They arrived in Bishopwearmouth in an early winter twilight, and the coach driver wasn’t the only one who breathed a sigh of relief that they’d reached their destination. He was anxious to get the tired horses settled in their stables at the back of the Maritime Alms Houses between Crowtree Road and Maritime Place and hurry home to the hot meal his wife would have waiting. Sophy knew she’d have to walk the rest of the way, crossing the Wearmouth Bridge into Monkwearmouth and turning west into Southwick. Normally she would have enjoyed the freedom of being out by
herself, but with the atrocious weather and having to carry her heavy valise, it wasn’t such an adventure. When Patience had still been at school with her, her uncle had taken and fetched them every time, but as soon as she had been on her own this convenience had stopped and she had been dispatched to and from the vicarage by courtesy of public transport. Again, she hadn’t minded this, since anything was preferable to spending time in her uncle’s company, but tonight it would have been nice to have made the journey in comfort, door to door.
Once she had said goodbye to her fellow travellers, however, she squared her shoulders, picked up her valise and began to trudge through the snow which now reached the top of the neat, above-the-ankle button boots which all Miss Bainbridge’s young ladies had to wear. She had left Crowtree Road and turned into High Street West and then Bridge Street, and was approaching the bridge, when a voice calling her name caused her to turn and blink through the snowflakes.
‘Sophy, I thought it was you.’ Matthew came panting up behind her, his face beaming. ‘Here, let me take that,’ he added, whisking her valise out of her hand before hugging her. ‘You’ve picked a good day to come home.’
‘Matthew, what are you doing here?’ She was so glad to see him; the walk to the vicarage had appeared a huge battle just moments ago. Now it was fun.
‘We’ve all been sent home early because of the snow.’ He tucked her arm through his. ‘Frightful, isn’t it? Everyone’s saying it’s going to be a bad winter, but then they always say that and it mostly is.’ He grinned at her. The snow had settled on his hat and overcoat, but he looked every inch the young gentleman, and she was suddenly aware he wasn’t Matthew the schoolboy any longer but a grown man earning his living. She couldn’t have been more proud of him if he was her brother.
‘Come on,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You can tell me all you’ve been doing and I’ll fill you in on the latest at home. Did you know John is courting and it’s serious? Her name is Flora Irvin and she’s a miner’s daughter.’ His voice hardened. ‘Mother’s throwing a blue
fit but John’s determined she’s the one, and Flora’s a lovely girl.’
A miner’s daughter. Sophy could imagine how that had gone down with her aunt. She was forever parading the daughters of her friends in front of the boys, listing their pedigrees as though the girls were cows at the cattle-market. Superior cows though. ‘How long has John been seeing her?’
‘Ages, apparently, but he had more sense than to let on. One of Mother’s friends saw them at the Palace a few weeks ago though, and the game was up. I’d told him it was only a matter of time.’
‘You knew then?’
‘He told me in the summer when I left law college. I’ve been his alibi a few times.’
He grinned at her again and although Sophy smiled back, part of her was saddened. John and Matthew, probably David too, didn’t like their mother. She’d known it for some time. Worse, they didn’t love her either. She would have given the world for her own mother to have been alive, but then, her mother wouldn’t have been like Mary Hutton. How could anyone love her aunt? But her uncle must have done at one time or else he wouldn’t have married her.
‘Flora’s got a sister,’ Matthew added, deadpan.
‘Matthew?’ Sophy stopped dead, staring at him.
‘Verity’s her name and she’s seventeen years old and just . . . perfect. I haven’t mentioned her at home yet, though. I thought I’d let the heat over John die down a bit first.’ Matthew started walking again, drawing her along with him. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think whenever you tell your parents I’d rather not be around, if it’s all the same to you,’ said Sophy, and she was only half-joking. Whatever her aunt’s reaction, she would bear the brunt of it somehow or other.
‘So, tell me what you’ve been doing,’ Matthew kept her tucked into his side as they marched on. The cobbled road across the bridge was deep in snow by now, the evidence of horses clear enough in the furrows left by cart and coach wheels and the odd steaming pile of horse manure. Most folk had wisely retired indoors, and the normally bustling town was hushed and still. Even the
river was quieter than usual, the sound of the paddle-wheel blades on the tugboats beating the water muffled, and the smell of industrial smoke suppressed by the falling snow.
They talked all the way to the vicarage, slipping and sliding once or twice and convulsed in giggles when one or the other of them nearly went headlong. Somehow they reached home without mishap, both of them flushed and bright-eyed as they scraped the ice and snow from the insteps of their boots on the mat of the porch before Matthew opened the front door and they stepped into the warmth of the hall, just as Mary came out of the drawing room. Her eyes flashed from Matthew’s laughing face to Sophy’s, and then back to her son’s as she said sharply, ‘What are you doing home at this hour?’
‘Mr Routledge closed the office early due to the snow.’ Matthew bent down to place Sophy’s valise on the floor before helping her off with her coat. Neither of them were surprised that Mary hadn’t acknowledged Sophy’s presence in spite of it being four months since she had left for her last term at school. ‘I met Sophy near the bridge and we’ve walked home together.’
‘I can see that.’ Mary moved closer, sniffing, her long thin nose practically quivering. ‘Have you been drinking?’
‘Drinking?’ Matthew said in surprise.
‘Alcohol, boy. Alcohol.’
‘The innkeeper made us all a hot toddy when we stopped for a while at Washington,’ Sophy said quietly. ‘The coach driver said it would keep the cold out.’
Matthew, no vestige of laughter remaining and red in the face from being called ‘boy’, spoke stiffly. ‘You shouldn’t have had to travel by McCabe’s coach, Sophy. Father should have come and collected you. It’s not right, a young lady journeying by herself.’
Mary opened her mouth to speak, took in her son’s angry face and thought better of it. But she would privately reprimand Matthew later for speaking to her that way in front of the girl. Sophy had now been elevated from child to girl in her mind, and with her maturing, the fear which had begun years ago when she had seen how beautiful her niece was becoming had been
magnified a hundred times. She wanted the girl out of this house and out of their lives as soon as possible, but due to Jeremiah’s ridiculous interference she was on the horns of a dilemma. She had always intended to put the girl into service in the kitchens of a big house, somewhere miles from Southwick, but that was no longer possible with the education she had received. And she was too young to take the post of a governess somewhere. But something would have to be done.
Matthew took his cousin’s hand, drawing her past his mother as though she didn’t exist as he said, ‘Come into the drawing room and sit by the fire and get warm. I’ll ring for Molly to bring us some tea and cake – it’s a while until dinner.’
Mary stood where she was until the drawing-room door had shut behind the two, her body rigid but the sick panic she felt every time Sophy came home to the fore. John seemed to be out of the equation now, although he would marry that miner’s girl over her dead body. She couldn’t believe John had stooped so low as to entertain such a thing, but it wouldn’t happen. She would make sure of that. But Matthew was still fancy free and young and silly enough to act rashly if he imagined himself in love. Look at the way he had championed the girl this evening and the way they had been laughing when they’d come into the house . . .
Mary found she was wringing her hands and immediately stopped, composing herself before she went upstairs and entered Jeremiah’s study without the courtesy of knocking. He was sitting hunched over his desk working on his sermon for Sunday morning and looked up in surprise at her entrance.
‘The girl is back,’ Mary said flatly. ‘She came in with Matthew a few moments ago and he insisted on taking her into the drawing room for tea and cake.’
Jeremiah nodded without commenting. He might have known it would have to be something to do with Sophy for Mary to willingly come into his presence. That his wife hated him, he had no doubt. She had told him so often enough in the last six years since he had sent the girls away to school. But he was also in no doubt that she hated Sophy more, and he had to admit he didn’t
understand this. The day she had nearly killed the girl – it had been touch and go for a time and he had suffered the torments of the damned wondering if the child was going to pull through – he had realised there was a sickness in Mary. There were many times he had wished, and still did, that things were different and that Esther had never come home to have the child, since this in one way or another had been the bane of his life. That apart, he couldn’t see why Mary was so against his sister’s child. Women were supposed to be the softer of the sexes, weren’t they? And Sophy had displayed none of the badness which had been in her mother. It was unfortunate she looked like she did, admittedly – such beauty in a woman always caused problems in his experience – but it would doubtless be an asset in getting her married off early.
‘Did you hear what I said?’ Mary’s cold flecked eyes were fixed on him and he saw now she was upset about something or other by the patch of colour in each cheek.
‘You said Sophy was home.’
Mary drew in a thin breath. ‘I
said
–’ she stressed the last word as one might do when talking to a recalcitrant child or a dimwit – ‘Matthew brought her home and the two of them are in the drawing room.’
Jeremiah was genuinely puzzled. ‘What of it?’
‘Oh, give me strength.’ Her cool manner gone, she glared at him. ‘Isn’t it bad enough that you had no idea of John’s behaviour until one of my friends had to alert us to the fact he was consorting with a common miner’s daughter?’
Jeremiah was beginning to lose patience. His sermon wasn’t going well; he’d had indigestion from the amount of fat in the cold pork Mrs Hogarth – who wasn’t a patch on Kitty – had served for lunch; he’d heard of nothing but John and this girl, Flora, for weeks from Mary, and now she was playing guessing games. ‘If you have something to say, say it. Otherwise kindly leave me in peace until it is time for dinner,’ he said through partially clenched teeth.
‘The girl and Matthew. Can’t you see what’s under your nose without me having to spell it out?’
‘What?’
She had his attention now. Jeremiah sat bolt upright, staring at her. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous, they’re first cousins.’
‘And that would stop her, would it? The daughter of a whore with her mother’s blood running through her veins?’
‘Don’t talk like that. Esther was my sister.’
‘Oh, I know Esther was your sister, Jeremiah. If anyone knows that, I do. And we both know
what
she was, besides which, as you are well aware from dealing with your parishioners, there is many a girl given a child by her father or brother, let alone a cousin.’
Jeremiah went white. ‘You’re saying Sophy is expecting Matthew’s baby?’
Mary shut her eyes for a moment. Was he being deliberately stupid just to annoy her? ‘Of course not. Would I be standing here talking to you so calmly if that were the case? But there is something between the two of them, I know it, and it needs to be nipped in the bud. What are you going to do about it?’
Jeremiah had relaxed back in his chair as though all the air had left his body, which was exactly how he felt. For a moment he had thought— He shut his mind to what he had thought and looked at his wife. ‘Are you sure about this?’ he asked weakly. ‘That they have those sort of feelings for each other?’
‘Of course I am sure,’ Mary bit out. ‘And I hold you responsible in part, Jeremiah. If you hadn’t insisted on educating the girl above her station, giving her ideas, she wouldn’t have dared to make cow’s eyes at Matthew; she wouldn’t even have been here now. She could have been put into service at thirteen and off our hands a long time ago. But no, you had to have your way and send Patience and the girl away to school, an expense we could ill-afford.’
‘You know exactly why it was necessary to get Sophy out of this house, so don’t give me any of that. Your behaviour that day was inexcusable and could have had repercussions which would have destroyed us both. I had no alternative but to make sure it didn’t happen again.’
Mary flicked her hand scornfully. ‘A little discipline never hurt anyone. Spare the rod and spoil the child.’
‘A little discipline? She was barely conscious for days and her body will bear the marks of your particular rod for the rest of her life in one or two places. There is something in you which is unnatural, woman.’ There, he had said it. He had thought it for years and now he had said it.
Mary’s thin body seemed to swell and he really thought she was going to spring on him, so great was her fury. She stared at him for some moments, her hate a tangible thing, and then walked to the door where she stood and surveyed him again. ‘You are a spineless nothing of a man and I rue the day I ever laid eyes on you, but I say again, what are you going to do about the girl? Let me tell you, if you ignore this like you do everything else you’d rather not face, you will live to regret it. I promise you that.’
For some minutes after Mary had left, Jeremiah continued to stare across the room and then he placed his head in his hands. What
was
he going to do about Sophy?
Christmas, never a particularly merry affair at the vicarage, was even more dismal than usual that year. John and his mother were barely on speaking terms, Matthew tried to spend as little time as he could at home and made the office his excuse, saying pressure of work meant he needed to do extra hours, and the atmosphere in the house was so tense generally it was painful. Even David, home from school, was subdued.