Break of Dawn
Rita Bradshaw
Copyright © 2011 Rita Bradshaw
The right of Rita Bradshaw to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2011
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN : 978 0 7553 7112 9
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
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Part One: The Homecoming, 1880
Part Four: Liberation and Subjugation, 1897
Part Five: The End of One Beginning, 1908
Part Six: A Woman of Substance, 1909
Rita Bradshaw was born in Northamptonshire, where she still lives today. At the age of sixteen she met her husband – whom she considers her soulmate – and they have two daughters and a son and five young grandchildren. Much to her delight, Rita’s first attempt at a novel was accepted for publication, and she went on to write many more successful novels under a pseudonym before writing for Headline using her own name.
As a committed Christian and passionate animal-lover Rita has a full and busy life, but her writing continues to be a consuming pleasure that she never tires of. In any spare moments she loves walking her dog, reading, eating out and visiting the cinema and theatre, as well as being involved in her local church and animal welfare.
By Rita Bradshaw
Alone Beneath Heaven
Reach for Tomorrow
Ragamuffin Angel
The Stony Path
The Urchin's Song
Candles in the Storm
The Most Precious Thing
Always I'll remember
The Rainbow Years
Skylarks at Sunset
Above the Harvest Moon
Eve and her Sisters
Gilding the Lily
Born to Trouble
Forever Yours
Break of Dawn
For our infinitely beloved grandson, Reece Benjamin Bradshaw, born 26 July 2011; precious baby son for Ben and Lizzi, beautiful new cousin for Sam and Connor, Georgia and Emily, and Lydia. You were prayed for and wanted more than you will ever know, little one, and we praise the Lord for his treasured gift and give all thanks to God for you. ‘Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.’
And I couldn’t let this moment go by without mentioning Bailey, our dear grand-dog, who was going to be put down simply because he’s a Staffie cross and his face didn’t fit, before Ben and Lizzi took him in. He’s the most endearingly daft canine in the world, an utter softie and a comic genius without knowing it!
In the twenty-first century, few people think twice about women having the vote along with equality before the law in Britain, particularly in the divorce and custody courts, but these rights were won at great cost.
In the Victorian and Edwardian eras and beyond, courageous women from all walks of life and all classes rose up to fight for what we now take for granted. Many women’s movements existed, among them the Actresses’ Franchise League featured in this story.
I’ve gathered material from many sources, but particular thanks go to Julie Holledge for her wonderful history of women in the Edwardian theatre. Her book,
Innocent Flowers
, was quite a revelation.
It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions they fail not. They are new every morning: great is Your faithfulness.
Lamentations
3, v. 22-3
The Homecoming
1880
Chapter 1
Every jolt of the coach was torture. She didn’t know how she had stood the journey thus far, but this last leg was the worst. Or perhaps it was that she knew she was going home.
Esther Hutton, or Estelle Marceau as she liked to be known, attempted to ease her swollen body into a more comfortable position on the hard wooden seat, but it was no use. She gritted her teeth, opening her eyes – which she had kept closed for much of the time since leaving London in an effort to avoid conversation with any fellow passengers – and sat staring out of the grimy window. The November afternoon was dark and overcast. The weather had got progressively colder over the long, tedious days since she had left her lodgings in Whitechapel, and for the last forty-eight hours, squalls of wintry rain had battered the coach roof and stung the travellers’ faces when they had hurried into the various inns for a meal or overnight stay.
How she hated the north – and her home village in particular. Her full, somewhat sensual lips curled. From as long as she could remember, Southwick’s residents had successfully fought off attempts by Sunderland’s corporation to integrate the village into the township, as though there was something worthy in remaining separate. She had been brought up listening to her parents talk about the
dregs of humanity ‘across the river’, as though poverty and disease and squalor didn’t exist in Southwick. The hypocrisy, that’s what she couldn’t stand. All right, her family might be middle class, her father being a vicar and all, but his work must have brought him into contact with the seamier side of life in the village. When she had been able to escape her mother’s obsessional control and run wild in Carley, the area closest to the vicarage, it was the smell and flies she had noticed the most.
Esther swallowed hard, the memory of the ash middens rising up in her throat as the child inside her kicked as though in protest at her thoughts. The children she had played with on those oc casions had never seemed to be aware of the stench filling the back lanes, but once, when she’d had no choice but to use one of the backyard privies shared by several families or soil her drawers, the excrement was piled up practically to the top of the wooden seat and she had thrown up the contents of her stomach right there on the rough stone floor. Some of the children had even played in the field where the scavengers who cleared the human muck each week dumped their grisly load. Flies lived in their millions on the dung hill and during the summer months they invaded the tightly packed terraced houses closest to the farmer’s field, resting on food and getting into jugs of milk and crawling on babies’ sticky faces.
She swallowed again as her stomach churned, telling herself to think of something else.
How would she be received when she reached the vicarage? The grey landscape mocked the foolishness of the question. Why ask the road you know? Her father would be full of icy fury and her mother beside herself as to what people would think. To have their daughter’s sin paraded in front of their eyes was their worst nightmare. She glanced at the cheap gold band on the third finger of her left hand. She had bought the wedding ring before leaving London. It wouldn’t fool her parents but it gave some semblance of respectability to her homecoming.
Her gaze wandered and she caught the eye of the wife of the young couple sitting opposite. The woman immediately dropped
her gaze to the neatly gloved hands clasped in her lap, her sallow cheeks flushing. Since leaving London, Esther had had to change coaches several times. This one, which had left Middlesbrough early that morning, held yet another different batch of travellers. Besides the young couple, a portly, red-faced man was sitting dozing next to the husband, and an elderly gentleman with snow-white hair and a frock coat was sitting reading from a book of prayers on the seat beside Esther.
All her fellow passengers were dressed soberly and the woman in particular was the very essence of propriety, her dark-brown coat and hat and high-buttoned black boots speaking of dignified refinement. Esther appeared like a bright exotic bird that had somehow found itself among a group of sparrows, and the young wife’s fascinated and covert glances as the journey had progressed had made Esther very aware of her mistake. Among the company she had mixed with in London her blue brocade dress and matching coat with its elaborate fur collar would have been considered almost dull. It was the most subdued outfit in her wardrobe, which was why she had chosen to wear it for her imminent arrival in Southwick, but too late she realised she should have pawned a couple of the dresses one or other of her ‘gentlemen’ had bought her and used the money to buy something plain and serviceable.
She looked out of the window again, studying her reflection in the glass. Her hat with its sweeping blue and silver feathers brought out the deep violet of her eyes and pretty tilt of her chin, but she lamented the loss of the paint and powder she had used regularly for the last decade. Her mother would have become apoplectic at the faintest suggestion of such wickedness.
The coach lurched drunkenly, its wheels struggling over the thick ridges of mud and deep icy puddles in the narrow road they were travelling on, and Esther banged her forehead on the window, knocking her hat askew. Suddenly hot tears pricked at the back of her eyes, not because of the bump which had been nothing in itself but because of the position she found herself in. She had vowed never to come back to the north-east when she had left it fifteen years ago, but what choice did she have? Her hands rested
for a moment on the mound of her stomach. None. The music-hall audiences didn’t want to see an actress heavy with child entertaining them, and her admirers had vanished one by one over the last months as her pregnancy had progressed. She had sold every bit of jewellery she possessed and the lovely fur coat one of her gentlemen had bought for her in the early days, and she still hadn’t been able to pay the rent for the last few weeks. A moonlight flit had been her only option and she had left with the remainder of the clothes she hadn’t sold for her coach fare packed in her carpet bag and little else.
She blinked the tears away and sat up straighter. But she would return. Once the child was born and she had rested and was strong again, she would plan her escape. She had managed it fifteen years ago and she would do it again. Her parents would take care of the baby, they would see it as their Christian duty however much it stuck in their craw. She would make her way back to London and with her figure her own again she could take her life up once more. She was still pretty, and what she didn’t know about pleasing a man and catering for their more . . . unusual desires wasn’t worth knowing.