And as for the living evidence of the trouble which had ripped their family apart, he would continue to pray each day that the child born of sin would not see its first year. Every time he looked at it he would see and hear Esther as she had been the night she had come home, brazen in her shame.
His guts writhed and he lay for a moment more before quietly sliding out of bed. By feel he found his dressing gown on the chair by the side of the bed and put it on, but he left his slippers where they were and crept barefoot out of the bedroom. Once on the landing it was possible to see shapes and shadows, the large landing window being uncurtained, but he still had to watch his step as he made his way downstairs.
He would make himself a drink of warm milk and take it to his study where he could work on his sermon for Sunday in peace, he told himself as he reached the kitchen door. There had still been a good fire in there last thing; it wouldn’t have gone out yet and a couple of logs would soon bring it to a blaze.
He opened the door as silently as he had come downstairs and stood for a moment, his eyes fixed on the raised laundry basket in front of the glowing range. It was only then he acknowledged the real reason for the midnight sojourn, the thought that had been there from the second the child had taken breath. His heart began to race, pounding in his ears.
He took a step into the room, then another, unaware of the icy chill from the stone flags under his bare feet, and then he froze as a rustle and sigh from a black mound by the kitchen table caused his gaze to shoot down. For a moment he couldn’t believe his eyes as he took in the mattress and the figure sleeping under the covers. That girl. What on earth was she doing sleeping on the floor of the kitchen?
Without making a sound he backed towards the door, and it was only when he was standing in the corridor leading to the kitchen with the door shut that he let out his breath. He found he was shaking, whether from the enormity of the deed he’d been about to do or the fact that Bridget might have awoken and found him there, he didn’t know.
He leaned against the whitewashed wall, moving one lip over the other, his head swimming. He remained there for several minutes until the nausea which had risen from his stomach into his chest subsided.
He wouldn’t have done it. He ran a hand over his face which was damp with perspiration in spite of the freezing cold. He wouldn’t have. Would he? No, he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t. He told himself the same thing several more times before he could move, and then he stumbled upstairs to his study and fell into the big leather chair behind the fine walnut desk which had been his father’s. He drew in a great breath of air, as though he had been running for miles, and then put his head in his hands as he began to cry.
PART TWO
The Child
1890
Chapter 4
Little had changed in Southwick over the last ten years. True, Southwick’s Local Board had defeated another Sunderland act to absorb the growing township, and as if to cock a snook, Southwick had seen to it that a cricket and bicycle club was formed, along with a tennis club and a rowing club later in the decade. Southwick now boasted its own purpose-built Coffee Tavern at the east end of the green, something the Temperance Society considered a huge step forward in its fight against the demon drink, and the Liberal Club had opened new premises at High Southwick. All in all, Southwick residents felt their independence as a separate entity was justified. They could manage their own affairs and didn’t want Sunderland muscling in where it wasn’t wanted.
Outwardly, little had changed at the vicarage too. The vicar still visited his parishioners when the need arose, sat on various local Boards involved in good works, and preached fire and damnation from the pulpit every Sunday morning. Inside the house, however, the catalyst which had been dropped into their midst ten years before in the shape of one small baby had continued to bring changes which even now rippled an undercurrent within the family.