Gideon cursed as he lost his grip of the pencil he was holding awkwardly in his left hand.
He was working on his accounts and wondering anxiously if he had overstretched himself. The rental income from his properties had turned out to be less than he had anticipated.
His left hand ached from the unfamiliar exercise of writing, but Gideon had no option other than to do his own bookwork. Unlike Mary, he was not in the position to pay someone else to do it for him.
Thinking of Mary caused him to stop work and frown. He had heard that she had been released from prison and that she had returned home in very poor health.
He tried to ignore the unwanted thought that it would cost him nothing to go to see how she did. Why should he, he asked himself irritably, but somehow he found himself pushing his books to one side and standing up.
It was a Saturday evening and already there was
a certain rowdiness about the crowds gathered outside the public houses.
The air was full of summer sunshine and the talk of labour problems and strike action. Men weren’t earning enough to keep their families fed, and Gideon had every sympathy with them!
He cut through the market, where they were loading the last of the unsold cheeses onto carts, and then through the streets, past the Co-operative Society’s shop, where they were pulling closed the shutters as the final customers left, shawls pulled around their heads despite the heat, clogs clattering on the cobbles. Only the working classes shopped at the Co-operative Society. ‘Ladies’, like Mary, bought their provisions from Heaney’s on the corner of Fishergate and Chapel Street, and Gregson’s of Hope Street, famous for its cured hams.
According to Will Pride there had been a falling-off in his brother’s business since his marriage to Maggie.
‘Too sharp by half, she is – argy-bargied with half of our Rob’s customers or more, and fell out wi’ ’em!
‘Have ye heard about our John?’ he had asked Gideon. ‘Left Hutton, he has, and gone and got hisself apprenticed to some photographer. Caused a right to-do with Lyddy’s stuck-up family! Wanted him to go to be a schoolteacher, they did!’
Will had given an amused snort!
Gideon arrived at the house just as the doctor was leaving, and when Mary saw him her pale face lit up immediately.
‘I won’t stay,’ Gideon began.
But Mary overruled him, insisting, ‘I have been thinking about you such a lot lately, Gideon, and I am so pleased that you are here. Let’s go into my sitting room. I’ll ring for tea.’
A little uncomfortably Gideon followed her, noticing as he did so how much weight she had lost since he had last seen her, and how very frail she looked.
Once they reached the sitting room, she sat down, her hand going to her mouth as she began to cough.
‘Look, I can see that you aren’t well,’ Gideon began gruffly. ‘I’ll leave now and perhaps come back another time.’
‘No, Gideon!’ Mary protested.
The arrival of the tea tray kept them both silent then, but once the maid had gone, Mary begged him, ‘Gideon, please don’t go. You don’t know…I can’t tell you how much it means to me to have you here.’ To Gideon’s embarrassment, tears filled her eyes, and she had to put down the teapot as her hand started to shake.
‘Miss Isherwood,’ he began awkwardly, ‘I –’
‘No, please don’t call me that,’ Mary stopped him fiercely.
She was so obviously overwrought and upset that Gideon’s anxiety for her increased, but before
he could tell her that he thought she ought to rest, she announced abruptly, ‘Gideon, there is something I must tell you. I have tried so many times to do this,’ she continued in a low nervous voice. ‘I have lain awake at night, rehearsing the words I must say, and trying to imagine –’ She stopped and bit her lip, her eyes bright with tears. ‘If I don’t tell you now, Gideon, it may soon be too late. My doctor has told me that…that he believes the weakness in my chest has been exacerbated by my confinement in prison and that there is nothing he can do…’ Turning her head slightly away from him so that her voice was muffled, she whispered, ‘My condition is terminal.’
Gideon couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Mary was telling him that she was going to die! A huge surge of angry denial swept over him. But before he could voice it, she was continuing.
‘I grew up as a very lonely young woman.’ She spoke slowly as though even the effort of talking was tiring for her. ‘I was under the rule of an extremely strict and unpleasant father, who made no secret of the fact that he considered me to be a poor substitute for the son he had wished to have.’
She paused, and Gideon’s chest tightened as he witnessed her exhaustion. ‘You should be resting,’ he began.
‘No, Gideon, please. I must do this. I have to tell you! My father was a very successful businessman but he was also very suspicious of others. He was
a man who could not abide to be outdone by anyone in any way. When one of his fellow mill owners boasted about the portrait he had painted of himself, my father sent for the young artist who had painted it and told him that he wanted him to paint one of him, but, of course, bigger and better than his rival’s. The portraitist’s name was Richard Warrender.’ Mary gave a sad sigh, her mouth trembling.
‘I cannot go into details, Gideon. Even now, the pain of speaking about him…But he was the most…Predictably, I suppose, I fell in love with him, but, not so predictably, he returned my love. I knew, of course, that my father would never agree to us marrying and so we made plans to run away together. I had my mother’s jewellery and a small amount of money, and…but…’
Gideon could hear the emotion in her voice as she pressed her handkerchief to her mouth.
‘He deserted you, is that what you are trying to tell me?’ he demanded.
The look of anguish in Mary’s eyes made him catch his breath.
‘In one sense, yes, I suppose you could say that,’ she acknowledged. ‘You see, there was an accident and Richard was killed. Or at least I was told by my father that there had been an accident.’ Her voice shook. ‘I have always feared that my father guessed how we felt about one another, and that he was implicated in Richard’s death but, of course, I could never have dared to say so, especially when…I
was so afraid, so alone. I had no one to turn to other than my nurse. She herself was due to be married and was going to leave my father’s employ. With her connivance I…I managed to escape from this house, and go to London to seek the protection of a great-aunt who lived there.’
‘Surely if this Richard was already dead, there was no point in you leaving?’ Gideon questioned her bluntly.
Mary lifted her head and looked at him. ‘On the contrary, Gideon, there was every point,’ she told him quietly. ‘You see, I was carrying Richard’s child.’
Now she had shocked him and his expression betrayed that shock. But Mary ignored it, pressing on determinedly, ‘You were that child, Gideon. My child.’
‘No, that’s impossible.’ Gideon got to his feet, almost overturning his chair in his furious denial of her words. ‘My mother…’
‘Was my nurse,’ Mary told him simply. ‘When I told my great-aunt of my condition, she suggested that we approach her and ask her and her new husband to accept you as their own. Do not look at me like that, Gideon,’ Mary pleaded. ‘I had no other option!
‘You cannot know how much it hurt me to have to part with you – my child, Richard’s son, all that I had left of him – but I was so afraid for you, so afraid from the moment I knew that my father had arranged the death of my beloved Richard, so
afraid that he would find out that I was carrying you and that you would be destroyed in turn, either whilst you were still within my body or afterwards, when you had been taken from me at the moment of birth, and I was unable to protect you. I do not exaggerate, Gideon,’ she warned him starkly. ‘My father was more than capable of such an action. To him you would have been a disgrace, a slur on his public image he could not tolerate.’
Mary stopped speaking, too overcome with emotion to continue, turning her head away from him and, against his will, Gideon felt the sharp burgeoning of an unfamiliar emotion. Not pity, and certainly not understanding, but something sweet and piercing that pushed through the darkness of his furious anger like the green stalks of spring flowers pushing through the winter frost. ‘That first time you came here, I so wanted to tell you everything, Gideon, and to claim you as my son, but I was afraid that you would reject me and that if the scandal of our true relationship became public, it would drive us even further apart. You can’t know how many times I…’ she stopped to cough again, but Gideon was oblivious to her distress.
Standing up, he told her violently, ‘I do not believe you. How can you be my mother? It is all a lie.’ Then, before Mary could say anything further, he wrenched open the door and left.
An hour later Will Pride saw him in The Fleece,
staring bitterly into his empty glass and obviously the worse for wear.
‘Eh, Gideon, lad, I thought thee’d given up drinking. In fact, I heard thee ’as become a man o’ property,’ he added jovially.
Ignoring him, Gideon went up to the bar and bought himself another drink.
Mary Isherwood was not his mother and that tale she had told him was just a pack of lies.
He was drunk when he crawled into his bed two hours later, and he remained drunk for the following three days, whilst war raged inside his head and his heart.
‘Henry, please will you try to eat something?’ Ellie begged her husband. ‘You have barely touched a meal these last three days.’ She bit her lip as she looked anxiously at Henry’s gaunt face.
‘How can I eat,’ Henry responded wildly, ‘when the men of the
Antareas
are lying dead at the bottom of the sea?’
Ellie put her hand on his arm and asked him, ‘Henry, would it not be better if you were to confide in some person, someone of authority your…your fears regarding the
Antareas
? If indeed you are right and your father has –’
‘If? Do you not believe me then?’ Henry raged bitterly. ‘If you do not, then why should anyone else? No, I cannot tell anyone. And you must not either, Ellie. You must promise me that. You must
speak to no one of what I have told you. No one at all! Do you promise?’
Reluctantly Ellie did as he was insisting, fearing that she might agitate him further if she refused.
‘You think that I am deluded,’ Henry told her morosely, ‘and sometimes I wonder if I am myself. I feel that there is a curse on me at times, Ellie, and that I must pay for the sins of my father.’
‘Please don’t talk like this, Henry,’ Ellie begged him, wishing she had not given him her promise and wishing also that she might confide in Iris and seek her opinion.
Sighing, Ellie broached a subject she had not yet had time to discuss with him.
‘Cecily telephoned me today. Her mama-in-law is hiring a house in the Lake District for the rest of the summer, and Cecily is going to go up there with the baby. Iris will go too when she has time and Cecily has invited me to join them. It is to be arranged that the gentlemen, including you, Henry, will drive up to join us when they can –’
‘No, no, Ellie, you must not leave me. You cannot. If you do –’
‘But, Henry, it will only be for a few days. And –’
‘No, no, you must not go.’ Henry began to pace the room in agitation, wringing his hands. ‘You cannot go, Ellie. Please, I beg you, do not leave me. I cannot bear this house if you are not here. You cannot go and leave me here. You must not. I shall not allow it.’
He started to cry and, suppressing her own disappointment, Ellie went to comfort him, assuring him that she would not accept her cousin’s invitation.
It didn’t take Gideon very long to walk to Winckley Square, Rex trotting busily at his heels. The maid who answered the door to his knock looked at him in bemusement, but he ignored her flustered response to his arrival, and asked for Mary.
‘Miss Isherwood’s in her room,’ the maid responded unhappily. ‘Doctor’s orders and…’ His heart pounding, Gideon told Rex to ‘stay’ and took the stairs two at a time, rapping briefly on Mary’s bedroom door, his stomach clenching as he had to strain to hear her feeble ‘Come.’
The look of disbelief and joy suffusing her face when she saw him made him stiffen warily.
‘Oh, it’s you, Gideon. I thought you must be the doctor. He said he would call this morning. I am so pleased to see you!’ Tears filled her eyes and shimmered like rainbows before falling to run down her sunken face.
It shocked Gideon to see how much she had deteriorated in the three days since he was last here, and something twisted painfully round his heart at the thought that he might have been too late. Somehow he found he was standing beside the bed, taking the hand she reached out towards him.
As her thin fingers curled round his, she exclaimed softly, ‘You are so like your father, Gideon. Your
hands…’ Her face clouded as she touched his damaged hand. ‘I would not have had this happen to you for all the world!’ Before he could stop her, she raised his hand to her lips and pressed a maternal kiss against it. ‘You have your father’s gift, and I wish so much that you and he…I have kept all the little drawings you have done for me and put them with your father’s sketches. I must show you those…’ Her eyes misted and Gideon felt his heart lurch against his ribs as her breathing became shallow and laboured.
There was a rap on the door and the maid came in, announcing quietly, ‘The doctor is here.’
When the doctor had finished his examination Gideon was waiting downstairs for him.
‘Miss Isherwood – how is she?’ he demanded.
‘Not good, I’m afraid. The damage caused by the force-feeding, combined with an existing weakness…’ He paused, aware of the tension emanating from Gideon. He had been a doctor for twenty-five years, and this was a part of his job that never got any easier.
‘The situation has, I fear, gone too far for an operation, and besides…’ He looked away from Gideon. Mary had been very specific about her wishes.
There was a small pause in which the ticking of the clock had such a sharp distinctiveness that Gideon wanted to pick it up and hurl it across
the room to silence it ticking away the seconds of Mary’s life.