A Time Like No Other Read online

  He had ridden over to the Priory the day after his proposal and with cool dignity told Lally what he had planned for them, for her servants, her children and for the Priory itself. He would, of course, live at the Priory since there was no room at Mill House for them all, especially with two lively boys and then, naturally, a space must be made for the child who was coming. When the time came he might build a house, his own house, in which they would live, for the Priory was her sons’ inheritance and would come to one of them when they were older. And, of course, Mill House must be kept for the return of Roly whose home it was.

  In the meanwhile changes at the Priory must be made which he would explain to her when he had moved in. If she had any objections to anything he suggested she had only to say. She would be given an allowance to spend as she liked and naturally things she needed for the boys and the child yet to be born she had only to ask. He thought it might be wise, he told her coolly, if they were to share a room though she might find it distasteful, in view of the . . . the coming child. Servants were known to gossip and after all the baby was to be passed off as his! A ripple of distaste crossed his face. It would look strange if it were to get out that the newly married Mr and Mrs Sinclair were sleeping apart. Did she agree? She did.

  They ate a silent meal, Lally still dressed in her lovely wedding gown, the one Miss Hockley in Market Square had been astonished but delighted to design and make for her. Like the rest of Moorend she had been aware of Mrs Fraser’s relationship with Mr Roly Sinclair and to be told that she was to wed Mr Harry Sinclair and in three weeks’ time caused a ripple of whispers to flow from floor to floor in her busy establishment, and from there to spread quickly through the parish.

  At last Lally, fiddling with a butter knife, could stand the silence no longer. ‘Are we never to speak, Harry?’ she said abruptly. ‘Are we to live in this silently polite world for ever? We once were friends. You helped me enormously after Chris died. I have made a terrible mistake and again you are protecting me but if we are to have any sort of life together . . .’ Her voice trailed away and Harry felt the pain of it, her pain disintegrate something in the region of his heart. She looked fragile, vulnerable, defenceless against what she saw as his careless indifference to her misery. She had not wanted to marry him. She had been forced into it by circumstances, admittedly brought about by her own foolishness, but still it was not all her fault. Who better than him knew Roly’s charm?

  ‘Lally, speak, my dear. Whatever you wish to say, please feel free to say it.’ He leaned across the table and cut himself a piece of cheese. The table looked elegant, with bowls of flowers, fruit, cheese, wine, savoury biscuits baked by Biddy who he had ascertained was an excellent cook and for the time being, he had told Lally loftily, he would keep her on. Oh, he realised she was more than a cook to Lally and she would not be turned away. She was a decent housekeeper and with the money he was prepared to pour into the household purse would do very well. For the moment! Mrs Cannon would stay on at Mill House with her staff but the grooms would be needed here at the Priory since he meant to purchase thoroughbred stock. Ponies for the boys and the children he would have with Lally, a son of his own . . . Dear sweet Lord – a son of his own!

  ‘I have nothing in particular that I wish to speak of but . . . well, there must be something we have in common. Once upon a time we used to . . . Oh, Harry, this is . . . we are married and I for one would like to make a success of it, a life for—’

  ‘A success of it. Would you indeed, when you carry my brother’s child.’ His face twisted with what looked strangely like anguish though Lally did not recognise it.

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was passionate. ‘I came to you, not for this . . .’ indicating the pair of them sitting at the table, the expensive setting of cut-crystal wine glasses, the flowers, the scented candles, ‘though it is very pleasing.’

  ‘What did you come for?’ he asked her coldly.

  ‘I don’t know. You were my friend and as such I somehow found myself admitting my . . . my sin, I suppose you would call it. That’s what Moorend would call it. But when you offered me marriage I found myself liking the idea. We have not spoken of it during the past three weeks. I have travelled the days in a dream world, led along by some mysterious compulsion.’

  ‘You mean you were made to marry me?’ His voice was cold, that of a stranger, polite but uncaring.

  ‘No, no. I . . . for the sake of my boys . . . the scandal would have ruined their chance of a decent life among their own kind . . . and for myself . . .’

  ‘You would rather live a lie than be ostracised by society, you are saying?’

  He smiled cruelly and Lally wondered why she had never seen this side of his nature before. He had always been kind, gentle, helpful, ready to give freely of advice. He had shown a humorous depth to his nature, making her laugh, lightening a part of her life that had been cheerless after the accident that had killed Chris. Now he was this cold stranger who seemed intent on humiliating her. And yet she remembered the strange words Biddy had spoken when she had been told that Lally was to marry Harry. She had implied that Harry loved her but that was totally ridiculous, for she had seen no sign of it. In the past he had been friendly, trustworthy and understanding, unstinting with his advice and help and certainly not at all lover-like.

  She sighed deeply, catching the eye of Jenny who had just entered the room and was at the ancient sideboard ready to pour more coffee should it be needed but it seemed Harry was ready to start on something stronger. He had already drunk a full bottle of wine, Lally having merely a sip or two, and turning to Jenny, smiling politely, he told her she might go.

  ‘Shall we move to the drawing room, Harry?’ Lally enquired, just as politely. ‘There is brandy, whisky, port . . .’ for Harry himself had replenished the meagre supply she had managed for guests. ‘We could be more comfortable.’ She hoped this didn’t sound too inviting as though she were importuning him to some more intimate situation but she did long to get this first evening and night over and done with.

  They had dined on vermicelli soup, breast of veal, followed by a transparent jelly inlaid with brandy cherries and topped with whipped cream. A simple meal, but well prepared and cooked and Biddy had outdone herself with the table and so far Harry had seemed well pleased. He rose and moving round the table took her hand and led her from the dining room, across the enormous slabbed hallway in which a huge fire burned – already the house was showing the results of the money he meant to put into it, and his own comfort – and into the equally warm drawing room where applewood logs burned brightly in the wide fireplace. He ceremoniously seated her before it on the worn old sofa which he had already told her he meant to replace then moved to the drinks table and poured himself a large brandy.

  ‘May I offer you a liqueur, Lally?’ he asked her courteously. She had not even known there was such a thing among the many bottles he had had placed there.

  ‘Thank you, yes,’ for it might give her courage for the ordeal to come. He poured her a pretty coloured drink into a tiny glass – she had no idea what it was – and handed it to her. It tasted lovely and after he had lit a cigar and drawn the smoke deeply, satisfyingly into his lungs, she asked for another. He gave it to her and she was made aware that he too was eager to facilitate the situation, make it easier for both of them.

  They did not speak, both of them gazing sightlessly into the fire. Of what could they speak? Current affairs? The comings and goings of the royal family? The impending wedding of Joshua and Mildred Fawcett’s daughter to which he – but not Lally – had been invited? He drank brandy, glass after glass, and when the clock struck ten he stood up abruptly.

  ‘Lally,’ he said, his voice harsh with some emotion that seemed to devastate him. Lally’s face was drawn suddenly into a mask and he knew she was afraid, not of what was to come for she had known a man’s body before but of what was to happen between them. It could be disastrous. His own brother had impregnated her several months ago and now h
e was to attempt to go where Roly had been before him. It was intolerable, both of them knew it, but it had to be done. If they were to make any sort of a life together this night and all the ones to follow, it must be done. A terrible mistake had been made and this was the only way to rectify it.

  ‘I’ll be up in a minute.’ His eyes looked directly into hers and she was made to understand that there would be no avoiding what was to come. As she obediently left the room she saw him reach once more for the brandy bottle.

  Biddy had gone, saying nothing, for what was there to say to the tragic figure who sat in the centre of the bed. She had helped her to undress, put her into her demure nightgown, brushed her short hair and kissed her cheek.

  ‘Blow the candles out, Biddy,’ the small voice from the bed told her.

  ‘Nay, lass, tha’ ’usband will do that.’ She shut the door quietly behind her.

  He strode into the room, fortified by the enormous amount of brandy he had consumed, without which he would not have been able to do this thing. She shrank away from him for an infinitesimal moment and he almost turned away since he could not in all conscience force her to his will, then her head came up and her eyes, so blue and lovely with their flecks of green, darkened. Even in the subdued light of the candles he could see them, then they gleamed with what seemed like defiance. Her head came up and her soft mouth tightened. With one glorious movement she stood up in the bed and drew off her white frilled nightgown, tossing it to the floor. She stood, challenging him and in answer he threw off the brocade robe which was all he wore and advanced towards her. She did not shrink from him. Her body, though slender, was in perfect proportion, her breasts high and proud despite bearing two children, her waist neat, her hips soft and flaring and her legs long.

  ‘Well then,’ he heard himself murmuring, he had no idea why. His own body was bold, virile, thrusting, lean as an athlete’s, but strong and the colour of amber. Quite beautiful, masculine, a manly beauty which she had time to notice before he stepped up on to the bed and drew her into his arms. His penis pressed against her belly then he pulled her – not gently – down into the softness of the bed that she had once shared with Chris Fraser. He had not yet told her but he meant to change that and move them both into another room, one he would make into their room, a bedroom that would be made luxuriously lovely and would have no memories of her dead husband. But tonight they must make do with this and he hoped to God the ghost of Chris Fraser would not come to disturb them. Even Roly, his own brother might have shared this bed with her; he had never asked her where the event had taken place in which the child had been conceived but as soon as possible he would have the builders, decorators, designers, furnishing experts in to change not only the bedroom he and Lally would share, but the rest of this threadbare, decaying old house.

  He loved her that night in a way that took her by surprise. She had expected it to be quick and not exactly brutal, for she instinctively knew Harry was not a brutal man, but not gentle. He kissed her, parting her lips, caressing them, folding them softly with his, then began to lead her along the sweet and honeyed paths which he had learned with other women but which was also his nature. She felt the beginnings of joy as his hand held her breast, moving down to her belly, the dark triangle of hair at the base of it and into the increasingly eager centre, the moist centre of her womanhood. She cried out and he hesitated but she grasped him to her, pulling him down with no thought for the child growing within her as he entered her, spilling his seed where his brother’s and Chris Fraser’s had once been spilled. For a moment he agonised that he was not the first but, by God, he would be the last, his triumphant cry said.

  She slept then, her back against his belly, his arms cradling her, his face buried in the sweet scented tangle of her hair. He lay awake, his thoughts filling his head and his sad heart, for he loved this woman more than life itself and his love was not returned. He drew deeply into his lungs the smell of her, her soft hair tickling his nostrils and as he himself drifted off to sleep his last thought was that he would persuade her to grow it.

  He woke in the night. The candles had burned down but the fire glowed orange and red in the grate. She was still in the same position in which she had gone to sleep. She murmured something and as he turned her towards him she smiled. He kissed her, moving from her mouth to her jawline, down her throat to the peak of her breast where the nipple stood in a rosy point. He took it in his mouth and sucked gently and when, still half asleep, she pressed his head to her he smiled in triumph.

  ‘Chris . . . darling . . .’ she murmured, arching her back the better to accommodate him. At once he lifted his head and turned away from her to lie on his back, devastated by the name she had uttered and when she sat up he turned away from her, his wonder and the rejoicing that had filled him at what he saw as her acceptance and even eagerness to have him in her bed become ashes in his mouth.

  She lay back on her pillow, saying no more, then edged away from him so that they no longer touched. He lay for what seemed hours beside her, listening to her breathing, then fell asleep himself.

  Strangely, when they both woke she was curled up beside him again, her arm across his chest, his own holding her closely. It was still dark, five o’clock in the morning and at once he leaped from the bed and reached for his robe.

  ‘You must excuse me, my dear,’ he said in his polite, cool way, ‘but I have a mill to run. Several, in fact, and I must be there at the gates when they open.’

  ‘Of course,’ she answered in the same tone as his.

  ‘I’ll be home for dinner so until then . . .’

  He did not kiss her as he left and she turned over, staring blindly into the darkness wondering why she felt so foolishly disappointed.

  11

  The woman on the bed stifled a moan, heaving herself on to her side in an effort to alleviate her own suffering. The boy crouched beside her, his pale face twisted into an anxious frown. He put out his hand and touched her sweated face and she did her best to smile as though the birth of a child was nothing more than the grazed knees he often brought home for her to bathe and to receive the kiss and cuddle that made it better, but as the pain returned, knifing her in the small of her back, she could not help the cry that escaped from between her bitten lips. The boy seemed ready to cry himself, for he was only ten years old and though he lived among the poorest of the poor, the multitude of rag-pickers, the mill workers, the under-privileged, the slum dwellers who lived cheek by jowl with one another in the tenement building he called home and had heard the cries of the downtrodden women who gave birth every year, he and his mother did not mix with them. Mam was different from the rest of them. If his father had not died in an accident in the weaving shed at High Clough, an accident that had taken not only his pa but the child he had tried to save from the lethal machinery that had trapped them both, he and his mam would not now be in this frightening situation for Pa would have seen his ma through it. The child, a scavenger like himself, had slipped on a patch of oil, put out his hands to stop himself from falling and had been dragged into the machine’s clutches. His pa, working in the loom gate, had tried to save the child and in so doing had slipped in the same patch of oil and had shared the child’s fate. Bled to death the two of them and ever since then the maister had looked out for Sam and Susan Harper. Mam worked two looms in the vast weaving shed at High Clough where 816 machines clacked and whirred in the ‘fly’-laden air, seventeen rows of forty-eight in each row. She had carried on, grieving silently for her young husband until seen one day by the maister, struggling to reach the cord that jerked the wheeled shuttle across the loom. She was seven months gone then, hampered by her swollen belly, and without a word the maister had sent her home and with his help and Sam’s small wage they had managed. Sam should have been at the mill two hours ago.

  ‘Tha’ go, lad,’ Mam had told him but he could not leave her like this, could he?

  ‘Nay, Mam, ah can’t, not wi’ you like this. Babby’ll be ’er
e soon. Then ah’ll go.’

  Susan Harper clutched the sheet with work-worn hands and writhed through the next pain, gasping for breath and wishing she had mixed more with her slatternly neighbours who might have helped her, since it was not fair to expect a ten-year-old boy to deliver her but she and Jack had kept themselves to themselves. They had clawed their way upwards, kept a clean home, ate cheap but nourishing food and had even gone to the local evening classes, taking their baby son with them, and had learned to read and write. They would better themselves, Jack had told her confidently. He was not sure how but when they had mastered the art of it he would approach Mr Sinclair and see if there was work, perhaps as a supervisor, that could be put his way. They would teach young Sam to read and write, which they had done and with their combined wages, though it had tormented them to put Sam to scavenging, they had kept themselves decent, their room spotless and had been shunned by their slovenly neighbours who lived their lives in muddled chaos.

  ‘Sam, love,’ she gasped, clutching at his poor little hand, making him wince, ‘tha’ll ’ave ter go fer ’elp. Tha’ can’t do this on tha’ own.’

  ‘’Oo shall ah fetch, Mam?’ His child’s face was frightened and yet set with a determination to help his mam. ‘Will ah go fer Mr Sinclair? ’Appen ’e’ll know o’ someone . . .’

  ‘Eeh, no, lovey,’ she gasped. ‘’E’s a busy man an’ll not be bothered wi’t likes—’

  ‘’E will, Mam, ’e will,’ the boy said eagerly. ‘’E’s a grand chap.’ And before his mother, who was in the grip of another spasm, could stop him he was out of the door and running up the slimy cobbled road that led to the track across the moorland and the mill at High Clough.

  ‘I’m taking Merry out for a gallop, Biddy. The children are both taking a nap and it’s more than my life’s worth to wake them. Dora makes it quite plain who’s in charge of the nursery and it’s certainly not their mother. I won’t be long.’