Emily (47 page)

She glanced at Philip and he smiled reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry about anything,’ he said. ‘It will all come right.’

He had booked rooms at the Station Hotel in Hull and after Emily had washed and changed from her sooty travelling clothes she went down to the foyer to meet Philip for supper. ‘Is it too late to visit Mary now?’ she asked eagerly. ‘I think she wouldn’t
mind, she will be so thrilled to see us.’

‘She won’t be there. She has let the shop to someone else.’

‘Oh! I was so looking forward to seeing her!’ Emily was bitterly disappointed. She had so much to tell her and things to ask too. Important things which would affect her own future.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said firmly. ‘I will take you first thing tomorrow.’

‘But where? Where has she gone?’

He shook his head and smiled in a maddening way and would not be drawn.

They had supper and then called for a hackney carriage to take them to the riverside, where along with others who had come to watch the busy river traffic of steam packets, tugs and ferry boats, they walked to stretch their legs and felt the briskness of the breeze coming in from the sea. Emily drew in a deep breath. She could smell the salt, she could even welcome the smell of the whale blubber and the seed oil. She sighed it out. ‘It’s so good to be back,’ she said gratefully. ‘Especially when I was told that I could never come back. That I was banished for ever.’

He remained silent until she whispered, ‘But I can’t get rid of this feeling that Hugo Purnell is behind me. I won’t ever be able to come into Hull without thinking of him.’

‘I told you that he was in gaol and that is where he will remain for a very long time. You don’t need to be afraid of him!’

‘But I am! I can’t rid myself of his image. He’s like a spectre haunting me!’

He looked down at her. ‘Then we must confront the spectre,’ he said firmly and put up his hand to signal another hackney.

‘Where are we going?’ She was helped in and Philip took his seat beside her.

‘We are going to confront Purnell once and for all! You cannot spend the rest of your life thinking of him. I want you’, he said softly, ‘to think of me sometimes.’

‘But I do,’ she pleaded. ‘Always. But’, she shuddered, ‘he is always there.’

The cab came to a halt. ‘You sure this is where you want to be, sir?’ the cabbie asked. ‘I know some folk come for entertainment, but it’s not a suitable place for your lady.’

Philip nodded in agreement and asked him to wait for them and as Emily got down she trembled and shook. ‘Not here, Philip! Not here. I can’t go in!’ In front of her, its walls as forbidding as ever, was the Kingston Street gaol.

He took hold of her arm and firmly propelled her towards the octagonal building. ‘You must, or Purnell will always hold you fast.’

Two wards were kept for debtors, one for male and one for female, and as Emily took reluctant, dragging steps down the corridor to the male cells, she was reminded forcibly of her time spent incarcerated deep in the depths of one of the other buildings.

‘This fellow doesn’t get many visitors.’ The warder rattled his keys as he led the way. ‘He did at first. Some of his friends were very curious to see him locked up. They used to give him a shilling or
two, but he was very abusive so they stopped coming. Purnell!’ he shouted. ‘Purnell! Visitors for you.’

Emily clung to Philip as she looked over the crowd of men in the communal cell, but couldn’t recognize the tall figure of the man who had so humiliated and debased her. The men in here were bent and sullen looking and simply looked up in a desultory fashion as Purnell’s name was called.

A man in a dirty old coat got up from the floor and shuffled towards them. ‘Who wants him?’ he whined. ‘Have you brought some liquor – or money?’

‘It’s Purnell we want, old man,’ Philip said. ‘Can you point him out?’

The prisoner looked from Philip to Emily, then back to Philip again. His face was grey and lined, his hair long and unkempt. He narrowed his red-rimmed eyes. ‘I know you,’ he said hoarsely. ‘What’s your name? I went to school with you.’ He clutched the bars of the cell. ‘Don’t you remember?’

Philip stood back from the stench of him. ‘Purnell! Is it you?’

Emily was horrified. This was never Hugo Purnell! This shabby, uncombed, dishevelled figure was not the figure who had haunted her sleep.

‘’Course it’s me!’ Purnell snarled. ‘Come to gloat have you? None of my friends come any more, so why have you come? What’s your name? I can’t remember.’

‘Linton,’ Philip reminded him. ‘I came to see you about a year ago.’

‘Ah,’ Purnell said vaguely, his mood changing. ‘Yes. So you did. What was it about? Something about a servant girl? Do I still owe you money?’

‘Not any more, the debt was repaid.’

‘Was it? Hah! You were lucky then. Nobody else’s has been. I get letters every day asking me to pay.’ His face flushed and he became angry again. ‘How do they expect me to pay from in this hell hole, I ask you? I’ve got to work to pay for my keep in here, you know! I’ve been on the treadmill, I’ve ground up whiting.’ He showed his hands, which were ingrained with dirt and lined with white powder. His mouth worked and trembled. ‘But I can’t do it, old fellow. I’m not cut out for it, you know.’ His head drooped and he put his hand to his eyes. ‘Now I sweep out the cells, sweep up other people’s filth.’

Philip and Emily were both silent and Emily pressed her hand to her mouth and closed her eyes tightly. She fought hard not to feel sorry for him. Remember, she deliberated, what he did to you, how he made you suffer.

Purnell lifted his head. ‘So why have you come, Linton? And who’s the lady? Your wife?’

‘Er, yes,’ Philip agreed cautiously.

Purnell stared at Emily. ‘Well, you’re a very lucky dog, Linton, but then you always were! I’m delighted to meet you ma’am – delighted.’ Some of his old charisma returned and it was obvious that he didn’t recognize Emily. He turned his gaze to Philip. ‘You’re the only one who ever comes you know. Nobody else does. My wife left me and so did
my mother. None of my friends come. They’ve all left me to rot.’

Emily stifled a sob. How often she had wished that bitter thought on him, and Meg too had many times voiced the hope that he would rot in hell, for it was indirectly because of him that she too was transported.

‘Is there anything you need, Purnell?’ Philip asked. ‘Food? Blankets?’

Purnell shook his head. ‘Nothing, except a bottle of whisky maybe. There’s nothing else that can ease the misery or the humiliation.’

Emily spoke softly. ‘Do you ever think of why you are here? Of the events which brought you here?’

He stared at her blankly. ‘It was something to do with owing money, I think. I kept borrowing I suppose and not paying back.’

He doesn’t even remember me, Emily thought bitterly. After all I went through and he doesn’t remember, therefore he can’t feel any remorse.

Philip took her arm. ‘Come, Emily, let us go,’ he said.

‘Emily!’ Purnell said suddenly. ‘I knew someone called Emily once. She was a servant girl, but very beautiful, too beautiful to be a servant. But I hurt her.’ His eyes grew thoughtful and he scratched his chin. ‘She had my baby, but it was dead. Poor Emily! I wonder what happened to her.’

Emily turned away. There was nothing more to be said. They reached the top of the corridor and she turned around. Purnell was still clutching the bars of the cell and watching their progress. He painted a forlorn figure of misery, she thought.

As they reached the waiting cab, she looked back. It was dark now, but the moon, which lay half hidden behind cloud, cast a daunting, ominous shadow of the high walls over the courtyard. The only lights came from the top of the gatehouse in the north wall and the governor’s house, which overlooked all the buildings. She shivered and hoped that never again would she see the inside of this dreadful place.

‘Pay off his debts, Philip,’ she whispered as they drove away.

‘What?’ he said. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Pay off his debts on my behalf. I have money enough.’

He gazed at her. ‘You can’t mean that? The man who brought you so low?’

‘Yes. There’s no sense in him being there. He can’t ever pay off the claims against him and he’ll die in there otherwise.’

‘Do you forgive him?’ he asked quietly.

She hesitated. ‘No. I don’t think so. Nor will I ever forget. But I’m not afraid of him any more. He can’t harm me, he can only harm himself. I want to let him out and perhaps – just perhaps there’s a chance that he will redeem himself.’

‘All right,’ Philip agreed, though privately he thought that there was little hope of Purnell becoming a reformed character. But it was ironic, he meditated, that the one person who owed him least, should be the means of offering him that hope. ‘I’ll ask my lawyer to find out who his creditors are.’

He leaned back against the cushions. ‘But not
just yet. Purnell will have to wait just a little longer for his release. Tomorrow I have a surprise for you. Two surprises, in fact.’

‘Yes?’ She heaved a deep sigh. She felt as if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. ‘Tell me.’

‘No, you must wait. But –’, he relented a little, ‘I will tell you some of it.’

From the glow of the carriage lamp he saw the anticipation on her face. ‘Tomorrow’, he said, ‘I am taking you for a carriage ride into Holderness.’

The morning was bright and there was just a hint of spring in the air as they came out of the hotel. Waiting on the forecourt was a spanking smartly painted four-wheeled chaise drawn by two horses and attended by a liveried coachman.

‘For us?’ Emily drew in a breath. ‘Oh, it’s so handsome. So very elegant,’ adding anxiously, ‘but expensive?’

‘Yes,’ Philip agreed, ‘indeed, but you must accustom yourself to a different lifestyle, Emily. I told you that you were a rich woman.’

‘But I can’t spend money in such a fashion,’ she whispered, not to be overheard by other hotel guests who were arriving or departing. ‘There will be nothing left if I do!’

‘You’re forgetting the seam,’ he urged. ‘Joe hasn’t even started yet. Once he gets all the equipment together and he can now that he’s free, there will be gold in plenty.’

‘But it’s not mine,’ she insisted. ‘It belongs to Joe and Mr Clavell.’

‘All right,’ he said grumpily, ‘if you want to give it all up, then do so. Perhaps I’ll stand a
better chance of marrying you if you are penniless and only living in a poor cottage in Holderness?’ He sighed. ‘My mother will be so disappointed. I wrote and told her that I was trying to win the hand of an heiress.’ He shook his head in mock sorrow. ‘It’s what she has always wanted for me.’

‘You are so silly, Philip,’ she laughed. ‘I’m seeing an entirely different side to you from the one I thought I knew.’

‘That’s because, Miss Hawkins,’ he said with slight irony as he led her down the steps, ‘you are no longer conscious of our different situations. You are no longer a servant girl trying to do the right thing for her so-called
betters
.
I
haven’t changed. You are the one who has!’

‘If I have changed, it’s because of you,’ she murmured. ‘If you hadn’t taken orders on the
Flying Swan
, I dread to think what would have become of me.’

He shook his head. That prospect didn’t bear thinking of. ‘Miss Hawkins,’ he continued in the formal manner as he handed her into the carriage, ‘I said yesterday that we must be careful of your reputation now that we are back in your home county, and to this end I took the decision that it would be more circumspect for you to have a female companion to accompany us.’

‘Oh!’ she said in dismay. ‘Is it really necessary?’ She had planned to tell him as they travelled of her childhood days in Holderness, of times by the river, of Sam and Granny Edwards. All those memories she knew would come flooding back now that she
was home. The day will be spoiled now if there is a stranger with us.

‘It is indeed necessary.You must know that,’ he said severely, yet she caught a glimmer of mischief in his eyes. ‘I have made the arrangements so if you would excuse me for one moment?’

She sat back against the cushions and waited whilst he ran up the steps and back into the hotel. If being a rich woman means that I have to be careful over everything I do or say, then I don’t think I shall like it, she pondered and even the velvet cushions and the rich smell of leather did not dispel her disappointment. Perhaps there is something to be said for being poor after all.

She glanced out of the window and saw Philip appearing through the doors and ushering out a young woman. She sat forward. There was something familiar about the woman’s bearing, though she had her head lowered as she came down the steps and her bonnet obscured her face.

She lifted her head and Emily took a deep, deep breath of joy, of recognition. ‘Ginny! Oh, Ginny!’

Ginny jumped inside the carriage, not waiting for Philip’s help and wrapped her arms around Emily. ‘I’m so glad to see you back, Emily!’ Her eyes were bright with emotion. ‘I never gave up hope, not after that day I met Mr Linton. I knew, I could tell how he cared for you and I was certain he would bring you safely home.’

Philip, who had been standing outside the carriage doors as their greetings were made, put his head inside. ‘Well, ladies! Shall we drive?’

As they travelled out of Hull and into the
countryside it seemed to Emily that there was so much to tell Ginny and yet so much that couldn’t yet be told. She remained silent over her journey to the London gaol and about the convict ship which took her to Australia. That was something which would be told only piece by piece; yet she shyly told her of Philip Linton’s concern, of Creek Farm and of Meg and of her brother Joe, but not of the gold, for she didn’t want to lose Ginny’s friendship now that she had wealth.

‘How ever did you find Ginny again, Philip? And how ever did you get Mrs Marshall to give you time off, Ginny?’

Ginny glanced at Philip Linton, who said, ‘Oh, all the better people know Ginny, she was easy enough to track down.’ He smiled as he spoke and Emily felt that they were hiding something from her.