Dreams Can Come True (18 page)

Maggie looked in surprise when she arrived at the cottage. What a state it got into over the years since she and Jack had lived there. Surely Farmer Briggs could have maintained the place better, even if it had been empty. The door was hanging by only one of its hinges and a few slates to cover those gaping holes in the roof wouldn’t have gone amiss.

She pushed her way past the overhanging bushes, the scent of lilac invading her senses, causing her for a moment to hanker after her youth. Hadn’t life been much more simple then? A roof over their heads and food in their mouths. The pleasure of waking up each morning, breathing in the fresh sea air, walking along the shore without any shoes on. She forgot the more unpleasant parts; waking up in the chill of the winter and walking through the rain to work at the farm.

“Hannah, is that you?”

Maggie heard a young man’s voice calling eagerly from within the cottage. She hesitated. That was the voice of the man who was looking forward to seeing the daughter, not her mother. What kind of reception was she going to receive?

“Oh, Mrs. Haines!”

Eddie gaped at her, looking alarmed. He rose quickly from the old settee where he had been sitting.

“Where’s Hannah? Did she send yer? Is she ill or something? I haven’t seen her for days!”

He began to run his fingers through his hair in a distracted fashion and Maggie’s heart softened a little as she looked into his handsome face.

“Yes, Hannah isn’t very well at the moment, but she doesn’t know that I’m here. I waylaid Olive and got your message that you’d be waiting here at Lilac Cottage. Strange that you should choose this place to meet. My husband and I used to live here.”

“I know, me mother told me; seemed fitting somehow that we used it for our secret trysts.”

“Oh, so you’ve met here quite often then. All those long walks with the dogs that Hannah took ended up with meeting you.”

“Mrs. Haines, I’m sure yer didn’t come here to discuss Hannah’s walks in the countryside. To be honest, I’m glad that you and I have met. Rather it be you than yer husband. Hannah told me I’d get a good hiding off him should our paths ever cross, which is going to be difficult seeing he’s going to be me father-in-law. I’m sure that Hannah has told yer that she has said she will be me bride.”

“Yes, she had told us, Eddie and that’s why I’ve come to see yer. Her father went up in a puff of smoke when she told him and now he’s not speaking to her. It’s a great pity ‘cos the bond between them is a strong one. Well, it has been up to now.”

“It’s because he thinks I’m not good enough for her. I know it, Mrs. Haines, but she’ll never find another who loves her as much as I do. I love her down to her little fingertips. Since I played with her and Mikey in the Selwyn Lodge nursery, I knew that she would be mine one day. I’ll work all the hours God sends to give her everything she wants in life. The foreman where I work says I’m a strong and willing worker and I’ll end up one day running me own gang of men.”

Eddie looked hopefully at Maggie, wondering if his words had gone some way to impress her. He couldn’t tell as her face had remained inscrutable and then she started pacing the floor, which somehow made him feel nervous. He felt she was up to something; she hadn’t just appeared to tell him Hannah was ill.

“I can see that you’re an earnest young man and only want the best fer Hannah, but think what will happen if things don’t live up to your expectations. She’ll hate yer for it, for taking her away from the comfortable existence she’s grown up with and without meaning to sound the proud parent, she’s been educated to a higher standard than you have, as well.”

“I don’t think that’s a fair thing to say, Mrs. Haines, if yer don’t mind me saying so. Hannah may have had all the advantages, but that doesn’t mean we’ll be mismatched in our married life. She’ll make a good mother and will be able to help our children get a better future. I regret the hours I didn’t spend in the classroom, but I’ll make sure me kids don’t miss out.”

Maggie could see that she wasn’t getting anywhere with this zealous young man who was so adamant that his future lay with Hannah. She decided to try one more tactic, then she was going to throw the towel in. Perhaps a bribe would work; perhaps Eddie could be persuaded financially to move away from the area. She would feel that it was rather a dirty trick, but it would give her the measure of the man.

“Fifty pounds!”

Eddie’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when he heard the sum that Maggie mentioned. But his voice was full of scorn as he flatly turned her offer down.

“You’re trying to bribe me to give up Hannah. What kind of a man do yer think yer dealing with? If yer said a thousand it wouldn’t be enough to make me part from her. I love her, Missis, and I’m gutted that you’d think you could pay me to go away. Anyway…” Eddie’s voice dropped to a confidential whisper, “she may be expectin’ my child. It’s possible, and yer wouldn’t want its father to have cleared off and left it, now would yer?”

Maggie’s anger reached boiling point when she heard his jeering words. So, the little madam had lied when she had said that it was Jeremy she had lain with. Her hand came up to give Eddie a hard slap across his smug-looking face. Then she turned on her heel to walk angrily out of the cottage.

Maggie tossed and turned in her bed that night. Her head throbbed with the anger that she was still feeling. She hated being lied to, and she couldn’t make sense of why Hannah had done so.

On her arrival back at Selwyn Lodge, she had quelled the urge to rush up to Hannah’s room and confront her. The girl wouldn’t be in any fit state to listen to her stepmother’s ranting and deep down Maggie would have felt a curmudgeon to have added to her suffering.

She decided to get up and make herself a warm drink; maybe a cup of tea would calm her down, or perhaps a glass of Cook’s brandy would help her sleep. Maggie looked in on Hannah. From what she could see from the light of the oil lamp, the girl was sleeping, so she closed the bedroom door quietly and tiptoed away.

Someone was sitting at the kitchen table as Maggie entered the room. It was Jack. He jumped as she glided in with slippered feet and set the oil lamp down so she could see him.

“What are you doing here in the dark?” she asked gently. “Can’t yer sleep? Well, that makes two of us. What’s that yer drinking? Pour me a glass of it, will yer? Anything to make me sleep after a really terrible day.”

“Can it get any worse, Maggie? You and me have fallen out over something that we could have worked out between us. I’m sorry, Maggie. I’ve been acting like a thoughtless idiot because I’ve got a dent in me pride.”

“Well, one of the problems has gone away, Jack. Hannah isn’t expecting anymore. She’ll be poorly for a few days, then probably steeped in misery for a week or two, but that should be an end to it. At least she doesn’t have to marry Eddie Dockerty anymore and perhaps we could think of somewhere to send her to get over it. I have the address of her old nursemaid, who I’m sure would be pleased to see her after all this time.”

“No, Maggie.” Jack said very firmly. “Hannah will still be marrying the Dockerty boy. I’m going to insist on it, even if she has lost his baby. He’s deflowered her, if that’s what yer call it and what other man will have her now? I thought at one time she was more than friendly with Jeremy Adshead and marriage to him might have been on the cards.”

Maggie nearly blurted out that Hannah had said it was Jeremy’s baby she was expecting, but decided to hold her tongue. She was at a loss now as to whether Hannah had told her the truth and telling Jack would only confuse things.

“So what are we going to do then? She’s not going to be up to getting involved with wedding preparations just yet and there’s something we’ve forgotten about, your mother and Mr. Arlington.”

“Yes, I know. Poor mother has been pushed onto the sidelines with all this kerfuffle; their nuptials are on the 23
^rd
. We can hardly tell her about Hannah getting wed, that would really put the cat amongst the pigeons. Anyway, what say I come back to our bedroom and make up for lost time? That’s why we’ve not been sleeping well, yer know. No one to warm each other’s feet and that bed in the guest room is as hard as hell!”

It was Hannah and Eddie’s wedding day: 8
^th
January 1870. It was also Eddie’s 21
^st
birthday, as Madeline had flatly refused her permission for her son to marry into the uppity Haines family. That had greatly puzzled Eddie when he had asked her to sign the paper. He had thought his mother would have been happy for him, knowing how he had always nurtured that dream.

Over the years Madeline had lost her prettiness. After the birth of seven children her girth had widened significantly and her expression was of permanent sulkiness, as she experienced life married to a pub’ landlord. Their tavern was the hub of the working-man’s community and Ted spent long hours running it.

Madeline’s pampered upbringing in Formby was now a distant memory and her dreams of a career as a dress designer dwindled with every birth. She had turned into a bitter, resentful woman and she placed the blame of her misfortune squarely at Maggie’s door. For her son to marry into that family was to her a flagrant travesty. She had refused point blank to give the marriage her blessing, and threatened her husband with all sorts of misery if he signed and went behind her back. There was nothing for it but to wait for Eddie to legally be the master of his destiny.

Hannah, on the other hand, experienced none of this hostility from her parents. Jack was glad to be getting rid of her. She was no more than a slut in his opinion and deserved all that life with Eddie was going to bring her. Hannah was his princess no longer; just a constant reminder of his time with Kitty May.

Maggie, however, had been more sympathetic. The thought of Hannah having to live in a tumbledown dwelling, which was all the couple could afford, dismayed her. The fact that Jack was denying her the wedding that all brides dream of was enough in itself, but Hannah was still her stepdaughter; a child that she had nurtured since a babe of eighteen months old.

Behind her husband’s back, she had arranged with a team of her workmen to add two rooms and a bathroom to Lilac Cottage, fix the roof and repair the place into an habitable home. Ironically, she had chosen Lilac Cottage, not because the couple had used it for their secret trysts, away from the prying eyes of those who would have frowned upon their relationship, but because the place down there brought out the best of Maggie’s nostalgia. It had been a haven, somewhere simple and uncomplicated; a shelter where she could hide away from the villagers who had looked down their nose at an immigrant. Now Hannah and Eddie could embrace the same protection, because there would be those who would make it their business to point fingers as before. What was a well brought up girl like Hannah doing with a no-hoper like the Dockerty boy? Was he after the family money? Was there a Dockerty baby on the way?

“Hannah, I’ve never seen you look so beautiful,” Maggie remarked as she put the finishing touches to her stepdaughter’s hair. “I think I made a good job of yer gown if I do say it meself. I’ve not lost the touch even after all these years.”

She had copied Hannah’s wedding gown from a picture in a fashionable London magazine. They had made the journey to the fabric house in Chester and chosen a length of heavy white silk, which Maggie had made into a fitted bodice dress with a skirt that draped across the front in neat swathes and covered Hannah’s now-womanly figure. A small bustle sat under a waterfall train that fell to the floor, then trailed a couple of feet behind her. A long-sleeved jacket made of white baby seal skin completed the outfit and Maggie was now fixing some white satin roses into Hannah’s chignoned hair.

“It’s all thanks to you, Mother,” Hannah said brightly, though tears of emotion were welling into her eyes. “Left to father, I’d be wearing sack cloth and ashes, not this elegant dress on my wedding day.”

“That’s because yer father is still hurting. He’s unhappy that yer marrying Eddie, he only ever wanted the best fer you.”

“You mean marry someone like Jeremy Adshead? This is all Jeremy’s fault that I’m in this situation. Did you seriously think I would have married Eddie, if Jeremy hadn’t given me a baby?”

“Hannah!” Maggie said in a shocked voice. “What are yer telling me? Are yer still insisting that the baby yer lost was Jeremy Adshead’s child?”

“Why, didn’t you believe me?”

“Well, no, not after Eddie told me yer could be expecting his.”

“When was that?”

Both women stared at each other aghast.

“I went to see Eddie that day you were losing the baby. He had left a message for you to meet him at Lilac Cottage. I went instead and tried to get him to change his mind about seeing you. That was when he told me that you were probably expecting his child already. Unfortunately I lost my temper and belted him one, because I thought that you had told me a lie. And he was mocking me, making out that you were his already and that there was nothing I could do.”

“Oh, Mother, I wish that you had told me. It’s true what he said though. Because I needed a father for my baby I sought Eddie out. I didn’t want to be the subject of people’s gossiping. I purposely let him have his way with me, one evening at the cottage. Then of course I lost the baby shortly after, but by that time Father had issued his ultimatum. So, here I am making the best of it. There’s really no choice in the matter, is there? Eddie will be waiting at the church and in an hour I’ll be a married woman.”