‘I need something a darn sight stronger than tea.’ He stood up, his face glowering. ‘I’ll be in the study if anyone wants me.’
When she was alone, Hannah let out a long irritated sigh. Jake had said he was a fool and he was right, he’d played right into Adam’s hands. And this was the man who had been humming and hawing about whether to take the trap because he didn’t want to appear to be bragging! Adam would make a meal out of this with the neighbours, he’d already nailed his colours to the mast by calling out what he did as Jake left the street. Everyone would think Jake had started the fight and Adam was the innocent.
Oh, Jake, how could you have been so stupid?
Her face flushed with anger and she continued to hold herself stiffly for another moment or two before suddenly plumping down onto the seat Jake had vacated. Did it matter what the neighbours thought? Did it matter what any of them thought back in the town? Here on the farm they were in their own little world, a world where everyone appreciated Jake for the man he was. Why was she getting so het up on his behalf?
After making herself a cup of tea, her panacea for all ills, she sat exactly where she was for almost half an hour. At first she told herself she didn’t know why she was making such a fuss about Jake letting Adam goad him into a fight, then her innate honesty kicked in.
No more woolly thinking. It was as though she was having a conversation with another part of herself. She liked Jake, more than liked him. Something had slowly happened over the last twelve months, something she would have termed impossible a year ago. It didn’t matter that he thought of her in the same way he thought of Naomi - no, that was silly, of course it mattered but it didn’t make any difference to the way she felt.
She glanced round the shining kitchen. She could never reveal how she felt. Their relationship had developed into an easy one where they could say anything to each other; she could never do or say anything to jeopardise that. Besides which, he was now a wealthy man and she knew Farmer Dobson’s daughter had been after him for ages even before this. No doubt there would be others who would be giving him the eye once word of his new standing spread.
For a moment her mind raced as she considered the possibility of Jake bringing a wife into the farmhouse. Would she be asked to stay on as housekeeper or would she be expected to leave? Could she bear to stay on and see him married to someone else? And then she shook her head, impatient with herself. She was putting the cart before the horse here. He might not want to marry. He hadn’t thus far. But then he was a very private man and not given to showing his feelings. Who knew what he really wanted?
As she got up from the table, a shiver ran through her whole body. She didn’t know if it was because the storms of recent days had chilled the air and suddenly everything was cold and damp, or the fact that through Jake and Adam fighting she’d been forced into admitting something she had refused to recognise for weeks now. But nothing had changed, not really. Everything could go on as before.
A day at a time.
One of her Aunt Aggie’s favourite sayings rang in her mind. That was the way she had to cope with this. All the fretting in the world wouldn’t change anything and it wasn’t as though anyone knew, her secret was her own and would remain so. The only person she could have confided in who was unconnected with Jake was her Aunt Aggie and that avenue was closed to her.
But for now there was the dinner to see to, the steak and kidney pie wouldn’t prepare itself. She squared her shoulders, smoothed down her pinny and got to work.
Chapter 18
It was an unusually rainy autumn, everyone said so, and for weeks the ground outside the farmhouse resembled a quagmire. Even the animals seemed sick to death of the weather and the hens showed their displeasure by laying fewer eggs than normal. October had come in with wind and sleet showers and November was a bitterly cold month. On a particularly nasty wet November afternoon, when hail and icy sleet with a force eight gale behind them was sweeping the north-east, Hannah had a visitor.
In spite of it only being two o’clock in the afternoon she had just lit the oil lamps when a knock came at the front door of the farmhouse. This was almost unheard of. Only Farmer Dobson and his daughter and one or two of Seamus’s old friends stood on such ceremony, and Farmer Dobson hadn’t been near the farm for weeks since Jake had made it clear to his daughter that he had no intention of availing himself of the comfort she had seemed determined to give.
Quickly discarding her pinny, Hannah smoothed her dress and patted a stray tendril of hair into the bun at the nape of her neck before hurrying through to the hall and opening the front door. ‘Mam?’ Her mouth fell open as she surveyed the soaked woman on the doorstep.
‘I-I had nowhere else to go. She . . . she’s thrown me out. Just like that.’
Pulling herself together, Hannah said,‘Come in, come in.’ She stood aside for her mother to step into the hall. She had been in the process of making a pot pie for their dinner when the knock had come but she didn’t lead her mother to the kitchen but up the stairs to the sitting room. She lit a fire in there most days now to keep the dampness from penetrating the furniture and by mid-afternoon the room was as warm as toast.
‘Come and sit by the fire.’ Hannah looked at her mother but Miriam wouldn’t meet her eyes. ‘You’re soaked through, I’ll fetch some dry clothes.’
‘Thank you.’ Miriam put down the cloth bag she was holding which, like her, was dripping water onto the polished floorboards. ‘I caught a tram as far as I could but then I had to walk the last mile.’ She held out her hands to the warmth of the blaze.
Hannah said nothing more and left the room swiftly. In her bedroom she did not immediately select some clothes for her mother but stood for a moment gazing blankly ahead. Her mother. Here. She felt at a loss how to handle the situation. She wished Jake was around but he had gone into town on business and wouldn’t be back for at least another hour.
When she returned to the sitting room, Miriam was standing exactly where she had left her. ‘I . . . I didn’t like to sit down. Not wet through. Everything’s so lovely . . .’
‘Here’s some of my clothes, I think they’ll fit you.’ Hannah placed them on an armchair with a towel. ‘I’ll get some tea while you change and then I’ll be back.’
She took her time making the tea. Fingernails of sleet were tearing at the window and the wind was howling, but it was nothing to the turmoil inside her. Her stomach was churning and she felt physically sick. From what her mother had said, it was obvious her aunt had forced her to leave the flat. Did that mean Aunt Aggie had found out about her husband’s affair with his sister-in-law?
She placed a number of jam tarts and some butterfly cakes on a plate which she put on a tray next to the tea things. She was aware she was moving slowly, delaying the moment when she would have to return to the woman upstairs.
When she walked into the sitting room, her mother was clothed in the dress and cardigan she had given her, her wet clothes folded on top of the cloth bag. She was sitting in a chair close to the fire and immediately she said, ‘I know what you must be thinking, me turning up like this, but I had nowhere else to go. I . . . I wondered if I could stay overnight, just till I sort out what I’m going to do.’
‘Of course.’
‘Thank you.’
Hannah pulled out one of the occasional tables and placed the tea tray on it. She poured two cups of tea and passed her mother hers along with a tea plate before she offered the plate of tarts and cakes. Miriam took a small cake but did not begin to eat it; instead she crumbled a morsel in her fingers and said,‘Your aunt recently had an operation. Were you aware of that?’
‘I knew she needed an operation. I didn’t know she had had it.’
‘Oh yes, she’s had it and come through remarkably well for a woman who has supposed to have been dying for years.’
It was so bitter, the venom in her mother’s voice, that it caused Hannah to blink.‘She’s home again then?’
Miriam put her cup and plate on the table. She sat looking down at her hands which were joined on her lap, her bony fingers making small stroking movements between the knuckles.There was an embarrassing silence before she said, ‘She came home today from an establishment in Seaburn where she’s been convalescing for three weeks since leaving the hospital. Her new doctor arranged it all.’
Miriam’s tone left Hannah in no doubt as to how her mother viewed this new doctor. ‘I see.’
‘She walked in the house,
walked
in mind, and sat herself down and told me I was no longer needed.’ Miriam’s voice was trembling but the look on her face told Hannah it was more with rage than anything else. ‘My services were no longer required, that’s what she said, and he stood behind her with his hands on the back of her chair and said not a word in my defence.’
Knowing what she knew, Hannah could think of nothing to say.
‘I couldn’t believe it at first. Well, you wouldn’t, would you? I’ve worked my fingers to the bone for the pair of them and that was all the thanks I got for sixteen-odd years of servitude. I . . .’ Miriam swallowed deeply. ‘I told her I wasn’t having it, that she couldn’t do that to me and then . . . then she accused me of all sorts of things.’ Her face was burning, the colour suffusing it was almost scarlet. ‘And still your uncle said nothing. He just stood there like a great lump of lard—’ She broke off, visibly fighting for control before she continued, ‘To be treated like this by kith and kin. Your father would be turning in his grave if he knew how his brother and wife had behaved.’
The hypocrisy was too much. Hannah stood up. She tried to speak gently because however much her mother deserved this present state of affairs, she was in a terrible state. ‘I know, about you and Uncle Edward.’
Miriam’s head snapped up. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I saw you, that New Year’s Eve I went to Naomi’s. I came back and you didn’t know I’d come in. I heard . . . well, enough.’
Miriam opened and shut her mouth several times like a stranded fish before she said, ‘It-it wasn’t what you think. I mean . . .’
Ignoring this, Hannah said again, ‘I
know
, Mam.’
Miriam’s gaze was now riveted on her daughter. ‘Did you tell her? Aggie? Was it you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Whether you believe me or not, I did not tell her. I wouldn’t do that to Aunt Aggie.’
Something in Hannah’s voice must have convinced Miriam because she dropped her head, her hands working more urgently in her lap as she muttered,‘Then how did she know? She was all right before she went to the hospital and then to come back like that. She was like a different woman and I don’t mean because of the operation. She stood over me while I collected my things, watching me to see what I took. It . . . it was so humiliating.’
But not as humiliating as what her aunt had endured all these years if she had known about the affair. Could she have done? And kept silent? It was the only answer.
‘And Edward,’ her mother continued. ‘He was cruel, cruel. When . . . when I knew Aggie was determined to get rid of me, I admitted everything. I didn’t see why he shouldn’t be shown up for what he was, and he told me to get out. In front of her. He said I’d forced myself on him when he was at a low point and then blackmailed him into continuing the affair by threatening to tell Aggie everything. It wasn’t like that.’
Hannah stared at her mother for a long moment. ‘You knew he was lying that night he said he didn’t try to rape me.Why should you be surprised at anything he says or does?’
‘No, no I didn’t.’ Her mother shook her head. ‘I had no idea, I swear it. Of course I believe you now, I know what sort of man he is now, but then . . .’
‘Even supposing you didn’t know what Uncle Edward was like, which I find impossible to believe, you knew what I was like.You knew I wouldn’t make something like that up, why would I? And with Uncle Edward. It was . . . disgusting.You knew and you chose to protect him. I . . . I can never forgive you for that. If it hadn’t been for Jake I don’t know what I would have done or where I’d have gone.’
Miriam’s face took on a blank look. Glancing away, she said, ‘Are you saying you want me to leave this minute?’
‘No, that’s not what I’m saying. You’re welcome to stay the night, I know Jake wouldn’t expect you to leave in this weather but I don’t think he will want you to stay any longer than that.’