The Flight of Swallows (45 page)

Josie, who had been arranging a quilt in a lovely fall of colours over a plain balloon-backed chair, popped her head round the door and they both turned to look enquiringly at her.

‘You’re wanted in’t shop, Mrs Armstrong. There’s a customer ’oo can’t decide over a chair he fancies or—’

‘We don’t sell furniture, Josie. You know that. What is in the shop is for display purposes only. Can’t you tell him or get Mr Joseph to deal with him? I’m busy with—’

‘I told him that, ma’am, an’ so did Mr Joseph but he ses he wants to speak to the owner. He’s really taken to that chair, the one I were just about to drape this quilt over.’

All the girls who worked in the shop, adept now at displaying what was for sale, wore a pale grey dress with demure white collars and cuffs, very professional, and were proud not only of their jobs and the position they had achieved, but their children who were being taught to read and write and do sums and when the time came would go to the school in the village. They had bettered themselves, thanks to Doctor Chapman and Mrs Armstrong, and they were made up with it, and the doctor and their mistress were accorded the positions of gods!

The man stood with his back to the door, gazing out of the window at the bustle in the Bull Ring but even so she knew who it was.

Her father turned as she stood in the doorway of the workroom. He looked very smart in his morning coat, a single-breasted waistcoat and striped trousers. He had a pristine white handkerchief in his breast pocket to match his linen collar and carried a silk top hat.

‘Good morning, Charlotte. This girl seems to be simple and the salesman incompetent. Your staff do not give me the service I demand so I thought you might be able to help me.’

He smiled smoothly.

29

Her heart pounded so hard she thought it might run out of control and stop beating. She wondered at the back of her mind why, in all this storm that had them at its centre she and Brooke had not considered the shop as a place of hazard. But then it was in the middle of a busy shopping area with hundreds of people passing to and fro and there were five employees in the building, though what good the rather effeminate Mr Joseph would be in such an emergency she could not imagine. Good at his job of salesman. The ladies liked him, for he had a certain manner that was civil without being subservient and he very definitely knew his carpets! She sat down in the chair her father wanted to purchase and waited.

‘My dear Charlotte. I was passing so I thought I would pop in and have a look at my daughter’s new enterprise and very smart it is too. And busy . . .’ for the shop was filled with customers, some of them just browsing, others discussing their requirements with Mr Joseph. She would have to expand soon if things continued to grow as they were, she had told Brooke only last night, secure in the knowledge that she was safe from this ogre who had haunted her life for so many years.

‘I was interested in the very chair you are sitting in, Charlotte, but that girl who is as “daft as a dormouse” as they say in these parts, seemed to think—’

‘We don’t sell furniture,’ Charlotte snapped, ‘and she told you so. Now if that is all, I have work to do.’ She stood up but he merely smiled and took a step towards her. To her own annoyance she took a step back.

‘Very well, but since I am here I thought it would be pleasant if we had a little chat. I would so like us to be friends, you know.’

‘Friends! You and I will never be friends.’

‘Charlotte, really!’

‘I haven’t the time to—’

‘I find your attitude displeasing, Charlotte,’ he told her, still smiling, ‘and you know when I become displeased you are always punished so I would be glad—’

‘Get out of my shop or I shall call a constable. There is always one about the Bull Ring and if—’

‘And accuse me of what, my dear?’ His expression had turned dangerous and his eyes a deep muddy brown. ‘I am here merely to invite you to step across the way and have a coffee with me in the Griffin Hotel. It has a very respectable lounge where a lady and gentleman may sit and chat without interruption. You will be perfectly safe, my dear. Oh, yes, I have seen those men who patrol your husband’s estate and so far I have made no attempt to cross the boundary so to speak. But you may have noticed’ – here he held out his arms – ‘that I no longer use a walking stick. Indeed I can even mount my horse thanks to the excellent man your Doctor Chapman recommended to me. I have seen the children playing,
my
daughter with them and I must say she is growing into a very attractive little girl. I am quite taken with her and I’m sure if she came to live with me she would feel the same about her father. So, perhaps you might like to discuss this over a coffee. I am actually on my way to see my lawyer and meet Sir Clive Parker who, you may remember, is my dead wife’s father. In fact the grandfather of Ellen, or Ellie as I believe you call her. He and I have discussed the matter and though he has no wish to take her on he would like to see his granddaughter and tells me he—’

Charlotte put out a hand and grasped the back of the chair, defeated. ‘I’ll get my hat and coat,’ she said.

Brooke took the telephone receiver from Mr Johnson’s hand then held it away from his ear as a shrill voice gabbled so hysterically and so incoherently that he could not make out who it was or what she was saying. It was obviously a woman.

‘Slow down, slow down, I can’t understand what you are telling me.’

‘Sir . . . gabble . . . gabble . . . come at once . . . mistress . . .’

‘Who is this?’ he snapped, instantly alert.

‘Jenny . . . Jenny, sir . . . an’ ’e’s tekken ’er.’

‘Jenny, for God’s sake, woman, who? What the bloody hell are you saying?’

‘Mrs Armstrong, sir, ’er pa come in . . .’ In her distress Jenny had reverted to the way of speaking she had done her best to eliminate, copying her mistress. ‘’E’s took ’er ter the Griffin ’Otel, she said ter tell tha’, fer a coffee.’

‘A coffee!’

‘Telephone master ter come at once, she sed ter tell tha’ . . .’

Brooke didn’t even put the receiver back on the hook. Alarming all the servants to the extent that Nellie dropped a pan of soup all over the freshly scrubbed kitchen floor, he flew to the back door, ran to the garage and jumped into the Mercedes, shouting to Percy to give the starting handle a swing. ‘In fact, get in and come with me. I might need you,’ he told the startled groom.

‘But I’m in me muck—’ Percy protested, for he had been mucking out the stables.

‘It doesn’t matter. Get in.’

The journey from King’s Meadow frightened poor Percy to death, as the master drove at an incredible sixty miles an hour racing along winding country roads through Middlestown, Horbury and thundering into Wakefield at such a rate folk on the pavements jumped hastily back in alarm. He screamed to a halt outside the Griffin Hotel, flinging poor Percy back in his seat, not even turning off the engine and leaving the motor parked askew at the front door. He ricocheted into the hotel, dodging guests and causing them to move hastily aside and porters the same, shouting after him to watch what he was doing.

‘The coffee lounge, where the hell’s the coffee lounge?’ he yelled at a waiter and when the man pointed a wavering hand he raced towards the open door with Percy, who had no idea what the devil was up, in close pursuit.

She was sitting opposite her father, her face drawn, her eyes dead, leaning back in her chair with a cup of untouched coffee on the table before her while Arthur Drummond, leaning slightly forward with his elbows on the table, talked to her, expecting no answer, it seemed. He was not holding a conversation so much as giving her orders.

Brooke’s roar of outrage lifted every head in the room and several ladies squeaked.

In two strides he was across the room, those drinking coffee at the small tables cowering back in terror, for they thought he must be an escaped lunatic. Grabbing Arthur Drummond by the scruff of his neck, he hauled him to his feet, drew back his fist and hit him squarely on his chin. Drummond landed on his back, fortunately between two tables, and their occupants, ladies having coffee after an hour’s shopping, began to scream. But Brooke wasn’t satisfied. He wanted Drummond to stand up and allow him to hit him again and again, so when he did not he dragged him to his feet and struck him once more, this time on his nose which immediately spouted a great gout of blood.

Charlotte, who for several moments had been paralysed with shock and fear, stood up, her chair crashing backwards into the chair occupied by a lady whose bonnet fell over her face with the impact. She was screaming Brooke’s name and attempting to get hold of him, for if no one stopped him he would surely kill her father. Percy, who had followed his master into the hotel, spreading dung on the luxurious carpet in the entrance hall, leaped across the room and tried to get a grip of his other arm, the one that the mistress could not reach. The room was in uproar. Several waiters were doing their babbling best to restore order and the manager, when he arrived on the scene, could not believe his eyes.

‘Sir!’ he was shouting to no avail, for it was obvious that the gentleman attacking the second gentleman was just that, a gentleman. In fact he recognised him as the wealthy and influential landowner Mr Brooke Armstrong and the one he was doing his best to smash to pieces was another, though not so wealthy nor so influential. There was a working man with muck on his boots and a lady screaming Mr Armstrong’s name and everyone in the coffee lounge was either shrieking – the ladies – or protesting loudly that they had never seen anything like it in their lives.

‘I shall send for the constable,’ he cried, doing his best with the man in working clothes to hold back Mr Armstrong, but by now it seemed the white-hot rage that was consuming Mr Armstrong, whatever it was about, was cooling, owing to his wife, the one who owned the Carpet Shop across the Bull Ring, dragging him, soothing him, pleading with him to come away or he would be arrested.

Dazed and bleeding, the second gentleman was helped to his feet, his face a mask of hatred. The thought passed through the manager’s mind that if the look directed at Mr Armstrong by the bloodstained gentleman had been hurled at him he would have been exceedingly frightened. His lip was curled back in a snarl, rather like that of a wolf ready to attack. He could barely stand and a couple of waiters held him, one on each arm, for though he was the one who had been attacked there seemed to be a chance he might retaliate.

‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, I beg you,’ the manager began, but Arthur Drummond, who had been taken completely by surprise by Brooke’s appearance and attack – in fact he had been feeling particularly jubilant at his own success in cowing Charlotte – was in a rage so great he almost hit the man who held him. She had agreed to visit him at her old home, or ‘call on him’ as he had put it, in the manner of their class, but they both knew exactly what that entailed. She would persuade her husband to dine with him and to invite him to dine at King’s Meadow. They were to put on a front to ensure that their mutual friends would be made to realise that their feud had been forgotten. They were to be ‘friends’ in fact, and he would rather enjoy riding with her on her husband’s acres, he had told her and if her husband proved awkward then Charlotte was to let him know that Ellie would at once be brought back to live with him at the Mount. And then there was the question of his own grandchildren: what were their names? Ah yes, Lucy and Toby. He might like to have them brought over to the Mount now and again, just to make sure Charlotte was not allowing them to become undisciplined. She had been known to be indulgent with her brothers, particularly Robert. He wanted all this to be plain to them both so that when he kept his appointment with his lawyer he could tell him that all was now settled. Sir Clive could visit his granddaughter whenever he wished, either at the Mount or at King’s Meadow. All he wanted in return for this perfectly reasonable request was that Charlotte and he would be friends again!

It was at that moment Brooke Armstrong had slammed across the coffee lounge and, if Arthur was not mistaken, broken some of his teeth.

‘I want this man arrested,’ he hissed through his bleeding lips, taking the white napkin the manager held out to him and putting it to his face. ‘I think I have enough witnesses to prove that I was sitting here talking peacefully to my daughter when he—’

‘My wife!’
Brook bellowed. ‘And I dare say he would not be willing to repeat what he was saying to her.
Demanding
of her. He is a bastard, a bloody pervert . . .’

‘Brooke, darling, please . . .’ Charlotte was doing her best to draw him away from the shocked and silently staring crowd of onlookers, some of the ladies beginning to whimper, for in their sheltered lives they were not accustomed to hearing such language nor to seeing such violence. Brooke wanted nothing more than to have another go at smashing Drummond’s face in but the touch of his wife’s hand, the sound of her voice calmed him and he was not to know that she was beginning to regret the telephone call she had asked Jenny to make. But she had been fearful of what her father might do: lure her into his carriage which waited outside the shop, or drag her somewhere down a ginnel at the back of . . . God knew he was mad enough, and she had panicked. And now look what had happened!

She had been prepared to agree to anything her father demanded of her, no matter how humiliating. She had sat and listened to his whispered ultimatums, nodding her head as though she were willing to give in to them. She had kept her eyes averted so that he would not see the loathing in them and the growing, secret determination to deny him what he wanted. She would
never
become his ‘friend’ – dear sweet Jesus, she knew exactly what that meant – she would never,
never
give Ellie over to him nor let him have any input on how she reared her own children even if she had to persuade Brooke to move away and hide these precious children from him. Her own brothers had come for Christmas as they had done ever since she had married Brooke and though they appeared to have overcome their strict, no, cruel upbringing she would not under any circumstances permit her own children, nor his, to be treated as she and her brothers had been. He would never be allowed across her doorstep and she would not
call
on him at the Mount, she vowed silently. Sir Clive, if he wished it, though he had shown no sign of it so far, might come and visit his granddaughter at King’s Meadow. Besides, she knew Brooke would agree to none of his demands. He’d kill him first. Dear God in heaven, help me, help me . . .