The Flight of Swallows (19 page)

He dragged her into his arms and she began to make a soft mewing sound in her throat as she pressed even closer to that wondrous, unexpected moment that both of them longed for. He almost threw her on to the bed and she gloried in his roughness. His face strained triumphantly above hers and she reached up with her teeth to worry his lips and at that moment there was a light tap at the door. They were so engrossed in the magic, the suddenness, the whipping up of their greed for one another they did not hear it, but when it came again, louder this time, it percolated through the passion, the heat, the ardour and Brooke lifted his head from her rosy nipple and roared his frustration.

‘What the bloody hell . . .’ He had been about to take this changed wife of his, plunge himself into her, ravage her, though how can a woman be ravaged willingly? He only knew that he could have knocked senseless whoever was intruding on this most important moment of his life with Charlotte. ‘Can we not get a bit of peace in our own room, for God’s sake?’ he raved.

‘Brooke . . .’

‘Go away,’ he snarled at the closed door. ‘Can’t whatever it is wait until tomorrow?’

‘No, sir, I’m that sorry but I must speak ter Miss Charlotte.’

It was Kizzie’s voice on the other side of the door. They both slowly came from that sensual world which they had entered so astonishingly, looking in a dazed sort of way at one another, for had they not just left her with Jenny and her newborn, all of them, including Kizzie, secure in the knowledge that the birth had been achieved successfully with no complications. The child had been healthy and they had left the Dower House happy that all was well. Now here, thirty minutes later, was Kizzie asking for her mistress.

‘I must see what . . .’ Charlotte began but Brooke, his desire roused beyond his control, held her back. She had never refused him in the past, nor seemed unwilling, but it had been a dutiful acknowledgement to his needs, not hers. But tonight had been different and he was not about to give it up without a fight. Particularly with a servant.

‘No, Charlotte. We know that mother and child are well, for we saw them no more than thirty minutes ago so there is no need—’

‘Please, Miss Charlotte, ah can’t manage on me own. Tha’ needs ter come an’ . . . well, I think tha’ll need ter call doctor.’

Charlotte slipped from the bed, somewhat unsteady on her feet, and moved towards the door, conscious that her husband who had been so kind and helpful tonight had flung himself away from her with a groan.

‘Dear God, am I always to come second . . .’

For a moment Charlotte hesitated, since she had also been roused, ready for what had seemed to be a new start in their marriage, a shared experience that would be agreeable to them both, but Kizzie would not have come knocking on their bedroom door for some trifling thing. Something must have happened: perhaps Jenny had begun to bleed or . . . or the baby had . . . well, she was not awfully sure what could have happened to the baby since she had had no experience with infants. She had been ten years old when Robbie was born and her mother had died and there had been servants, nurses, a doctor in attendance.

She turned for a moment to the rigid figure of her husband who lay on his back with his arm across his eyes. ‘Brooke, I’m sorry, I must just see what Kizzie wants, what has happened since . . .’ but he continued to lie where she had left him. If she was to go, then go she must but she was not to expect him to approve. In fact he would never forgive her! This was the first time since their marriage that she had been as mad for him as he was for her and now . . . his aching member throbbed with need and he would never forgive her if she went.

She threw on her negligee and opened the door to Kizzie who was in a state of disarray that told of something quite out of the ordinary, for Kizzie was a calm, organised young woman who let nothing much faze her. Now her hair was coming down about her face, the apron she wore had bloodstains on it and though it was as cold outside as the Arctic, she wore no coat nor even a shawl.

‘What is it? Has Jenny . . .?’

‘Nay, lass.’ Kizzie seized her hand and began to draw her towards the head of the stairs leading down to the hallway. ‘Jenny’s alreet. ’Tis t’other ’un.’

‘T’other ’un?’

‘Aye, Ruth. ’Er what left a while back. She’s ’ad ’er bairn but she’s in a bad way an’ theer’s nowt I can do. She needs a doctor. Bairn’s in a bad way an’ all. Miss Charlotte, I can’t manage two on ’em an’ a poorly baby. Will yer telephone yer doctor?’

‘I don’t know a doctor, Kizzie. I’ve never had cause to need one.’

They both hurried down the stairs and when they reached the telephone stared at it as though it might have some answer for them but Kizzie knew they could not afford to dither because the girl, Ruth, fourteen years old and said to have taken to prostitution in the last few weeks, would bleed to death if nothing was done. Kizzie had cut the cord, separating her from her child but it, another little girl, was lying, unwashed and unattended, while Kizzie fought to save the mother’s life.

Charlotte stood, gnawing on her knuckles as she struggled with this dilemma that Kizzie was expecting her to solve but really there was only one person who could point them in the right direction and he was upstairs, hating her in his frustrated anger.

There had been no mistress at King’s Meadow since Brooke’s mother had died, but Mrs Dickinson, that most careful of housekeepers, had left a notebook on the telephone stand, in which she had written the telephone numbers she considered might be needed in an emergency and one of them was a Doctor Chapman.

‘There’s a Doctor Chapman here,’ she mumbled as she rifled through the pages.

‘Telephone ’im, lass. Theer’s no time ter waste.’

Yes, the doctor was at home, a cool voice at the other end of the line told her, but he had just got into bed and could it not wait until morning? . . . Oh, Mrs Armstrong, King’s Meadow, of course, just a moment, the voice changing noticeably when it was discovered to be the wife of one of the wealthy landowners in the district on the other end of the line.

The doctor was on his way, the voice eventually told her, coming over in the gig and would be with her in ten minutes. Could she perhaps say what . . . no, of course not, she quite understood, but by this time Charlotte had hung up and was hurrying upstairs to put on some warm clothing and Kizzie had left to return to the Dower House.

Brooke was not in their room and when she knocked timidly on the door of his dressing room his voice told her coldly that unless she was prepared to get back into her own bed with him beside her she could bugger off!

She waited at the front door of the house, conscious of Mr Johnson, the butler, hovering at the top of the staircase wondering if he could help her in any way, for the noise she and Kizzie had made had apparently awakened the rest of the servants.

‘No, Johnson,’ she told him absently. ‘Go back to bed. I am waiting for the doctor.’

‘The doctor, ma’am? Is the master taken ill?’ He began to descend the stairs but she waved him away in a peremptory fashion. ‘No, no, the master is well,’ but is in a foul mood, she wanted to add.

‘Shall I . . .?’ the stately gentleman asked but Charlotte told him to go back to bed, leaving him wondering if it was not the master who was ill, and obviously not the mistress, what was wanted from a doctor.

The doctor arrived, his little gig skidding on the ice-coated gravel drive. He flung himself at the door, but Charlotte was out and had hold of his arm before he could reach it.

‘This way, Doctor; Doctor Chapman, isn’t it? We have not met before but I am Mrs Armstrong.’ She still had hold of his arm as though afraid he would escape, dragging him hurriedly towards the gate that led to the Dower House. He looked bewildered and indeed began to struggle somewhat, since his wife had informed him as he was about to sink into a much needed sleep that Mrs Armstrong of King’s Meadow was ill and here she was in the best of health, seemingly, and taking him away from the main house.

‘It’s one of my servants, Doctor; well, not actually that but she is a woman who needs medical attention and your name was in the book.’

Book!
What was the woman talking about and where the devil was she taking him?

‘She has just . . . well, you will see when you examine her. She is apparently losing blood.’

‘Please, I beg you, Mrs Armstrong, let me get my breath. Losing blood? Has she had an accident?’

‘No, a baby.’ Charlotte opened the door of the Dower House and pulled him through and there was Kizzie leaning over the bedraggled figure of young Ruth who was sprawled in a chair by the fire. She had her legs wide open and Kizzie was doing her best to staunch the blood that was pumping from her, holding a great bloody mass of towels to the base of her belly. Ruth was whiter than the white, ice-coated world outside, her hair hanging about her in bloodstained draggles as though she had pushed her hands, which had been at her belly, through it.

‘Dear God!’ the doctor ejaculated, for a moment totally appalled, then his medical mind took over and pushing Kizzie out of the way he knelt down and proceeded to work between Ruth’s legs while Kizzie and Charlotte watched in wonder.

‘More towels and hot water,’ he ordered. He took instruments out of his bag and seemed to thread a needle and slowly, slowly, the blood was reduced to a trickle then it stopped. There was blood everywhere, on the doctor, on the chair, on the rug and Ruth was soaked in it from her waist down but miraculously she was still alive. The doctor gave his orders in a crisp voice, saying nothing about the unusual circumstances in which he found himself, for if Charlotte had searched all the parishes around King’s Meadow she could not have engaged a more competent or modern-thinking doctor than Wallace Chapman. He had concerned himself with obstetrics and gynaecology at the infirmary in Wakefield and travelled to Huddersfield and Halifax in his research. He had spent some time in Africa and had been involved with the women and children dispossessed by the war and living in the terrible places built by the British. But that was behind him, though he still was concerned with the tribulations of poor women in childbirth. He was in his forties, Charlotte thought, tall and thin and hollow about the chest, raw-boned, pale-complexioned, untidy, wearing shabby tweeds with leather patches at the elbow.

He gave them instructions that he expected to be obeyed and within an hour Ruth was bathed and asleep in a clean bed, drugged with something Doctor Chapman produced from his bag. The baby was attended to, cleaned up properly, and having examined – with no sign of astonishment – the other mother and child, probably wondering what the devil the young Mrs Armstrong was up to, he promptly put Ruth’s baby to Jenny’s breast, which was overflowing with milk and not one of them, not even Jenny, was allowed to argue.

Only when he was seated at the kitchen table with a cup of Kizzie’s scalding, almost black tea in his hand did he revert to the man who had stumbled across the yard after Charlotte. He became diffident, shy almost, as though aware that he was in the company of the wife of one of Yorkshire’s wealthiest and most influential gentlemen. One who rubbed shoulders with others of the gentry and one who could do a great deal to help the women and children whom Wallace Chapman tended.

‘May I ask how you came to telephone me, Mrs Armstrong? I don’t usually . . .’

‘Your name was in my housekeeper’s telephone book, Doctor. I assumed you were the Armstrong family doctor and so—’

‘My uncle was a doctor in these parts and I took over his practice when I returned from Africa. I live in the family home, since I am the only member left, but I have never been called to King’s Meadow before.’

‘We’re all healthy and, of course, I myself have only been here for five months so I had no knowledge of . . . but I thank God that you were there, Doctor, or Ruth would have died.’

As though that was explanation enough she and Kizzie calmly sipped their tea, smiling at the doctor but Doctor Chapman was intrigued. What was the lovely, very young, well-bred wife of Brooke Armstrong doing with a woman who was so obviously of the lower classes and one who had had, if his experience of such matters was correct, a great deal to do with men in the last few months and had, probably because of it, delivered a premature baby. A baby who had not much chance of surviving. The mother was very damaged, in fact he was pretty certain she had been raped, despite her condition, and here was Brooke Armstrong’s wife acting as a nurse and God knows what else to these two young women who were not of her class or anything like it. Was her husband aware of it? There were not many men, at least of Brooke Armstrong’s station in life, who would allow their wives to involve themselves in such matters. He and his wife had a room at the back of their large, three-storey house to which often in the night a woman or even a child might be seen creeping perhaps beaten by a drunken husband or father, raped, bleeding and bruised. He and Emily would tend them without comment, in a kind but unemotional way, and there they would stay until they were well enough to move on, probably back to the same situation from which they had escaped. They relied on the charity of the town’s wealthy and here, perhaps, was a woman, the wife of one such, who might be applied to for the wherewithal to keep up his small clinic, as he liked to call it.

‘I wonder, Mrs Armstrong, if I might ask how you have two such young women in your household. Both delivering a child on the same night and only you and your . . .’

‘Friend. Kizzie is my friend and has been for many years. This small house, the Dower House, was standing empty so I had the idea . . . Well, to start at the beginning, Jenny, she’s the first one, came knocking on the kitchen door looking for work. My servants – well, you will be aware of the attitude towards unmarried mothers – they were turning her away, you see. She had been seduced . . . Lord, it’s the usual story, Doctor, a maidservant interfered with by the son of the house and given notice when it was found she was with child. I took Jenny in, against the wishes of my husband and my servants, I might add, and I intend to help her in any way I can. She does the most beautiful wall hangings. She makes rag rugs and I think something might come of her talent, but aside from that she has been treated abominably. I’m sorry, this is a simple but well-known story but . . . Really, Doctor, I find my life . . . it has no particular focus to it so I thought if I could help girls like this . . . Yes, you might look surprised, Kizzie’ – turning to smile at the startled servant – ‘I know I have said nothing to you but I am not cut out to be the sort of wife . . . so many of them do absolutely nothing except indulge themselves and though I am not against pleasure I would like to . . . Dear Lord, I sound like some “do-gooder” who interferes in the lives of others but I’m not, really. I came up with an idea for these girls to earn a living without—’