment, and Myrtle’s heart was in her mouth. The stateliness of Lower
Berkeley Street and all its neighbours proclaimed that the wealthy citizens and aristocrats of England monopolized the western half of the West End, as did the extraordinary ring of wide and
pleasant parks that dotted the area. Myrtle had listened to Angeline talk about Oswald’s London house and the shops and entertainment, the palaces, gentlemen’s clubs, art establishments
and museums in the capital, but she had never accompanied her mistress on her visits. Oswald had insisted that Ellen Harper and her daughters were on hand to see to Angeline’s needs, and that
had been that. Now, as the grandeur of the nobility’s and gentry’s summer residences were in plain sight, she wondered how she’d had the temerity to think Marmaduke Jefferson
would grant her an audience.
But she had to try.

She glanced over her shoulder to where Frederick was waiting on the other side of the road. She had thought it better that she saw this last stage of the undertaking through on her own, but now
she wondered whether to call him over. She felt very small and insignificant standing on the bottom of the four immaculate steps leading up to the gleaming front door, and glanced to her right,
where a set of steps led down to what she assumed was the kitchen and the servants’ entrance below ground level. Should she make enquiries there first? But probably they would just send her
away with a flea in her ear.

She hesitated for a moment more and then took a deep breath and walked up the steps, yanking firmly on the bell pull. Her heart was now thudding so hard she didn’t know if she would be
able to speak when the door opened. It took a few moments and then the door swung open and an individual whom she took to be the butler was peering down his nose at her. He looked her up and down.
‘Yes?’

No ‘Miss’ or ‘Madam’ or ‘What can I do for you?’ Strangely, his attitude put iron in Myrtle’s backbone. She had decided to plead her cause to whoever
opened the door. Now she straightened her shoulders and said coolly, ‘I’m here to see Mr Jefferson.’

‘Are you indeed. Do you have an appointment?’

Lying through her back teeth, she said, ‘Of course.’

‘And the name is?’

‘I’m Mrs Golding’s personal maid.’

‘Well, Mrs Golding’s personal maid,’ he said with deep sarcasm, ‘if you had had an appointment with Mr Jefferson, I would have known about it.’

Looking him straight in the eye she said coldly, ‘Mr Jefferson must have forgotten to mention it, but I suggest you inform him that I am here.’ She was banking on curiosity, if
nothing else, prompting Mirabelle’s husband to see her.

‘Now look here—’

‘No, you look! I have an appointment, and I don’t appreciate being kept waiting.’

‘I don’t know what your game is, m’girl, but I do know you don’t have an appointment with the master. Do you want to know how I can be so sure? Because
he’s—’

‘Myrtle?’ A voice behind the butler caused him to swing round, and Myrtle saw Alice, Mirabelle’s personal maid, standing there. ‘I was just crossing the hall and I
thought I knew that voice. What on earth are you doing here?’