A Mother's Gift (31 page)

‘By all means if you think you need her support,’ Robert had answered, quite unruffled. In fact she could have sworn he was smiling at the other end of the line.

This wasn’t the first time he had summoned her of course. He had insisted she go round the works with that toad, Bertram, and himself and spent a couple of hours explaining how these were the smaller works, the original Hamilton works which were being retained when nationalisation came into force.

‘Father had it all worked out,’ he had said. ‘My little steel foundry and the Hamilton works too are both below the size when they would be nationalised. And meanwhile there will be capital from the main plant with which to diversify.’

‘I will be in charge of the Hamilton works,’ said Bertram. ‘There was no need to bring in the tart’s daughter.’ He didn’t look at Georgina as he said it and the tips of his ears were bright red.

‘Watch your tongue, Bertie or I will wash your mouth out with soap,’ said Robert. ‘Now apologise to your half-sister.’

‘I can take care of myself,’ said Georgina feeling perversely put out that he should take her part. ‘Do you think I care what a little boy says when he’s having a tantrum?’

‘I’m the same age as you, just about!’ shouted Bertram.

‘Then act your age,’ said Robert. ‘And you, Georgina, don’t rise to it.’

Georgina fumed as she recalled it. He spoke to her as though she were as juvenile as Bertram. But she forgot about the incident as she turned on to the newly laid tarmac drive that ran from the road to the cottage. They could have had it laid years ago when Father was alive, she thought. But no, he had wanted the cottage kept out of sight. It was a wonder he had let her go to school in Saltburn, it being so near to Teesside and closer to Hamilton Hall. Yet no one had found out about her. At least not until after his death and then of course it didn’t matter to him. Georgina’s devotion to her father had taken some hard knocks in the last couple of years as she realised how she and her mother had been manipulated by him.

The door to the cottage opened and Kate came out as she climbed from the car. They hugged and Georgina could feel that her mother was no longer so thin as she had been up to and just after her father had died. In fact she looked really well. Her fair hair gleamed in the sunlight and her skin seemed to have a bloom on it.

Arm in arm they went into the house where Dorothy was waiting.

‘I’ll swear you look younger every time I come home,’ said Georgina. ‘Don’t you think so Dorothy?’

‘She looks naught but a lass,’ Dorothy agreed. ‘Now, I’ve laid out lunch on the dining-room table. You want to eat something before you go to that meeting. I always reckon you can’t think properly if you haven’t eaten properly. You haven’t got a picking on you, Georgie. Do they not feed you right in that college?’

Georgina laughed. ‘I’m fine, fit as a lop,’ she said and laughed again. It was an old saying her mother said she’d picked up from her gran and had sometimes used though her father had frowned upon it.

Nothing was said about Robert’s phone call until they were out on the road once again and on their way to Hamilton Hall.

‘What’s it all about, do you know?’ asked Kate. She sat beside Georgina in the two-seater car feeling only slightly nervous as her daughter roared along the road. She sincerely hoped she would slow down as they got into heavier traffic but she would never say so. Anyway, Georgie was a brilliant driver. But Kate started the conversation to take her mind off the road.

‘It’s about my summer vacation,’ said Georgina.

‘I thought you were going to go camping in Europe,’ said her mother.

‘I was. I am,’ Georgie replied. ‘But
he
thinks I should stay and get to know the business better. I told him I wouldn’t and he started issuing threats about me losing my inheritance. Anyway, he wanted me to meet him at the Hall today.’

‘Then why am I here?’

‘Because I said I was bringing you,’ said Georgie, suddenly resembling the little girl she had insisted she was not. ‘Why? Did you not want to come?’

‘Why not? Mary Anne isn’t there any more, is she?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Georgie, sounding uninterested. She changed the subject. ‘I want to make Robert understand that I don’t want to work in an office. At least not
the
office of a steelworks. Why can’t I do what I want to do?’

‘And what is that, exactly?’

‘Research into new technology, Mam, the coming thing it is. Computers. In a few years computers will be running the offices, you’ll see.’

They turned into the drive of Hamilton Hall. The crunch of the tyres on the gravel reminded Kate forcibly of that day when they were summoned to hear the reading of Matthew’s will. For a moment she considered asking Georgie to stop, to turn round and take her home. But she knew she couldn’t do that. Instead she lifted her chin and forced her memories to the back of her I mind. Instead she looked out of the window at the smoothly mown grass, the tees of the avenue in the full leaf of summer and the view of the house just opening up before them.

‘Hamilton Hall,’ she murmured. ‘Your father always did have a sense of his own importance. Anyone would think it had been passed down from generation to generation but it wasn’t. He bought it.’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?’ Georgie didn’t want to get into a discussion about her father, not when they were almost there.

‘No. Not at all.’

They rang the bell and were ushered into the drawing-room by Benson. Mary Anne was there, Kate realised with a little jump to her nerves. She rose to her feet and came forward to greet them, her hand outstretched.

‘Nurse Benfield!’ she said as she took Kate’s hand. ‘No, I shouldn’t call you that, should I? May I say Kate?’

‘If you’d like to,’ said Kate. She was taken aback. Mary Anne seemed so different, her manner easy, even friendly. And she looked younger somehow, her fair hair, now streaked with silver, was cut in a fashionable style and she was slimmer. She wore a pencil straight skirt in a warm brown with a coffee-coloured blouse and the colours suited her. And she wore makeup, lipstick and eye shadow and a hint of rouge on her cheekbones.

‘And you, Georgina,’ said Mary Anne. ‘You are looking well, my dear. How are you getting on with your studies? You’re so pretty too, the boys must be chasing after you!’ She gestured towards the open French windows. ‘It’s such a lovely day we can have tea on the terrace. Come and sit down; Daisy will bring it directly.’

Mary Anne looked so well, so self-assured, Georgie and Kate could hardly keep their eyes from her. She had blossomed somehow, thought Kate. And the result was startling. Of course, the last time Kate had seen her was the day of the reading of the will. Mary Anne had been wearing black which was bound to make her skin look sallow for she had that type of skin, she mused, as Daisy brought out the tray and Mary Anne poured tea.

‘I thought Robert would be here, he said it was a meeting,’ said Georgie. She too was watching Mary Anne and not quite believing what she saw.

‘Yes dear,’ Mary Anne said smoothly. ‘He asked me to apologise for him, he will be a little late.’ She offered plates of tiny sandwiches, then sat back and looked from one to the other. Georgie took a cucumber sandwich and bit into it, she was hungry anyway, she may as well eat,
keep
her energy level up. She might need it for when Robert finally came.

‘Maisie isn’t here?’ asked Kate.

‘No, no she’s at Whitworth Hall, Robert’s place you know. It belonged to her father’s family. When Matthew died I thought I would go to live there but I came back. I have Bertram to think of.’ Mary Anne sighed. ‘He left university, you know. Didn’t finish his course.’

They sipped tea in silence for a minute or two. Mary Anne looked as though she were about to speak once or twice, her look of confidence slipping slightly. Georgie finished her tea and got to her feet and asked if she could take a walk in the garden.

‘Of course,’ said Mary Anne. The two women watched as she walked down the steps to the lawn and wandered away towards a shrubbery to one side. Then Mary Anne leaned forward towards Kate.

‘I wanted a word with you,’ she said. ‘Robert isn’t late, he is never late for anything, I’ve never known anyone like him for punctuality. But when he said about the meeting I told him I wanted to speak to you.’

Kate’s expression was guarded; was Matthew’s wife going to lay into her for taking Matthew away? The apprehension she had felt as she came here returned and she lifted her chin.

‘Oh?’ she murmured.

‘I wanted to say … I don’t bear you any animosity for what happened,’ said Mary Anne.

‘You don’t?’ Kate was mystified.

‘No. I remember you when you were a young
probationer
at the hospital. You were shy and naïve, gauche even. But you were kind. I liked you then. And I knew you had a boyfriend too, a boy from your home, wasn’t it? You know how nurses gossip, even over patients’ beds. Sometimes I got the impression that they thought all patients were deaf or slow-witted.’

Mary Anne sat back in her chair and glanced over to where Georgie had disappeared. ‘I knew how Matthew chased after you,’ she went on. ‘How could I not? I’m sure even the other nurses saw it. And believe me, my dear, you didn’t stand a chance once he had decided he intended to have you.

‘I didn’t care. By that stage I was only too glad for him to turn his attentions elsewhere. Though I never knew how far it had gone.’

Kate stared at the cold tea still in the bottom of her tea cup. She was acutely embarrassed, she didn’t know what to say. Oh, that’s all right, glad to do it for you? Her cheeks were bright red.

‘Hallo! Where is everybody? We were supposed to be having a meeting.’

Robert came striding out on to the terrace. He bent and pecked his mother on the cheek and gave Kate a cool nod. ‘I am never sure what to call you,’ he said. ‘But how are you?’

‘Fine, thank you,’ said Kate, feeling even more embarrassed than she had been a few minutes before. She took a hold of her feelings, however, as she had promised herself she would do on her way here. ‘You can call me Catherine Benfield. Mrs, if you like, for Georgie’s
sake
. I changed back to my maiden name legally last year.’

‘
Mrs
Benfield. Where is your daughter? I asked her to be here. Does she understand that as executor of my stepfather’s will I can hold back her allowance? I—’

‘Robert, sit down and have a cup of tea. I’ll ask Daisy to make more, though I don’t know how the ration is holding out. And apologise to Kate, you know I hate rows. You sound like Bertie. Besides, Georgina is here, she is taking a walk in the garden while she waits for you.’

‘I’m sorry Mrs Benfield,’ said Robert looking anything but contrite. ‘No, don’t bother Daisy, I don’t want tea. I’ll just go and find Georgina.’ He went off over the lawn with long, loping strides.

‘It’s because he is so protective of me,’ Mary Anne observed to Kate.

‘Yes. It’s nice really.’

Robert saw Georgina as he emerged on the opposite side of the shrubbery; she was on her way back to the terrace.

‘There you are,’ he said impatiently, ‘come along, we’ll go into the study.’

His tone made her consider telling him to go to hell but in the end she followed him round the side of the house to the front door and into the study which turned out to be on the opposite side of the house to the drawing-room.

‘I thought this was a meeting,’ she said, surveying the empty room.

‘It is. A meeting between you and I,’ he replied. ‘We are going to establish some ground rules.’

‘For two pins I would tell you what you could do with the business. I could just get up and walk out and there would be nothing you could do about it,’ said Georgina.

‘Go on then, do that,’ Robert replied smoothly. He glanced at her and smiled, an enigmatic kind of smile. She might look like her mother but there were some likenesses to her father, he thought. Matthew had hated to be crossed too but he knew which side his bread was buttered.

‘And you needn’t look at me like that, I mean it,’ Georgina said crossly.

‘I’m sure you do. But you are much too much your father’s daughter for that. You want the money.’

‘I have a right to it!’ she flared. ‘You know I want to go on, do research—’

‘And there’s no reason why you shouldn’t.’

‘How can I do both? Work in the office and at the university?’

‘Isn’t that why your father wanted you to go to Durham?’ Robert got to his feet and walked to the window. Long shadows were beginning to creep along the lawn outside and the light had changed to that golden colour which comes just before sunset.

‘I don’t know why you wanted me to come here anyway. It wasn’t much of a meeting,’ Georgina went on, in a mood to grumble. ‘And I might as well not have dragged my mother over either. She must be bored waiting for me. She was planning to go to Winton Colliery.’

‘Oh yes, visit the old family homestead.’

‘There’s no call for sarcasm,’ said Georgina with
dignity
. ‘Just because she came from a miner’s family. There’s nothing wrong with that.’

‘Oh, don’t be so prickly!’ Robert turned his back on the view and walked back to the table. ‘Of course there isn’t. Your mother could have come in here if she had wanted to.’ He lifted his briefcase. ‘I have to go back to the office now. I have no more time, work to do. And I will expect you there on the first day of the summer vacation. That’s next week isn’t it? You can start by learning the routine. Learn from the bottom up. My stepfather was a great believer in that.’