Break of Dawn (6 page)

Not so Jeremiah.

It was pitch black in the bedroom; Mary insisted that not a chink of light was allowed into the room, and the heavily-lined
velvet curtains at the window were closed against the storm raging outside. The storm inside his being was another matter. For the first time in his life he had been cast in the role of a transgressor and he was burning with righteous indignation.

He lay stiff and silent, listening to his wife’s steady breathing and small, ladylike snores.

Mary had made him feel like a sinner, like the worst kind of miscreant – and why? he asked himself for the thousandth time. Because he had wished to spare her the knowledge of his sister’s ignominy, that was all. No good purpose would have been served by offending her delicate sensibilities, and if things had remained as they were – as he had expected them to remain – she would never have known the shameful truth. He had
told
her that it had been his parents’ decision to explain Esther’s leaving with the story about warmer climes and a French husband, and that he had merely been respecting their wishes, that he had never – would never – keep anything from her in the normal way of things, that he had only been thinking of her tender emotions and the pain such a revelation would cause to one brought up as sensitively as she had been.

Mary had listened to his explanation in silence, her eyes gimlet hard and her face stony with condemnation. Then she had made the pronouncement which even now, two weeks later, had the power to make him squirm.

‘You have betrayed the trust my uncle placed in you when he introduced us, in the worst possible way. You are a false man, Jeremiah Hutton, and it gives me no pleasure to say so. I shall not disclose your cruel trickery to the bishop, nor to my parents or the rest of the family, not for your sake but for theirs. But do not expect me to condone such deceit by absolving you of your crime because I will not.’

Crime
. Jeremiah ground his teeth. He had been made to feel like a criminal in his own home, sure enough. And now his sister’s bastard was to be raised in this house, a constant reminder of his fall from grace in Mary’s eyes.

Did she expect him to continue begging and pleading for her
understanding in the coming weeks and months? Probably. Certainly she was displaying a spitefulness of which he would not have thought her capable, disguised under a pietistical facade which made his blood boil often as not.

He wouldn’t be able to stand it if this state of affairs continued. He stared into the blackness, self-pity choking him and causing him to swallow against the lump in his throat. He was a good husband. Mary had had no cause to complain in twelve years of marriage, and he doubted if there were many women who could say that in this town. And now, when he was asking for just a drop of the milk of human kindness, she had none to give. Well, so be it. He now knew where he stood. If she wanted to drive a perman ent wedge between them, she was going the right way about it. He’d had enough, more than enough, in the last weeks. Mary would see another man to the devoted husband she was used to over the next little while, and she had no one to blame but herself. If she had thought to crush him with her attitude, she was in for a shock. He would not be browbeaten in his own home and neither would he plea for her understanding again.

And as for the living evidence of the trouble which had ripped their family apart, he would continue to pray each day that the child born of sin would not see its first year. Every time he looked at it he would see and hear Esther as she had been the night she had come home, brazen in her shame.

His guts writhed and he lay for a moment more before quietly sliding out of bed. By feel he found his dressing gown on the chair by the side of the bed and put it on, but he left his slippers where they were and crept barefoot out of the bedroom. Once on the landing it was possible to see shapes and shadows, the large landing window being uncurtained, but he still had to watch his step as he made his way downstairs.

He would make himself a drink of warm milk and take it to his study where he could work on his sermon for Sunday in peace, he told himself as he reached the kitchen door. There had still been a good fire in there last thing; it wouldn’t have gone out yet and a couple of logs would soon bring it to a blaze.

He opened the door as silently as he had come downstairs and stood for a moment, his eyes fixed on the raised laundry basket in front of the glowing range. It was only then he acknowledged the real reason for the midnight sojourn, the thought that had been there from the second the child had taken breath. His heart began to race, pounding in his ears.

He took a step into the room, then another, unaware of the icy chill from the stone flags under his bare feet, and then he froze as a rustle and sigh from a black mound by the kitchen table caused his gaze to shoot down. For a moment he couldn’t believe his eyes as he took in the mattress and the figure sleeping under the covers. That girl. What on earth was she doing sleeping on the floor of the kitchen?

Without making a sound he backed towards the door, and it was only when he was standing in the corridor leading to the kitchen with the door shut that he let out his breath. He found he was shaking, whether from the enormity of the deed he’d been about to do or the fact that Bridget might have awoken and found him there, he didn’t know.

He leaned against the whitewashed wall, moving one lip over the other, his head swimming. He remained there for several minutes until the nausea which had risen from his stomach into his chest subsided.

He wouldn’t have done it.
He ran a hand over his face which was damp with perspiration in spite of the freezing cold. He wouldn’t have. Would he? No, he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t. He told himself the same thing several more times before he could move, and then he stumbled upstairs to his study and fell into the big leather chair behind the fine walnut desk which had been his father’s. He drew in a great breath of air, as though he had been running for miles, and then put his head in his hands as he began to cry.

Little had changed in Southwick over the last ten years. True, Southwick’s Local Board had defeated another Sunderland act to absorb the growing township, and as if to cock a snook, Southwick had seen to it that a cricket and bicycle club was formed, along with a tennis club and a rowing club later in the decade. Southwick now boasted its own purpose-built Coffee Tavern at the east end of the green, something the Temperance Society considered a huge step forward in its fight against the demon drink, and the Liberal Club had opened new premises at High Southwick. All in all, Southwick residents felt their independence as a separate entity was justified. They could manage their own affairs and didn’t want Sunderland muscling in where it wasn’t wanted.

Outwardly, little had changed at the vicarage too. The vicar still visited his parishioners when the need arose, sat on various local Boards involved in good works, and preached fire and damnation from the pulpit every Sunday morning. Inside the house, however, the catalyst which had been dropped into their midst ten years before in the shape of one small baby had continued to bring changes which even now rippled an undercurrent within the family.

It would be fair to say the vicarage was a house divided, and
the divide came in the shape of Sophy. On the one hand Jeremiah, Mary and Patience made no secret of their loathing of ‘the child’ as Mary continued to call Esther’s daughter, but John, Matthew and David held their cousin in deep affection and the little girl was Bridget’s sun, moon and stars. Unfortunately for Sophy, the three sons of the family were at private boarding schools for a great part of each year, and she was left to the tender mercies of Patience, whose chief delight was finding new ways to torment her. And in this Patience was ably assisted by her mother.

With each passing year Esther’s daughter had grown more beautiful and similarly, so had Mary’s hate of her niece grown. She lost no opportunity in physically punishing the little girl for the slightest fall from grace – of which there were many because Sophy was a spirited child – using her correction cane with righteous zeal and unerring accuracy for maximum pain. A word spoken out of place, a chore not carried out to her satisfaction, a glance she considered insolent – all brought forth retribution of the harshest kind. It was one of Mary’s regrets that she couldn’t find fault with the child’s aptitude for her lessons. Patience and Sophy were taught by a governess for four hours each morning, and although Patience was fourteen months older than her cousin she didn’t have half of her intelligence or natural proficiency. Once the lessons were over for the day Sophy was consigned to Bridget’s care with a list of chores from her aunt as long as her arm, and both Mary and Patience had taken to checking that these were being carried out at odd moments of the day, suspecting that Bridget was too lenient with her small charge.

Jeremiah had little to do with the workings of the house and none with domestic arrangements. When he was at home he buried himself in his study, emerging only at mealtimes or when they had guests. At those times anyone would have been hard put to guess the state of enmity existing between husband and wife. Most of the time he ignored Sophy’s existence, and when he was forced to acknowledge her presence, his granite profile concealed a bitter resentment which had grown like a canker over time, souring every aspect of his life.

As for Sophy herself, it would be true to say that but for Bridget and her parents the little girl’s life would have been unbearable. As it was, she accepted her lot, if not stoically – she had too much of her mother running through her veins for that – then with a fortitude which enabled her to be happy some of the time, although the older she got the more she questioned the unfairness of her position.

As she was doing right at that moment whilst helping Bridget clean the household silver on the scullery table. ‘I’m going into double numbers tomorrow, aren’t I, Bridget?’

‘That you are, my lamb.’

‘Patience and David had a party when they went into double numbers. Do you remember the frock Aunt Mary bought Patience, the pink one with the silk sash?’

Bridget nodded but didn’t comment. The mistress had spent a fortune on the dress from one of the la-di-da shops in Bishopwearmouth, but all it had done was to accentuate Patience’s extreme plainness ten-fold. No expensive frock could disguise the fact that Patience was the spitting image of her mother, in nature as well as appearance, Bridget thought darkly.

‘It was a bonny frock,’ Sophy murmured wistfully, glancing down at the plain grey serge dress her aunt made her wear every day except for the occasions they had visitors.

Bridget sniffed. ‘Bonny is as bonny does.’

Sophy stared into the round, rosy face of the person she loved most in all the world. Bridget sometimes said things which didn’t make any sense at all.

‘Kitty’s making me a birthday cake but we’ve got to keep it a secret,’ she whispered conspiratorially. ‘She said I can help decorate it and write my name in pink icing sugar.’

‘Is that so?’ Bridget knew she didn’t need to emphasise that the bairn’s aunt and uncle mustn’t catch a whiff of it, and Miss Patience, too, of course. She’d often thought it was a great pity Patience wasn’t a boy, because there was no doubt a major part of her fierce hatred of this child was down to the green-eyed monster. And she could understand how Patience must feel in
part, because if Mrs Lemaire had been pretty, her daughter was beyond bonny. Sophy’s skin was pure milk and roses, her wavy hair a bright golden auburn and her lips full and perfectly shaped, but it was the bairn’s eyes that took your breath away. They were like none she’d seen before in a human face, being a burned honey colour and as clear as amber, with thick sweeping lashes and fine curving brows above.

‘If my mother was here she’d have bought me a new frock.’

It was a whisper but Bridget heard it and put her arm round the slender shoulders. ‘That she would, me bairn. That she would. And a matching one for herself, no doubt, then you’d have been two peas in a pod.’ She was exaggerating a little but felt it was called for. ‘Just like her you are, hinny.’

Sophy nodded. And that was why her aunt and uncle didn’t like her. She had learned much from listening to Bridget and Kitty’s chatter as she had grown, especially when they thought she was asleep in her pallet bed in the far corner of the kitchen. She knew her mother had been her uncle’s sister and that she had married a French nobleman of whom her family had disapproved. Her mother had been beautiful, like a fairy princess, and her father very handsome. She had added that last bit herself but she knew it to be true, for why else would her mother have left everyone and everything she’d known to marry him? It was like a story, even if it had ended badly with her father dying and her mother having to come home to her Uncle Jeremiah. Her aunt and uncle hadn’t liked her mother and they didn’t like her. She had said that once to Bridget, and Bridget had answered that her aunt and uncle didn’t like anyone, including each other, but then Kitty had shushed Bridget and told her to hold her tongue.

She also knew that Bridget was wholly hers in a way no one else was, and this was often balm to her bruised heart when her aunt had been particularly harsh. Only last night she’d heard Bridget and Kitty talking at the kitchen table over a cup of tea before they retired for the night, Patrick ensconced in his chair by the range smoking his pipe.

‘Cryin’ shame, I call it,’ Bridget had said softly. ‘She’ll be ten the day after the morrer and still sleeping like a dog in the kitchen. What other man would hold with his own sister’s bairn being treated as scum, I ask you? She’s worse off than we are, at least we get paid for the work we do’ – here Kitty had snorted, and Bridget had amended – ‘even if it is a pittance, and we have our own rooms, Mam, now then. That little bairn has never been allowed to play, and she was made to slave from when she could walk. A pallet bed in the kitchen – it’s not right, not when the guest room is empty year in and year out, ’cept for when the bishop comes to stay for a few days.’