A Mother's Love (37 page)

‘What about Matt … your son’s child. I haven’t come to beg for myself or my mother. But James is your grandchild. Your blood, Mr Craig. Are you prepared to see him go without too?’

The man took a step forward, glowering. ‘Don’t be impertinent. You inveigle your way into my home, assume upon our …’

‘I’m being perfectly pertinent, Mr Craig,’ she said sharply. Her tone sounded far older than her years. The man blinked, then regained his composure, looking as though he loathed having to do so before an obviously inferior being, a child, and a female at that.

‘Young lady, I see no reason why I should answer you. But I will enlighten you to this extent. Yes, we have considered James. As our grandchild, he will be provided for. He is to remain at his present school, his fees paid by myself. I gather he’s a bright lad. We will arrange for his eventual entry to university, and a generous sum of money will be put in trust for when he comes of age. I can assure you, young lady, that he’ll never go without. But if your mother thinks for an instant to benefit from our generosity in any way …’

‘We don’t need your
charity
, Mr Craig.’ Sara lifted her head, bringing her height up another inch.

Why couldn’t they have set out their intentions in their letter, thereby saving her this journey and the degradation of having to face them? How she hated them both. Her clear blue eyes, brittle and bitter, stared unwaveringly into the man’s faded blue ones.

‘We wouldn’t for an instant dream of asking you for one penny. I know how shabbily you treated my mother, as though she were dirt beneath your feet. But I see now that we have nothing to be ashamed of. All I came for was to see that my brother – my half-brother, your grandchild – be given what is only his right. Now I have had that assurance from you, I feel better. We won’t trouble you again.’

‘My dear …’ As Sara turned to go, Mrs Craig rose stiffly. Sara paused as the woman came towards her. She was already unfastening the mourning brooch, skeletal fingers protruding from the black lace knuckle-length gloves, fumbling. Reaching Sara, she pressed the brooch into her unexpecting hand.

‘Take this, child. It will help pay your fare and a little beside.’

Sara started back as though the pin had jabbed into her flesh. ‘I don’t want your brooch!’

‘Merely something to make amends …’

‘There’s nothing to make amends for,’ Sara hissed. ‘Making amends is too late. I won’t tell my mother that I came here.’ She raised her voice to reach the ears of an embarrassed Mr Henry Craig. ‘She would feel so belittled, never having asked anything of you herself.’

With that she swung away from them and strode out into the hall, the butler hardly given time to reach the door before her as she snatched her hat and coat from the waiting housemaid.

In Regent Street, Annie and Clara relaxed over light refreshments in a busy little teashop to recover their strength before continuing their shopping expedition.

One Saturday in the month was put aside for this, but this particular spree was special. They were looking for new dresses, ready for summer, to replace the black. Six months had passed since losing Matthew, long enough for a brother-in-law. They would still have to wear sombre colours, of course, making it more difficult, and so far neither had seen quite what they liked. But given another hour or so …

Amid the clatter of cutlery and the drone of conversation around them, Annie cut her toasted teacake into quarters with vicious strokes of her knife.

‘I still think it’s a imposition,’ she said, picking up on the debate that had been going on intermittently most of that morning.

Clara watched her sister thrust a piece of teacake into her mouth as though wishing it nothing but harm. She nibbled her own guiltily. She was putting on far too much weight, and envied Annie her figure. Even if a little scrawny, it did lend itself to this year’s tubular gowns. Clara, with her plump hips, was having problems. She abhorred the new sleek style, even if she did love the gigantic hats that accompanied it, and looked upon 1910 as being a most unpromising year for her as far as fashion went.

‘I suppose it is a bit of an imposition,’ she said, deliberating over the teacake. ‘But I suppose they’ve got to live somewhere. I can’t imagine what the poor things would do otherwise.’

‘Poor things!’ scoffed Annie, chewing avidly. ‘Harriet hasn’t done so badly for herself in the past.’

‘I know, but that was the past. I feel sorry for them. What can she do, poor thing … Yes, Annie – poor thing. And Sara too. That child hasn’t done anyone any harm. She looks so pale and far from well, honestly. I think she really loved her stepfather. You wouldn’t wish them out on the street, would you, Annie?’

‘Of course not,’ Annie conceded. ‘What I mean is, what are they going to live on? There’s two of them, remember. Neither of them bringing in any money. Harriet’s got less now than she had when Will died. At least she had a place then, and the money he left. Now she expects Mum to keep her, and Mum like a fool, will.’ Annie reached for her teacup to wash down the teacake.

Clara chewed on her lip. ‘She’d do the same for us. But I did hear …’

Annie’s cup hit the saucer hard. ‘Don’t you see? It’ll be
our
money Mum’ll be using to keep them. Using up what she gets from the profits of Dad’s business.’

‘Yes, but as I was going to say, I heard …’

‘And when it’s nearly all gone on keeping those two, there’ll be precious little left for us when Mum dies.’

Clara’s face dropped in horror. ‘Don’t talk like that about Mum.’

Annie’s face remained obdurate. ‘We have to face it, Clara. She’s not getting any younger, and she had that stroke. She could have another one any time. Personally I can’t see her making old bones.’

‘How can you talk so callously?’ Clara cried, but Annie swept on remorselessly.

‘We’ve got to face facts, Clara. The fact is, Mum’ll be using up something like half her weekly income on those two. It won’t go back into savings as it should. When Mum goes, when it comes to sharing what’s left –
three ways
, I might add, because Harriet will expect her share, and blow the fact that she’d have already had hers while Mum was alive – we’ll be getting only a fraction of what we should get. Those are the facts, Clara, callous or not.’

Clara, still eager to finish what she had been trying to say, gave a compliant nod. ‘I do know what you mean, but I heard that Sara …’

‘And another thing. I can’t see how Mum’s going to keep up with looking after them. You know Harriet still drinks, despite all that’s happened. She does it in secret, but I know. Medicine indeed! That costs money. And then there’s Jamie’s schooling and Sara’s going to college in September. Where’s the money coming from, I ask you? Where’s …’

If Clara had been standing, she would have stamped her foot. ‘Will you let me finish what I’m trying to say? I’ve heard that Matthew’s parents are going to pay for Jamie’s education. And Sara won’t be going on to college. She’s decided not to.’

‘But she won her scholarship. Got top marks in nearly everything.’

‘I know. But she says she wants to go out to work instead.’

‘Work!’

Clara had forgotten about her teacake. ‘I think it’s an utter waste of a clever brain. And there are suffragettes trying to make us more conscious of our talents and use them. She says she wants to help pay her way. But doesn’t it seem a shame, her wasting all that education like that?’

‘Well, I never!’ Temporarily overcome by the enormity of her niece’s sacrifice, Annie nevertheless quickly regained her former acidity. ‘What can a girl of sixteen expect to earn? It’ll be no more than a drop in the ocean to what Mum’ll be asked to fork out.’

‘It does prove she’s trying,’ Clara offered.

But Annie merely shrugged, popped the last of her teacake into her mouth, wiped her fingers delicately on her napkin, and said, ‘Huh!’

Two letters had arrived for her the previous day. Sara gazed again at the results of her matriculation exam: she had got top marks in almost everything. She felt no pride in it, only a deep sadness that Matthew wasn’t there to share that pride with her. Without him it meant nothing and she had no intention of taking up the place offered her.

Great-Aunt Sarah had praised her for her heroic sacrifice, but it had been no sacrifice at all. Even if they could have afforded the fees – certainly out of the question now – of the college for young ladies which the covering letter named, she couldn’t have brought herself to go. She had too much on her mind to think of studying.

By the next week, their lovely home in Victoria Park Road would be theirs no longer. Oddly enough, Sara felt she couldn’t have cared less, so forlorn did the place seem now. In a way, she was almost glad to see the back of it.

The bank had taken everything. Mr David Symonds had pleaded for them to be allowed six months’ grace to seek other accommodation, and the bank had finally agreed. But with no money it had been impossible to find anything decent, and it had been Gran’s generous gesture of opening her home to them that, in Sara’s opinion, had only just saved her mother from being committed to a mental asylum. She’d never seen anyone go so rapidly downhill. Frightened by her mother’s frail grip on reality, she had vowed to do all she possibly could to help pay for at least some of their keep. College was definitely not included in those ideas.

Laying the letter aside, she picked up the other that had arrived with it, and reread this one with satisfaction. It was to grant her an interview for the position of junior stenographer with a small City newspaper on a four-week trial. It stated that they did not normally engage young ladies, since the newspaper business was a harsh environment, but being very impressed by what she had written about herself and her previous experience on a journal, they would take a chance on her, purely as a form of experiment, and that she was to bear this very much in mind were she to be accepted.

Dated 14 April 1910, the letter made Sara smile. Today was the fourteenth – Thursday. Whoever had misdated it didn’t deserve his job, that was certain, and if she couldn’t do better than this, then she wasn’t worthy of her sex. Experiment indeed! She would show them what a woman was capable of, and vowed to guard always against such mistakes that would let her down – should she get the job, of course.

Slowly she refolded the letter with its incorrect date, returned it to its envelope, then in an impetuous gesture of hope, pressed it to her lips. She knew implicitly that she’d get this job. Today, the fourteenth of April, was her birthday. It had to be a good omen.

The interview had been for the sixth of May, but with the death of King Edward, it was hurriedly postponed to the following Friday.

Sara’s nervousness had been heightened by having to wait another week, and when it came to presenting herself at the offices of the
London Graphic
, she was a mass of nerves. To see her, however, no one would have suspected. What they saw as she passed through the noisy, cluttered newsroom behind her elderly interviewer was a tall, shapely young woman with a steady blue gaze and a certain carriage that drew all eyes – certainly the narrow hazel ones of the News Editor as he moved among the half dozen littered desks, checking copy to go to press.

The way she held herself, so erect, was enough to distract him for a few begrudging moments to follow her progress across the office in the wake of that old dodderer, Alf Berryman, who usually conducted most of the lesser interviews.

Becoming aware she was being watched, the young woman turned her head towards him and met his gaze for a fraction of a second before turning back to continue after Berryman’s corpulent figure. In that fraction of a second, Jonathan Ward noted a smooth, unruffled, frigid expression, lips composed, chin firm; and deduced a woman self-assured and high-minded – not appealing in a female, much less so in one so young.

At twenty-five he wasn’t yet married or even courting; had no intention of doing so for many years yet, if ever. He was married to his job. In love with it. Girls with their skittish demands and their emotional views, if they ever had any, were nothing but a liability.

He turned back to what he had been doing. By the time he looked up again, the young woman was seated at a desk in one of the small side offices. Berryman, seated opposite her, grinning all over his broad face, hadn’t even thought to close the door – too bowled over by the obvious charms sitting there in front of him, stupid old fool.

He was going soft in the brain, Berryman. Probably wouldn’t even think to test her capabilities, if any, before bumbling off to recommend her to Fred Mackenzie, the Chief Editor. It had been Berryman’s suggestion in the first place to try out female staff, which came cheaper. Silly suggestion. Cheap or not, it would never work.

Ward’s wide lips beneath a dark, narrow moustache twisted in a sardonic grin. It was time Berryman retired. Shrugging broad shoulders, he returned to checking copy, but could not help yielding to a temptation to one glance through the open door, to where the young woman was talking, Berryman’s broad bald head tilting up and down to her every word all the while, like one of those nodding Buddhas.

‘I start next week – general typing.’ She felt no enthusiasm, was incapable of much feeling since Matthew’s death. It was as though she merely floated on the surface of things, much as driftwood might on an oily sea. Her Great-Aunt Sarah regarded her quizzically.

‘You don’t seem terribly pleased over it. What’re they paying you? Well short of what they’d be paying a man, I’ll be bound.’

Sara laid her hat and gloves on the tiny table in the narrow hall. They had moved here to her grandmother’s house in Approach Road over the weekend, with the minimum of fuss, there being little to bring with them since the house and its contents had gone to pay Matthew’s debts.

She followed her great-aunt into the parlour overlooking the street. ‘Six shillings a week. Something of a comedown, I suppose, after all I learned with Matth …’ Sara swallowed, still unable to utter his name without her throat tightening up – enough almost to strangle her. ‘After my being used to the journal,’ she rephrased.