Emma
Authors: Rosie Clarke
Contents
All she has is her reputation...
When Emma Robinson discovers she is carrying Paul Greenslade’s child, there are harsh consequences after he disappears rather than marry a common shop-girl.
Forced by her tyrannical father to marry Richard Gillows, Emma learns quickly that a jealous husband is a violent one. How can Emma escape the ties that bind her, to build a life for herself and her child?
From the author of
The Downstairs Maid
(Note: previously published as
The Ties That Bind
by Linda Sole)
Rosie Clarke was born in Swindon. Her family moved to Cambridgeshire when she was nine, but she left at the age of fifteen to work as a hairdresser in her father’s business. She was married at eighteen and ran her own hairdressing business for some years.
Rosie loves to write and has penned over one hundred novels under different pseudonyms. She writes about the beauty of nature and sometimes puts a little into her books, though they are mostly about love and romance.
The Downstairs Maid
‘Tell my fortune, Gran,’ I begged, offering my hand palm-up across the scrubbed pine kitchen table. ‘Oh, please – just this once.’
She puffed on her clay pipe, silently regarding me from those wise old eyes, and considered. Known affectionately to March townsfolk as Old Mother Jacobs, my grandmother disliked telling fortunes for her family because she was afraid of what she might see. She had read her husband’s death in the tea leaves and it had frightened her so much that she had tried to ignore her gift ever since, which was a shame because there was no doubting she had the ‘sight’.
‘Please, Gran …’
‘Maybe just this once then … seeing as you’ve brought me baccy.’
‘I didn’t do it for that, Gran.’
‘No, that you didn’t, you’re a good girl.’
Gran took my hand in hers. Her skin felt rough and callused from years of hard work; her fingers were misshapen claws spotted with age and twisted with the rheumatics. I waited eagerly as she puffed on her pipe, looked thoughtful, then began to trace the lifeline on my hand with a yellowed fingernail.
‘You’ve a long life ahead of you, girl,’ she said at last. ‘A long, hard road to travel by the looks of it. You’ll not have easy times.’
My life had never been easy. I wanted Gran to tell me about the future. ‘I don’t mind work,’ I said, dismissing her warning. ‘Will I marry? Will I have children?’
Sometimes I was afraid that my life would never change. I had been working in Father’s shop ever since I’d left school at fifteen. I hadn’t wanted to leave. My teacher had been sure I was bright enough to win a place at college, that I could go on to become a teacher myself, but my father had refused to listen.
‘If you’re bright enough for that, you can keep the books for me,’ he had told me when I’d begged him to let me stay on at school. ‘You’ll not need to go out and earn a living. The business will be yours one day, so you may as well learn how to look after things. I don’t want to employ anyone else, Emma. May as well keep the money in the family.’
My father was very careful with his money; some people said he was mean, though not within his hearing.
‘You will have a child,’ Gran said, nodding her head. ‘Perhaps more than one. There’s a break in the line here. It means …’ She shook her head and let go of my hand. ‘Nothing. It’s all nonsense. Why I let you persuade me I don’t know. You’ll marry if you want, Emma. You ain’t a beauty but there’s something grand about you – goodness knows where it comes from. Not from me or your father, that’s for sure – but mayhap your father’s folk. There was always a mystery about Harold Robinson. Nobody knew where he came from twenty-odd years ago when he set up shop and they’re none the wiser now. A close man, your father – in more ways than one.’
No, I wasn’t pretty; Gran was right about that. I had thick, dark hair, which I brushed back off my face and secured into a coil at the nape of the neck, and my eyes were brown, but there was nothing remarkable about me that I could see.
‘Pretty isn’t everything,’ Gran said, taking another puff of her pipe. ‘You’ve got something men like. Your destiny is in your own hands, girl. Don’t you worry, things will come right one of these days. You won’t always be tied to your father’s shop.’
‘You are a pet!’ I flew round the table and hugged her. She smelled of baking and carbolic, familiar and much loved. ‘Shall I wash the tea things before I go?’
‘Am I the invalid now, that I can’t wash a couple of plates?’ She scowled at me, but the fierce look hid a warm heart. ‘Be off with you, Emma. It’s a lovely day. Take a bit of a walk and get some air into you. Your father keeps you indoors too much.’
‘At least he lets me visit you once a week.’
‘I’d have something to say if he didn’t.’ She gave me a long, speculative look. ‘You’re a good lass, Emma. I look forward to your visits – but if ever you want to do a bit of courtin’ on a Wednesday afternoon, you don’t need to worry over me. I shan’t grumble if you don’t come.’
‘You’re a wicked woman,’ I said, laughing. ‘At the moment there’s no lad I’d rather spend my time with – if there was I would tell you.’
‘I know that.’ Gran’s eyes had a naughty glint, reminding me that she had by all accounts been a bit of a lass in her youth. ‘But there’s a few lads have noticed you, lass. Your father won’t be able to hang on to you for ever, no matter how hard he tries.’
‘Bless you,’ I said and kissed her cheek. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, Gran.’
She was looking at me, an odd sadness in her eyes that made me wonder what she was thinking.
‘You’re not ill, Gran?’ I asked, a cold chill at the base of my spine.
‘No, I’m not ill. Get off with you, before the day’s wasted!’
I smiled as I left my grandmother’s cottage. It was built close to the railway line and Gran spent most of her time these days sitting at her back door, puffing her pipe and waving to folk in the trains which rattled past. She was known to almost everyone in March, a small, busy, Cambridgeshire town which had one of the largest marshalling yards in Europe and had become prosperous because of it, and to many travellers who passed through on their daily journeys to and from work.
Her husband, Jack Jacobs, had worked all his life as a railwayman, ending his days as a crossing keeper. After his death, Gran had rented her tiny cottage from the railway, living on her meagre savings and gifts of fruit or vegetables from the gardens of people who knew and liked her.
Remembering a conversation with my father earlier that morning, I frowned. I had asked him for something to take Gran as a gift, but he had refused me.
‘I’ve no money to be wasting on Mother Jacobs,’ he’d muttered. ‘She’ll get by without charity from me; she always has.’
‘I wasn’t asking for money, Father. Just some tobacco or a bar of Fry’s dark chocolate. She likes that.’
‘You’ve got your wages. Buy her something yourself if you’re so set on it.’
I had intended to do that anyway. But it wouldn’t have hurt Father to give me something for Gran. He made more than enough money, and I ought to know. I kept the books for him, though I had no idea what he did with all the profits. Neither my mother nor I saw much of them. He certainly didn’t pay me much of a wage.
I mulled over my grandmother’s words. It was true that Father didn’t give me much time away from the shop, which sold newspapers, sweets, tobacco and various odds and ends, like stationery, lighters and boot-laces. He had once considered selling food, too, but there was a large greengrocer’s next door and a general grocer’s at the end of the road, so in the end he had decided to stick to the trade he knew best.
I was thankful he had decided against branching out. I already worked long hours for the eight shillings a week he paid me. I could have earned more in the new corset factory, which had recently set up in town, but Father had refused to hear a word about it.
‘No daughter of Harold Robinson is going to work there,’ he had told me when I’d mentioned it. ‘Common as muck, that’s what those women are. You should think more of yourself, Emma, and thank your lucky stars for the home you’ve got. You don’t need more money. You’ve a bed to sleep in, food in your stomach, and your mother will make you a new dress when you need one.’
My mother was good with her needle. She always looked smart herself, a slim, trim, attractive woman who had once been a looker, but had a permanent droop to her mouth these days. I had never minded wearing the dresses and blouses she made me for everyday, but I did want a smart, tailor-made costume for best. I’d seen one in a shop in the main street, and every Wednesday on my way back from visiting Gran, I popped in to look at it. Just to make sure it was still there.
That afternoon, I panicked when I glanced through the costume rail. It had gone! Disappointment swept over me. I had been saving, but I’d left it too long.
‘Don’t look like that.’ Mrs Henty came through from the back. ‘I’ve put it by for you, Emma. Someone else was looking at it on Saturday, and I didn’t want it to go.’
‘But it will be ages before I can save enough to pay you.’
‘How much have you saved so far?’ Mrs Henty gave me an encouraging smile.
‘Ten shillings – and I should be able to put another two by this week.’
‘Well, let’s see – how about this? You pay me a deposit, then bring in what you can until you’ve paid the rest off.’
I thought about the costume. It had a long, slim skirt that flared out slightly into a frill of box pleats just above my ankles; the jacket was three-quarter length and in the new swagger or jigger style, which hung like a kind of triangle over the tight skirt and looked very stylish; and the shade was a soft green, which suited my colouring.
‘It was really kind of you to put it by for me,’ I said, making the big decision. ‘I would like to pay so much a week, if you’re sure you don’t mind?’
My father would be angry if he knew what I was doing; he didn’t believe in owing anything to anyone, but if I didn’t decide now someone else would buy my costume.
‘I’d rather you had it than anyone else,’ Mrs Henty said. ‘That woman on Saturday wanted it for a wedding, but it would be wasted on her. No, it’s your costume, Emma. That lovely green looks just right on you, dear.’
‘I might be able to pay you more soon, if my father gives me another two shillings a week. He said he would if I got up earlier to sort out the papers for the boys to deliver, and I have all this week.’
‘You make him pay you the extra,’ Mrs Henty advised. ‘He can afford it. He must know what a treasure he’s got in you, dear. Goodness knows I’d love to have you working for me.’
‘Father would never let me,’ I said with a sigh of regret. ‘I only wish I could work for you, Mrs Henty. You have such lovely clothes.’
She smiled and nodded as I went out. It was an impossible dream, of course. Father would find some reason why he didn’t want his daughter to work in a dress shop.
Mother had the table spread when I got in. She knew I always had a cup of tea and a piece of cake with Gran, but it was nearly six and Father would be up for his supper at half past. It was our chance for a quiet gossip before I went down to take Father’s place in the shop.
‘How was your grandmother?’ she asked as I took off my coat and hat, hanging them on the pegs in the hall. ‘Pleased with the baccy, I expect?’