Chaff upon the Wind (22 page)

Kitty gasped and indignation flooded her face. ‘No, I did not.’

The old man grunted and reached out with dirty fingers to touch it. ‘Mm, well, I could only give you two pounds.’

‘That’s not nearly enough.’ She made as if to fold up the dress. ‘I’ll look for another broker.’

‘Wait a minute. Now, don’t be so hasty.’

They haggled for at least ten minutes until Kitty had driven the man to ten pounds. ‘You see, we’re leaving and I somehow don’t think we’ll get back to redeem it,’
she told him truthfully, ‘so I am sure you’ll be able to sell it at a good profit.’

She knew by the gleam in the man’s eyes that she was right in her assumption.

Within an hour of Kitty’s return to the hotel they were packed and, with the bill settled, on their way out of York in a hired motor car and on the road to Harrogate.

‘It’s a very nice place, Harrogate. A spa town.’

‘Whatever you say, miss,’ Kitty murmured, growing increasingly weary of all the moving from one place to another.

They travelled in silence for several miles until Miriam said suddenly, ‘What if Guy finds out, Kitty? He won’t want to marry me then, will he?’

Appalled, Kitty said, ‘Is that what you’re planning to do? Go back and marry Mr Guy?’ She knew that Mrs Franklin still clung to the hope, but Kitty had thought it a vain one.
Surely Miriam – and her mother – would not deceive the poor young man? But it seemed that she was wrong.

Miriam shrugged. ‘What else can I do?’

‘But do – do you love Mr Guy?’

The girl’s face was stony. ‘What’s the good of loving someone? I thought – I thought I was in love with – with
him
. And look where that’s got
me.’

‘But you shouldn’t marry Mr Guy if you don’t love him, miss. It – it’s not fair on him, because he loves you. Anyone can see that.’

Miriam sighed and then asked bluntly, ‘Do you still love Jack Thorndyke, after all you know about him?’

Now it was Kitty’s turn to sigh and say heavily, ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Then you’re a fool, Kitty Clegg.’

‘I know. But I can’t help myself. I’d do anything – anything to get him to marry me.’

‘Really?’ Miriam said slowly. ‘Would you really?’

Kitty looked away from her mistress to hide the tears that sprang into her eyes. Her glance went out of the car window across the moors stretching into the far distance. ‘Yes,’ she
said, quietly. ‘I really think I would.’

With her face averted, Kitty did not see the scheming look in the green eyes of her young mistress.

They found lodgings in a guesthouse on the hill leading up from the Spa rooms. The landlady, Mrs Lawrence, was a kindly soul who reminded Kitty of Mrs Grundy. On the journey,
Kitty had managed to persuade Miriam to wear the rings once more and to act the part of a recently widowed mother-to-be.

‘Your mother was right, you know. It’ll be so much easier, when – when your time comes.’

Miriam, still shaken from her recent brush with the possible exposure of her shame, agreed, though Kitty could see that it was with reluctance and the stormy expression in Miriam’s fine
eyes warned Kitty of more petulance to come.

Kitty was enchanted with the town just as she had been with the city of York, though for different reasons. The old city with its feeling of history, its beautiful Minster and quaint, old
streets had fascinated her, but Harrogate seemed elegant and the carriages and motor cars spoke of affluence and a place visited by the wealthy. Even the shops seemed to cater for the rich rather
than for a lowly maid. But Kitty was not envious, merely enthralled.

Not so Miriam. As her condition became more obvious and impossible to hide, so she became bored. Her irritability increased and Kitty found herself with no freedom to explore the town. Miriam
demanded her maid’s presence and attention the whole time now.

‘Let’s go to the baths, miss – madam,’ she suggested, trying hard to remember to address her mistress as if she were indeed a married lady.

‘Whatever for?’ Miriam frowned.

‘It’s like a meeting place for the ladies of the town on certain days and – well – soon it won’t be seemly for you to go out except for a little walk after
dusk.’

‘How can I go for walks here?’ Miriam asked listlessly. ‘It’s all hills. I’m out of breath by the time I’ve walked a few paces.’

‘Then it’s high time you walked a bit more,’ Kitty replied sharply. ‘It won’t do you nor your baby any good if you neglect your health.’

Coldly, her mouth tight, Miriam said, ‘What do I care about Jack Thorndyke’s bastard?’

Kitty pulled in a deep breath and before she had stopped to think what she was saying, the words were pouring out of her mouth. ‘Well, I care what happens to his child. And I’ll tell
you summat else. I wish it were me having his child, bastard or not. I’d love it, I’d care for it. Love it and care for it, I would, while there was breath in me body. There now,
it’s said.’ She swung away and marched out of the room before Miriam should see the tears smarting in her eyes.

Left alone in the bedroom, Miriam stared at the door. ‘Would you?’ she murmured, the calculating look once more in her eyes. ‘Would you indeed, Kitty Clegg?’

‘It’s no good, Kitty, I really can’t walk any further.’ Miriam leaned against a lamp post and panted heavily. Through the dusk of the August evening,
Kitty peered at her.

‘You feeling all right?’

‘It’s this awful backache. I’ve had it for a while and it seems to be getting worse.’

‘Why on earth didn’t you say something? Come on,’ Kitty said firmly, ‘we’d best get you back to the boarding house. Now.’

‘Why, what’s the matter?’ Miriam said, but allowed Kitty to take her arm, turn her round and begin leading her back up the hill towards their lodgings.

‘Maybe your time’s come. Backache’s one of the signs that you might be going into labour.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Well, it is,’ Kitty replied shortly, anxious now to get her mistress back into the house.

By the time they reached their rooms, they were both panting with exertion and anxiety.

‘I’d better get Mrs Lawrence to send for the midwife. Go and lie down, madam, and I’ll be back in a minute . . .’

Five hours later, Miriam Franklin gave birth to a lusty boy. Red-faced with exertion and crying hysterically, Miriam pushed the midwife away as she tried to put the child into her arms.
‘Take it away. I don’t want it. I don’t even want to see it . . .’

Helplessly, the midwife turned to Kitty who held out her arms for the infant. The moment Kitty Clegg held Jack Thorndyke’s son in her arms, she loved him. Loved him with a love as fierce
and protective as if she was indeed his natural mother. Her eyes devoured the tiny, puckered features, the tuft of black hair. ‘Jack’s boy,’ she murmured with wonder.
‘You’re Jack Thorndyke’s son. I just don’t understand,’ she whispered, nuzzling the infant’s head with her lips. ‘How can she turn her back on
you?’

Physically, Miriam recovered very quickly and, in a few days, she was demanding to be allowed to get up from her bed. But still she took no notice of her son, refusing to feed
him herself so that Kitty had the trouble of bottles and teats and suffered sleepless nights until the child took to what was, to her, an unnatural way for a tiny baby to have to feed. Kitty was
soon exhausted and pale with dark shadows under her eyes, while Miriam pampered herself and slept soundly through every night. Before many days had passed, to the casual observer it would indeed
have seemed that the maid, and not the mistress, was the natural mother of the infant.

‘I’m going home,’ Miriam announced two weeks after the birth of her child. ‘I can’t stand it here another minute.’

‘I don’t think the child can travel yet. I—’

Miriam whirled around on her. ‘The child? The
child
? You can’t possibly think I’m taking it home, do you?’ Miriam never referred to her son as anything but
‘it’.

‘Well, what are you going to do with
him
?’ Kitty asked pointedly.

Miriam shrugged and preened herself in front of her mirror, pulling in her waist so that, even for Kitty, it was difficult to remember that the other girl had given birth only two weeks
earlier.

‘I know what I’d like to do with it,’ Miriam muttered darkly. ‘Leave him out on the moors . . .’

‘Oh miss . . .’ Kitty began, forgetting, in her anguish for the tiny life which seemed already to be in her sole charge, to call her ‘madam’. Miriam mocked her in a
whining voice. ‘Oh miss, oh miss, how wicked you are . . .’

Kitty stood up and laid the boy in his makeshift cradle – the bottom drawer of the chest from her bedroom. Then, turning to face Miriam, she said, ‘You can’t go home yet. Your
mother’s arriving tomorrow.’

Miriam gasped. ‘How . . .?’ Then as realization dawned, she demanded angrily, ‘Did you send word to her?’

‘Yes,’ Kitty said boldly, squaring her shoulders. ‘Before we left, she asked me to let her know when – when your child had been born.’

‘Oh that’s wonderful! What if anyone sees the letter? What if . . .’

‘Do you think I’m that stupid?’ Kitty snapped, her patience which had been so long held in check giving way at last. ‘Of course I was careful how I worded the letter. I
said that we had arrived back in England and were staying in Harrogate. I didn’t even give her the name of the guesthouse but a poste restante address at the local post office.’

‘How extremely clever of you, Clegg,’ Miriam sneered but she turned away, unable, for once, to think of any further retort.

‘So,’ Kitty went on, ‘your mother will be here tomorrow. She’ll decide what’s to be done.’

Kitty’s voice and demeanour were so much stronger on the surface than she was feeling inside. Her heart was breaking at the thought that tomorrow she might have to part from the baby boy
who already had Kitty Clegg wrapped firmly around his tiny little finger.

‘So – this is my grandson?’ Mrs Franklin stood looking down at the child in the cradle.

‘Do – do you want to hold him, madam?’ Kitty asked tentatively, unsure what the woman’s feelings were towards the child, yet she could not imagine the gentle, kindly Mrs
Franklin being as vehement in her dislike of the circumstances of the innocent child’s birth as Miriam.

Mrs Franklin glanced up at Kitty and then back to the baby. ‘I would, Kitty, I would indeed like to hold him. But I am so afraid that if I did . . .’

Kitty breathed a sigh of relief. ‘You mean, you might not want to part with him? Oh madam, he’s a beautiful baby. Are you really going to give him away? I don’t know how Miss
Miriam can bear to. But – but . . .’ She faltered, unwilling to tell tales, yet Mrs Franklin should know of her daughter’s attitude towards the child. At her mistress’s next
words, however, Kitty’s heart grew cold.

Mrs Franklin was shaking her head. ‘We can’t possibly keep him, Kitty. It would ruin Miriam’s life.’ She looked up and met Kitty’s haunted eyes. The girl was
shocked. It was as if they were discussing a kitten or a puppy, not a child.

‘But madam, even if he’s adopted, how can you be sure he’ll be loved and cared for properly? Won’t you always be wondering where he is and how he is
and—?’

‘Oh don’t, Kitty, please don’t,’ Mrs Franklin whispered and Kitty saw her own feelings mirrored in the woman’s tortured eyes. ‘Please don’t make this
any harder than it already is.’

The door opened and Miriam swept into the room. ‘Have you done my packing, Kitty?’

Mrs Franklin and the maid exchanged a glance and Kitty heard the older woman give a small sigh. ‘So,’ she murmured, her gaze still on the sleeping infant, ‘nothing has
changed.’

‘What?’ Miriam demanded. ‘What did you say?’

Quietly, her mother said, ‘Nothing, my dear. Nothing of importance. Now, we had better all sit down and decide what is to be done.’

‘Done? What do you mean what is to be done?’ Miriam’s voice was high-pitched. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? Isn’t there an orphanage or somewhere that will
take it? Or the workhouse?’

Kitty noticed that Mrs Franklin winced at her daughter’s callousness, but calmly she moved across the room and sat down on a small bedroom chair. ‘It would be kinder to have the
child placed for adoption, Miriam.’

‘Do that then. I don’t care what you do,’ the girl shouted. ‘Just get rid of it.’ At the sound of her raised voice, a whimper came from the cradle so that Kitty
rushed towards it and scooped up the child into her arms. She held him close, crooning softly against his ear, her body swaying in a soothing, rocking motion.

‘Look at her, just look at her,’ Miriam sneered. ‘She ought to have been the mother. It ought to have been her giving birth to Jack Thorndyke’s bastard.’

Mrs Franklin gave a gasp, for it was the first time that Miriam had divulged to her the name of the father. But Miriam ignored her mother and, her eyes glittering with malicious calculation, she
took a step towards Kitty and said, ‘Why don’t you take him, Kitty? Why don’t you present Jack Thorndyke with his son? After all, you did say you wished it was you having his
child, didn’t you? And you said you’d do anything –
anything
– to get him to marry you. Maybe this way – you can.’

It was a monstrous idea and yet, once the seed had been planted in her mind, Kitty could not pluck it out. That she loved the child already was without question, but could she – dare she
– do such a thing?

Though they all knew that the suggestion had been made with malicious sarcasm, it had not been taken as such. Kitty had taken it seriously – very seriously.

Even Mrs Franklin murmured, ‘I suppose it would be a way out.’ Then looking straight at her, she added, ‘But it must be your decision, of course, Kitty. You must be aware that
you would face all sorts of problems. I mean, for instance, what would your family say? How would they treat you?’

But Kitty was only listening with half an ear. Jack’s son. She could take Jack’s son as if he were her own. All men wanted sons and surely a man like Jack Thorndyke would be bursting
with pride to think he had a son. Maybe Miriam was right, maybe he would even marry her if he thought she had borne him a son?