Shelter from the Storm (34 page)

Thaddeus’s carriage took them home.

‘Do you love Luisa?’ she asked him when they were well away from the house.

Joe started at the question.

‘I don’t know. I wanted to, but maybe that was just … because nobody’s ever cared for me.’

He said it without a trace of self-pity and the flatness gave the words impact. Vinia squeezed his arm.

‘I had a lovely day,’ she said.

Joe smiled at her.

‘Good,’ he said.

*

Esther Margaret had thought that if she could get Dryden to go to bed with her everything would be vastly improved, but she was not very surprised when it was not. He treated her as she was sure he had treated every woman he had ever bedded. He was happy enough to have her but it was something apart from the rest of his life and it demonstrated clearly to her how little he thought of her. She had nothing to complain of — he made love to her often with imagination and expertise. Esther Margaret hated it. She hated the way he didn’t talk to her either before or after — or during — and how soon he put her from his mind. There was no sweetness, no touching except in bed. Finally, mid-morning on Christmas Day when Vinia was long gone to the Morgan house and they had stayed in bed, she pushed him away, turned aside.

‘Enough,’ she said, into the pillows. ‘Enough, enough!’

He lay in silence for a few moments and then said tersely, ‘Am I doing it wrong?’

‘Wrong? You wouldn’t know how to do it wrong! My God, how many times have you done this with other people?’

‘I don’t remember. You don’t want me to do it?’

‘No, I don’t want you to do it!’ Esther Margaret shouted, and she reached for her nightdress and threw it on and went downstairs.

He followed her down a few minutes later, roughly dressed, hair all over the place, looking impossibly romantic, as though she were another man’s wife and he were about to go home.

‘Since I met you I only ever did it once. I know it wasn’t right because it was the night the baby died. I haven’t touched anybody other than that, I swear it to you.’

‘You don’t need to swear it to me, I know it. I know.’

‘So what do you want me to do?’

‘Nothing! I just wish …’

‘That I was Joe?’

‘No, no, that you cared even for a second. Even when you do that you don’t care!’

‘It’s just a … just nature,’ Dryden said, ‘tisn’t love.’

‘How in the name of God would you know?’

‘Because you can love people without touching them. In fact sometimes it’s better that way. Then you don’t … fall down anywhere and they don’t hate you. I would rather be like a photograph in a frame to somebody. Shall I go out?’

‘I don’t mind what you do,’ Esther Margaret said, and didn’t look at him even then.

So he went. He didn’t come back all that Christmas Day. She sat over the fire, and when the back door finally banged shut she got up swiftly and was disappointed to see Vinia in her festive finery.

‘I thought you were Dryden.’

‘Why, where has he been?’

‘I don’t know. He went out mid-morning and hasn’t come back.’

‘Did you have a fight?’

‘Something like that. He couldn’t be in the pub all this time, surely.’

He was soaking wet when he came back some time later, and the rain and wind showered the floor as he walked in. Vinia had gone to bed. He didn’t say anything, but came to the fire and took off his coat.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

Dryden sat down by the fire.

‘I can’t please you,’ he said, ‘except when you thought I was dead.’

‘That’s not true!’

‘If I was dead you could marry Joe and be happy. Isn’t that why you came back?’

She was surprised at his intuition.

‘I thought Joe was married when I came back.’

‘So what did you hope for?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Just as well, eh?’

He made as if to leave the room and she said, ‘Dryden, please—’

‘You weren’t happy when I didn’t touch you and you still aren’t happy when I lay you. I don’t know what you want.’

‘I suppose I wanted you to fall in love with me.’

‘I don’t do that.’

‘What, never?’

‘No.’ He looked past her to the stairs. ‘I did love a woman once but it was nothing to do with bedding her, it was enough to know that she was alive.’

‘Was it your mother?’

He looked at her and started to laugh.

‘Hell, no. Who could love that old witch?’

‘And none of the women you went to bed with?’

The laughter was still in his eyes.

‘I had a sort of thing for Porky Morley’s missus once.’

Mrs Morley was the fattest woman in the village and twice as old as Dryden with five children. Esther Margaret began to laugh.

‘You terrible fibber, Dryden Cameron! You did not.’ She went to him and she kissed him or he kissed her or it all happened at the same time and strangely the laughter had altered something between them. The kiss was magical. If the house had dropped down around them Esther Margaret couldn’t have stopped. Dryden put her down on to the rug in front of the fire and it was, Esther Margaret thought afterwards, guiltily, nothing but a lay, the kind of thing men did to their wives when they were short of time or they did to other men’s wives for the same reason, but it was not like him. He had never put her down and taken her simply like that, but it was somehow all the better for that simplicity. There was not another kiss or a caress but Esther Margaret was entranced, pleasured just as she had been so long ago in her bedroom at home and in the barn. She liked it so much she was embarrassed afterwards and said nothing on the way to bed. It did not occur to her until the next morning that he had not offered to tell her who the woman was and she would not have asked him for the world.

That winter Mary Cameron took to standing in the back lane at the end of each shift, waiting for Tom to come home. Sometimes she got confused and thought Dryden was Tom until she came hurrying down the lane towards him, and then she would realise and spit curses at him. Alf had to come out and collect her. She didn’t seem to notice the bitter weather and would not rest until she had seen the pitmen all into their houses, and often she would break down and cry and Alf could not persuade her into the house. More and more often she was there, and sometimes she would walk down into the pit yard and wait at the pithead, her eyes full of hope and expectation.

One day that March when she thought Dryden was Tom she held him and kissed him and put her fingers into his hair and cried.

‘They told me you were dead and I knew it wasn’t so. You would never leave me. Tell me you’ll never leave me.’

Alf tried to take her away but she clung to Dryden’s arm.

‘Tommy, Tommy!’ she cried.

Esther Margaret had seen all this in the back lane, and when Dryden finally got into the house she had no idea what to say to him. She was spending much less time at the shop. She liked being at home for him and she had something special to tell him that day, but since she was unsure of his reaction and after what
his mother had done she didn’t say anything. They had the house practically to themselves. Vinia came home from the shop late to eat and go to bed. She had talked of moving out but Esther Margaret had dissuaded her. Where could she go and what was the point anyhow? So she didn’t. It wasn’t until very late, when they were lying quietly in each other’s arms, that she whispered, ‘Are you all right, Dryden?’

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

‘I thought you might be bothered about your mother.’

‘She’s not my mother. She’s Tom’s.’ He would have turned away but Esther Margaret held him there.

‘Dryden …’ she said. ‘I’m going to have a baby.’

She thought he wasn’t going to say anything at all, he didn’t react for so long, and then all he said was, ‘At least we won’t have to get married this time.’

‘Couldn’t you be pleased?’

‘Be content that you’re pleased,’ he said. ‘It’ll have Alf’s name and you can have my wage for it and that’s all. You’ll have to do the rest. I don’t want children where I am,’ and he pulled out of her arms and turned away.

Esther Margaret moved close in against his back and kissed him.

‘It won’t be like that,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to give up my child or ill-treat him.’

‘I don’t want to hear about it,’ Dryden said.

*

One Monday that spring Thaddeus came to the pit office in the middle of the morning. He was grey-faced. He hadn’t looked well for some time, Joe thought.

‘Luisa is coming home to have the baby. George says she’s not ill but I’m worried about her. I think he’s tried to keep her there, which undoubtedly is the best thing, but she won’t stay. She shouldn’t be travelling in her condition. She always was strong-willed, as you know. She wouldn’t let me tell her anything,
otherwise I would not have let her marry that … that man.’

‘She wanted to marry him,’ Joe reminded him gently.

‘She always wanted to get away from here. I don’t blame her for that but to be honest, Joe, I don’t like him. I know he’s very successful and prominent, but there’s something about him I find chilling. I think I’m just envious that I couldn’t be that kind of man.’

‘You wouldn’t want to be.’

‘I wish I had wanted to be. Power must be a heady thing.’

‘You’ve been a good employer.’

Thaddeus laughed.

‘I shall have to be thankful for that.’

The following day a man arrived with a note in Luisa’s hand. All it said was ‘Come to me’ signed with her name.

Joe went. Thaddeus was at the foundry. Alice, though she fluttered like a caged bird in the hall, did not stop him, and when Joe got upstairs he scarcely recognised the young woman in the bed. The hand she reached out to him was so thin that it had no grip, and her face was pale and her eyes were dull and the golden hair which had been one of her claims to beauty hung about her like weeds.

‘You certainly know how to get a man’s attention, travelling all that way.’

The nurse hovered behind him. Joe turned to her.

‘Could you leave us, please.’

‘Mrs Morgan said—’

‘Leave us,’ Joe said again.

‘I lied to you,’ Luisa said when the nurse had gone.

‘Never in this world.’ Joe sat down on the bed and kissed her hand and then the inside of her wrist.

‘I wanted to say it to you. I love you. I want so badly that horrid old house you have and the past that should have been ours. I’m sorry. I should have left George. All those hotels.’

‘They were wonderful hotels,’ he said.

‘I knew you would come to me. I’m so glad. I didn’t want you to think I didn’t love you though in the circumstances it would have been easier. I wish I had married you. Kiss me.’

Joe touched her forehead with his lips.

‘No, properly.’

Joe kissed her very gently on the mouth. There was a commotion outside, a carriage arriving swiftly.

‘It’s George. You must leave. He mustn’t see you. Quickly!’

Joe tried to calm her but she was too alarmed, and the only way she would be quiet was if he left her. He walked slowly down the stairs in time to see George McAndrew stride into the hall.

‘What the Devil are you doing here?’ he said running upstairs.

Alice was there too.

‘Luisa asked for him.’ Alice began to cry. ‘She is so poorly.’

‘Nothing of the kind. She’s having a child is all.’

Alice looked at Joe through her tears.

‘She’s not coherent, she doesn’t really want you, she doesn’t know what she’s saying, you must understand that. Whatever she says it isn’t true.’ She came to him and clutched at the lapel on his coat. ‘Thaddeus should not have let you come here at all. George wouldn’t have allowed it had he been here, but Thaddeus won’t listen to me. You shouldn’t be here, it’s nothing to do with you.’

Thaddeus came in for his midday meal.

‘You read my mind,’ he said. ‘I want you at the foundry this afternoon.’

‘He came to see Luisa,’ Alice said.

Thaddeus looked hard at him but said nothing. Joe sat down to eat with them, but all the time his thoughts were of Luisa. Thaddeus talked brightly about work. George did not appear. While Thaddeus dragged him around the works talking about this problem and that order, neither of them concentrated. Finally, at five o’clock, they sat in the office beside the pattern shop and Thaddeus looked at him across the desk and said, ‘Have you been in love with my daughter long?’

Joe couldn’t meet his eyes.

‘It’s worse than that, Thaddeus.’

‘Yes, I rather thought it was. I had a feeling this was going to happen. George may be turning the world upside down but he’s a bore and a bully. No woman likes that, no matter how many diamonds she has been given. Do you see her much?’

‘Hardly at all.’

Thaddeus gave him enough time to say more and Joe tried but the words wouldn’t be said. Thaddeus meant a great deal to him and something told Joe that after this things would never be the same.

‘You fathered Luisa’s child, didn’t you?’ It was softly spoken, as though it didn’t matter.

‘Yes.’

‘And was it intentional?’

Joe caught his gaze. ‘No.’

‘Was it deliberate on her part, to use you to give her a child?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps. It seems George can’t.’

Thaddeus stood up.

‘If I was a younger man I would break your neck. How could you do such a thing? Clandestine meetings in nasty little places—’

‘It wasn’t.’

‘Wasn’t it? You’re just like your mother.’

Joe caught his breath.

‘Thaddeus, please.’

‘I was in love with her. They wouldn’t let me marry her but she was more accommodating after she married your father.’

‘No,’ Joe said.

‘She was a greedy, ambitious, lying whore.’

‘No.’

‘She would go with anybody. She had no idea who fathered you, did you know that? It could have been the stable lad. Anybody could have her! No, you’re not mine. Do you think I would have let you anywhere near Luisa? But you
got there anyway, didn’t you? If anything happens to her I’ll kill you.’

He got up, and when Joe got up too he said, ‘Don’t come to the house.’