The Urchin's Song Part 20

Not so Lily. When the hired carriage deposited Josie and Gertie and two trunks of their immediate belongings on the doorstep of the house at the back of the Caledonian Market, Lily was 100 per cent solid in her support.

Josie talked to her old friend in the very comfortable privacy of Lily's sitting room after the housekeeper had brought them through a tray of tea, and initially Lily just stared at her, open-mouthed and lost for words for once. And then she said, 'And he went a.r.s.e over head and nearly brained himself? By, la.s.s, I'd give me eye-teeth to have been there. The times I've wanted to see some blighter who'd been messing me about get his just deserts, but I never did. No, I never did. No guts to confront 'em, you see. All mouth and hair as me old mam used to say.'

'Not you, Lily.'

'Oh aye, me all right. There's them that say an' them that do, and you're a doer sure enough. So, what are you going to do?'

'Divorce him.'

'Divorce him?' It was Gertie who spoke although Lily's mouth had dropped open even further. 'He won't let you, not Oliver. Oh Josie, you can't, you can't. Just think of the repercussions for a minute. He's your manager as well as your husband and he's so influential, you know he is. Lily, talk some sense into her.' Gertie flung her hands wide in an unconsciously dramatic appeal to the other woman. 'Tell her she'll be cutting her own throat career-wise. She needs Oliver.'

'I think Oliver needs Josie a darn sight more than she needs him if you want my honest opinion,' Lily said quietly, ignoring the look on Gertie's face which told her Gertie did not want her honest opinion. 'And I don't mean just in a business sense either,' she continued, turning to Josie. 'He loves you, la.s.s, everyone knows that. Oh, I agree he's not what you'd call ideal husband material but he was never going to be. That's Oliver. And I have to say he's arrogant and self-opinionated to a fault, and this latest means he probably thought he could have his cake and eat it, but with all that - he does love you.'

'Then love is not enough, not that kind of love anyway. '

'That's for you to decide, la.s.s, one way or the other.'

'I have decided.' Josie's head, which had been bowed, raised itself and Lily saw the lovely brown eyes were dry and burning with dark emotion. 'I could forgive his gambling and drinking and all the other excesses, but not this. This is different.' And as Gertie went to speak Josie made a sharp movement with her hand as she said, 'I mean it, Gertie, and if you can't understand then you can't, but that's how I feel. This is different.'

'If it had been with anyone else but Stella Stratton, how would you have felt then?' Gertie asked flatly.

'Exactly the same.' And then Josie corrected herself, saying, 'Well, perhaps not exactly the same, but near enough to do what I am doing now.'

She stared defiantly at her sister, who nodded abruptly. 'Nothing more to be said then, is there?'

'No, Gertie, there isn't.'

Fortunately Josie only had another two weeks of her current contract left at the Empire; Oliver had been in the process of negotiating an extension for another six weeks but as yet, nothing had been signed. This meant she could leave London with impunity, and once Bernard understood she wasn't abandoning the Empire in favour of another London theatre - Drury Lane, the Gaiety and others were after her, as he knew full well - but was returning up north for a spell, he was more amenable to letting her have the Monday night off when Josie explained she had urgent personal business to attend to. He wanted to keep her sweet for when she returned to London anyway. She was a crowd puller, was Josie Burns, and unlike some of the performers he had to deal with she didn't have an odd day off here and there due to the amber liquid. So he agreed she would be 'sick' come Monday night, and Monday morning saw Josie on the train to Sunderland - alone.

Gertie did not offer to accompany her and Josie did not suggest it; in truth she was feeling more than slightly aggrieved at Gertie's att.i.tude since she had returned from Berks.h.i.+re, and for the first time in their lives a rift had opened between the sisters. Gertie had barely said two words since they had arrived at Lily's, and when her younger sister had gone with her to see Ada and Dora, and her two older sisters had mirrored Lily's reaction to the turn of events, Gertie had become even more sulky.

The newspapers were still full of the story of the tragic death of twenty-three people when one of the new electric trains in Liverpool crashed, and that, along with the Glamorgan pit disaster which took one hundred and twenty-four miners, and reports of a further outbreak of typhus in the East End of London made for depressing reading. Josie gave up the attempt after a while and slept most of the journey away, in between visiting the dining car for a very nice lunch which she only picked at. She was very tired; she and Gertie were sleeping on two shake-downs in Lily's sitting room after Josie had flatly refused to let anyone give up their beds for Gertie and herself, and these were not conducive to a good night's sleep. Not that she would have slept much anyway; her mind was constantly dissecting the scene with Oliver and Stella whether she was awake or asleep.

The train chugged into Sunderland Central Station on a blazing hot afternoon, and when Josie stepped on to the platform and looked up at the arched roof, particles of dust floating idly in the sunlight and the sound of warm northern voices all around her, she felt like a small la.s.s again for a moment or two.

On leaving the station she checked into the Grand Hotel which was an imposing building of five storeys and ideally situated, being just a minute's walk from the railway station, and after depositing her small portmanteau in her room she left immediately for Northumberland Place. She found it strange that nothing had changed since she'd been gone. She'd married Oliver, travelled a little, risen almost to the top of her profession and entered a privileged life which held no resemblance to the one she'd known before her marriage, and yet everything here was just the same. The same old trams creaking and grinding along, the same horses and carts piled with everything from fruit and potatoes and fresh meat to sacks of coal, the same shop awnings and, inevitably, the same raggedy, barefoot urchins darting about, the latter increasing in numbers the nearer Josie got to Northumberland Place and the East End. Likewise the smell of ripe fish from the quays fronting Sunderland Harbour. But it was home, it was home. She breathed in deeply of the warm air, thick with the odour of industrial smoke and fumes from the factories and workshops, roperies, ironworks, s.h.i.+pyards, limekilns and other industries cl.u.s.tered along the Wear, which, flavoured by the smell of fish, smelt like no other place on earth to Josie.

What would all the folk scurrying about their daily business think if they knew she was actually relis.h.i.+ng the smelly air? she asked herself with a touch of dark humour. But it didn't matter what people thought. It wouldn't have to, certainly in the immediate future. Folk would be scandalised when she divorced Oliver. She didn't know anyone, apart from the odd one or two in the profession, who had ever had a divorce. But then, when she thought about it, and she had been thinking about it a lot since Sat.u.r.day morning, that was because women put up with their men doing exactly as they pleased most of the time. And that seemed to be the case whether the woman in question was a working-cla.s.s la.s.s in the north or a Lady something-or-other in London.

There'd been a piece in one of the London papers in May when the Suffrage Bill had failed, which had reported one of the MPs saying that 'men and women differed in mental equipment with women having little sense of proportion', and he'd gone on to say that giving women the vote would not be safe. And that summed up very aptly how most men saw things, Josie told herself darkly, as she turned off High Street East towards Northumberland Place. Well, her sense of proportion was working quite nicely, thank you very much, and from what she'd seen of life thus far, the mental equipment needed to juggle bringing up a family, paying the rent, putting food on the table and often working from home which was most women's lot, was far in excess of the average man's.

There were a group of barefoot bairns sitting on the dusty pavement playing 'Kitty Cat' when Josie turned into Northumberland Place, and she stood for a moment watching them hit the pointed piece of wood with numbers scratched on it. Dirty and poor as they looked, they all seemed relatively well fed, and certainly a couple of them keeping the scores knew their numbers. They were some of the lucky ones, Josie thought soberly as she walked on. She couldn't ever remember playing in the street when she was a bairn. Her da had seen to it that they were either out begging or working most of the time, and she'd had to fight him every inch of the way to get any schooling for herself and the others.

Monday being was.h.i.+ng day, there were lines of dangling clothes and linen strung up in the back lanes and between lamp-posts in the side streets, and now the faint smell of bleach hung in the still air.

Josie took a long breath and then squared her shoulders before she knocked on the door in Northumberland Place. She knew the dropsy which had plagued Vera for years had meant her friend giving up work some months before, and she was hoping at this time of the day that Prudence would be at work. Barney's sister would have to know about the state of her marriage eventually, of course, but just at the moment she only wanted to share the news with Vera and Horace. Once she had spoken to Vera she intended to approach a couple of the theatres in the town with a view to appearing here when she'd left London. Maybe the Avenue first; it was currently Sunderland's most respected theatre and seated fifteen hundred people, and then perhaps the Palace or the Royal. She could do a couple of weeks at each, by which time she should be in a position to see the future a little more clearly.

Vera's squeal of delight on opening the door spread a little balm on Josie's sore heart, and as she was pulled into the kitchen amid a deluge of questions that had her laughing in the end, she thought again, Nothing has changed, nothing.

'Ee, la.s.s, I can't believe it!' Vera beamed at her, shaking her head in wonderment. 'Here was I, thinkin' the only thing in front of me was the ironin', an' then you knock on me door. Talk about a sight for sore eyes. An' don't you look bonny an' all; the tongues'll be waggin' in this street an' no mistake. Everyone's tickled pink that a la.s.s from these parts has made good in the halls. Come on, la.s.s, get your things off an' have a sup.'

'Oh, Vera.' Josie took her friend's hands as she said, 'It's so good to be back.'

'Good to be back? You gone doolally, la.s.s? With your lovely house an' the goin' on you've got?' This was said without a trace of resentment, Vera's face still split in a grin that went from ear to ear. 'Now sit yourself down an' take the weight off. I've got a nice bit of ham an' egg pie that's waitin' to get on the other side of somebody, an' a sly cake made not an hour since.'

Vera pushed her down on a kitchen chair before she turned to the range and busied herself with the kettle, and it was in that moment, as Josie looked down at her friend's grossly swollen legs and feet, that she thought, No, things are not the same. Vera was getting older and it showed.

The kettle settled on the fire, Vera turned round, pulling out a chair from under the table and sitting down heavily before she said, 'Well, if this isn't a treat. You up for a day or two, hinny? An' where's that man of yours, an' Gertie?'

Josie had been worried she would burst into tears as soon as she caught sight of this woman who meant more to her than her own mother ever had, but strangely, now she was here, she didn't feel like crying. In fact, if she had had to a.n.a.lyse her feelings, she would have admitted to exhausted relief being paramount. 'I've got something to tell you but it's just for your ears and Horace's at the moment, Vera. It's like this . . .'

Vera had always been a good listener and she didn't interrupt once, but as Josie finished her story the older woman breathed out noisily, before saying, 'The blasted fool. I've met some stupid so-an'-sos in my time but he takes the biscuit, he does straight. An' I thought more of him, la.s.s, I did really, him bein' a gentleman an' all.'

'Oh Vera, I could tell you stories about the so-called ladies and gentlemen of our country that would make your hair curl.'

'That'd be a first, la.s.s. Me mam used to corkscrew me hair so tight I'd be cryin' half the night with me hair bein' pulled out by the roots, but come mornin' it'd be as flat as a pancake. That's the only memory I've got of me poor mam, her tryin' to scalp me alive.'

Josie hadn't expected to laugh that day, although Vera being Vera she should have, she reflected wryly, and it did her the world of good.

'But jokin' apart, hinny, I'm heart sorry,' Vera said when they were sober again. 'He might have bin a toff but I liked him for all that.'

'So did I, Vera.' Josie hesitated for a moment before she said, 'And there's something else, something I think is wonderful but which . . . Well, I don't know how you'll feel about it. I've found Ada and Dora.'

'Found . . .' For once Vera was rendered speechless.

'Only this last week, just before the weekend, as it happens. And I suppose I didn't so much find them as they found me.' She related what had happened, and when she had finished Vera lay back in the chair and just stared at her for a full ten seconds without saying a word.

By the time Josie left the house in Northumberland Place an hour later, she was in possession of a few facts which had surprised her nearly as much as she had surprised Vera; the main cause of her disconcertment being that Barney was working and living in Sunderland. Josie didn't know how she felt about this development. Her life was complicated and awkward enough as it was, and whatever reason Barney had for leaving the theatre in London so abruptly, and whether he had a lady friend or not, it was going to make her living up here for a spell a hundred times more difficult. It shouldn't, but it would. Just Barney being around in the town, where she might b.u.mp into him at any time, would have been bad enough, but now he was the manager of a Sunderland theatre . . .

Another surprise had been the announcement by Vera that Prudence had a man friend. 'He isn't exactly the answer to every young maiden's prayer,' Vera had said with something of a grin, 'an' he's as broad as he's tall with a belly on him that'd do credit to any of the beer-swilling dockers down on the quays, but Georgie's nice enough in his way, bless him, an' he certainly keeps Prudence in line. The la.s.s has been a different girl since she's been courtin' him an' he seems to think a bit of her. Known him for donkey's years, I have - his mam an' da worked at the corn mill afore he did an' were decent enough folk. He might be big an' lumberin' but he's a gentle giant, you know? I think he felt sorry for Prudence to start with, what with her looks an' her hands bein' bad an' all, but the pair of 'em are fair gone on each other now. An' he's a bright feller although he don't look it.'

Josie had answered quietly, 'I'm glad for her, Vera.' And she was, she reflected now as she hurried towards the Palace Theatre in High Street West; the Avenue in Gillbridge Avenue now being out of bounds with Barney being the manager there. She was really glad that Prudence had found someone to love and was loved in return, but she just couldn't imagine the dour-faced girl she had known turning to sweetness and light.

'Barney reckons Georgie's all right, which is all to the good,' Vera had told her. 'The three of 'em get goin' on somethin' like politics or the unions an' it's like a debatin' society in here, I tell you straight. Me an' Horace sit here an' we don't know if we're on foot or horseback half the time. Aye, Barney likes him.'

Oh Barney, Barney. Josie stopped on the pavement outside the Palace, the big building with its three arches a good floor or two higher than the shops adjoining either side of it. But she should be thinking of Oliver right now, shouldn't she? And she was really, he was always there in the back of her mind, and the hard ache in the middle of her chest which had first made itself known in the aftermath of seeing him sitting on Stella's chaise-longue two days ago was still grinding her innards.

She cut off the train of thought with ruthless determination. She knew from the last couple of days that it brought pictures into her mind, images of them together which made her want to curl into a little ball and hide away from the rest of the world. And she wouldn't give Stella Stratton the satisfaction. But she missed him. Weak and impossible as he'd been, she missed him. She'd thought he loved her, and she hadn't been able to help loving him back.

Enough. Her chin rose in answer to the command inside. She was going to arrange a venue, two if possible, here in Sunderland and she was going to do it all by herself without help from anyone. She had started on her own and she would continue on her own, and this time she had the feeling that even Gertie wouldn't be with her . . .

The manager at the Palace almost bit her hand off, so quickly did he accept her offer to perform there for two weeks, and when she made a visit to the Royal Theatre in Bedford Street an hour later it was the same. Two weeks at the Palace followed by two weeks at the Royal. She nodded to herself as she stepped out of the building some time later. She would let it be known she was staying at the Grand, and then if Hubert did want to come and see her he could do so.

She didn't know if this was sensible or not, but the desire to make contact with her brothers which had swept over her that day in Ada's house was stronger than ever after everything that had happened this weekend with Oliver. Her sisters and the lads, they were family. Her family. And she had thanked G.o.d more than once for the tradition within the halls which discouraged a female artiste from changing her stage-name once she was married. In the early days a couple of theatre managers had tried to persuade her to select a more flamboyant surname than Burns but she hadn't felt comfortable with that, and now she was glad she had followed her instinct.

Vera had insisted Josie join them at Northumberland Place for their evening meal. This would mean meeting Prudence again, and although Josie had concurred, she wasn't looking forward to seeing Barney's sister.

She cut through the back lanes on her way home to Vera's, the narrow roads baked hard with ridges of mud and thick with bairns playing their games, and housewives gossiping over the small brick walls of their back yards before their men arrived home and demanded they be waited upon. Through one open gate she saw a young mother sitting on her back step nursing a baby at her breast while a toddler banged on an old tin lid with a wooden spoon at her feet, and the sight caused the familiar yearning to jerk inside her. This feeling had caused her to press Oliver in recent months as to when, exactly, they would start their family, but he had always come back with his stock reply of, 'When you are established enough to safely be able to take some time away from the halls.'

Well, he needn't worry about that now, need he, Josie thought bitterly as she turned into a small pa.s.sageway in between some shops which linked one street to another. Oliver had never admitted it but Josie felt he was reluctant to have children interfering with his life, and that her career was just a convenient excuse to delay things. They had discussed buying a small house in preparation for starting a family too, and again he had found myriad reasons why this was not possible at any one time, without acknowledging that the main cause - that he would have to severely curtail his gambling - was the real reason for prevarication.

Emerging into the hot, busy street Josie wrinkled her nose as she pa.s.sed the open doorway of a decorative plasterer's shop. It smelt like a glue factory, the heat causing the gelatine in the back of the shop to stink to high heaven. She paused outside the butcher's a few doors on. The butcher's boy was using the sausage-maker which resembled a little steam engine, and as she watched him winding the handle and the gears revolving the big wheel which pushed the meat through the nozzle, she remembered sausages were Horace's favourite treat. She bought two pounds, along with a nice bit of salted bacon, a bag of pork scratchings and a hefty piece of best beef, and then moved on to the grocer's and lastly the sweetshop.

Weighed down with her purchases she didn't notice the figure just behind her as she turned into Northumberland Place, so when a hand touched her on the shoulder she nearly jumped out of her skin. 'Oh! Oh, Prudence.' In her fright, she had nearly dropped the big parcel of meat which the butcher had tied up with string for her and now, as she adjusted her packages, she was surprised yet again when Prudence said pleasantly, 'Can I help? Let me take that for you. I thought it was you but I wasn't sure until you turned round.'

Josie's hands pa.s.sed the parcel of meat to Prudence, but she was looking at the other girl's face. Prudence looked so different! And yet she was still the same physically, although . . . her hair was clean and s.h.i.+ning, and her eyes had a different expression in them, a brightness which seemed to nullify their muddy shade and bring out the green . . . Josie became aware she was staring and said quickly, 'Thank you. I'm only up for the day but Vera has invited me to dinner and so I thought I'd get a few things by way of thanks.'

Prudence nodded. 'She'll tell you off, of course.'

'Of course.' They smiled at each other and again Josie was struck by the almost tangible happiness radiating from Barney's sister.

'I'm glad I've seen you. By yourself, that is.' Prudence swallowed before she continued, 'You've done very well for yourself and . . . and I'm glad. I mean that.'

'Thank you.' Josie didn't know what else to say.

'I wasn't very nice to you, was I?' Prudence's sallow skin had flushed with embarra.s.sment and Josie's cheeks were also turning pink. 'In fact, I wasn't very nice to anyone in those days.'

'Look, it's all water under the bridge.'

'No, no, let me say it, Josie. I've thought about writing to you to apologise but . . .' Prudence shook her head helplessly. 'Well, I didn't. But I'm sorry for how I was.'

'You were unhappy,' Josie said gently, the other girl's humility so out of character that she felt as though she was talking to someone else.

'Aye, I was.' Prudence stretched her neck and moved her chin from side to side before she said, 'And you were so pretty, and me da thought the sun shone out of your backside from the minute you walked through the door, Barney an' all. Pearl knew that, you know, deep in the heart of her. She knew she should never have married him once you showed up. She knew how he felt about you long before he did.'

Josie was utterly at a loss as to what to say. She wondered if Prudence was accusing her of anything, but then the other girl disabused her of that notion when she went on, 'But it weren't your fault, I know that now. Georgie - oh, he's my young man,' here Prudence's cheeks got still pinker, 'he calls a spade a spade, does Georgie, and we've talked a lot about the past. It's made me see things different.' Prudence didn't say here that all the talking had led Georgie to say that unless Prudence got herself sorted out he couldn't see a future for them. She had been hurt then, and it had been a while before she could accept that maybe Georgie had a point. He'd gone mad when she'd said to him that he was on Josie's side like everyone else, and then she'd cried and the upshot of it all had been he had taken her in his arms for the first time and kissed her . . .

'I'm glad.'

'Aye, well, I just wanted you to know.'

As they began to walk on, side by side now, Josie said, 'I'm going to do a few weeks at the Palace and the Royal soon and it would be grand to think I could call on Vera and you wouldn't mind me coming?'

'No, I wouldn't mind.' This wasn't quite true but to Prudence's credit it didn't show in her voice. She knew she would never be able to find it within herself to actually like Josie, and she didn't fancy the idea of her old enemy being around for however short a time it might be, but now she had a different life - now she had Georgie - she could stomach what had to be stomached. But it wasn't only Josie's presence for its own sake she didn't like the idea of; it was him, that man, Patrick Duffy. Her coming here might be dangerous.

Should she come clean and tell Josie about her conversations with the little Irishman? Looking back now she couldn't imagine why she had let Duffy talk to her in the first place. It was the one thing she hadn't confided to Georgie, but now Josie had come back perhaps she ought to warn her. Georgie would be disgusted if anything happened and it came out she'd known Duffy had it in for this woman.

She had only talked to Duffy twice more since that first time, and only then because he had appeared from seemingly nowhere when she'd been shopping and it had been difficult to get rid of him without being rude. And there was something about him, something unnerving, which had stopped her taking that tack. The man frightened her. She'd had the skitters for days afterwards each time she'd seen him.

He had always been careful not to come right out with it and say he wanted to harm Josie. He'd always referred to her as 'our mutual friend' but the tone of his voice had been enough to let Prudence know what he really meant. 'Wanting to renew the little lady's acquaintance.' 'Wanting to show the little lady in what high regard I hold her.' 'Wanting the little lady to meet some old friends of mine who have a lot to thank her for.' That had been the way Patrick Duffy had talked. And he'd only inferred what he'd inferred because he knew about her part in the attack on Josie in Newcastle.

As Prudence followed Josie into Vera's house her stomach lurched sickeningly. He had thought she would help him, and somehow that made her feel unclean, that a man like Duffy thought she would be his accomplice. When she had gone to Josie's father all those years ago she hadn't realised the type of man he really was; she hadn't believed Josie, that was the thing. But meeting Duffy, hearing him talk, she believed it all right. Oh aye, she did. And after the last time of seeing Duffy, twelve months back and more, she'd made sure she only went shopping when Vera was with her, and she'd come straight home at nights with no dilly-dallying. And then Georgie had spoken to her at work one day and asked her to go to the Olympia with him one night, and from that point on everything had changed. Or perhaps it was her that had changed.

The thing was, Georgie cared about people - really cared - and he was hot on the trade unions and social reform and everything like that, but in a doing way. He'd made her recall the times she and Barney had spouted on about such things to their da but with only head knowledge, not heart. At least on her side anyway.

The more she'd seen of Georgie the more she had realised the madness of what she had done all those years ago. Georgie had opened her eyes to all sorts of goings-on that happened when folk didn't have two farthings to rub together. She had helped him in the soup kitchen which had been set up at Christmas for the down and outs, and there had been little bairns come in who had been in a terrible state. She had always considered herself working cla.s.s and poor with it, her da being a miner and all, but she'd learned a thing or two since she'd been courting Georgie.

She couldn't remember a Christmas as a bairn when the stockings she and the lads had hung up hadn't been full of nuts and dolly mixtures and brand new pennies, just minted, along with a toy car or a little fort for the lads and a sweetshop or s.h.i.+lling doll for her. But these bairns didn't know what a toy was. Starving, filthy, cold and lice-ridden, most of them had looked like little old men and women. Oh aye, she'd learned a thing or two since she had been seeing Georgie, and all that had been related about Josie's beginnings had come back to her, but this time she'd believed it.

She hadn't been able to bring herself to admit to Georgie that she'd spoken to Patrick Duffy though. Deep inside she'd been scared that Georgie might begin to look at her with different eyes, especially after everything else she'd confessed. He still might, if she let on. Georgie thought she was a decent woman and she was, she was a decent woman. At heart she was.

'You all right, la.s.s?' As Vera touched Prudence on the arm, the younger woman realised she had been staring vacantly at them all. She brought the smile back to her face, nodding brightly as she said, 'Aye, I'm grand, Vera. Here, Josie's been buying up the shop I reckon,' as she handed Vera the parcel of meat.

Vera smiled back at her, obviously relieved and pleased at the lack of animosity in the air, and Prudence thought, I can't, I just can't tell them. It'll spoil everything. And there's no need, not really. Josie'll be come and gone again in a few weeks, back to her fine house and rich husband. If I say anything and I lose Georgie, what'll I have left? Nowt, that's what. And I can't lose him, I can't. Patrick Duffy's got other fish to fry now and it must be nigh on twelve months since I've seen hide or hair of him. No, least said, soonest mended.

It'd be all right. 'Course it would . . .

Chapter Twenty-two.

Josie walked into the house at the back of the Caledonian Market at just after three in the afternoon the next day, and half an hour later Oliver was knocking on the door and demanding to see her.

'It's all right, Agnes.' Josie had stepped out of Lily's sitting room into the hall when she had heard Oliver remonstrating with the housekeeper who had refused him entrance. 'I'll talk to Mr Hogarth in here.'

Lily and Gertie left the room hastily at this point, and as Oliver paused in the hall to let them pa.s.s Josie saw Gertie smile at him. It was a small thing but suddenly Josie felt very angry and it steadied her racing heart and churning stomach. 'Won't you come this way?' She could have been talking to a stranger, her words cool and polite, and she saw his eyes flicker at her tone before she turned and walked back into the sitting room. Agnes cleared away their makes.h.i.+ft beds first thing each morning and when the alterations to the three houses had been planned, Josie had made sure Lily's sitting room was a very comfortable one and had furnished it at no small cost.

She walked across to the large ornate fireplace which had no fire in it today before she faced him again, and she saw him glancing round the room with an expression of surprise on his face. 'This is very nice.'

'Yes, it is,' she said stiffly.

'I . . . I would have come before but I was not able to leave the Conways' until early this morning on doctor's advice.' She did not reply to this, and he went on, 'Josie, you have to believe this is not as it seems.'

'Do I?'

'Yes you do, you do. I wouldn't . . . I can understand how it appeared and why you put the worst possible construction on what you saw, but there is an explanation.'

'I have no doubt about that, Oliver. You spent the night with your mistress.'

'That is not what I meant and you know it.'

'I know that that woman has always hated me because in her eyes I took you away from her. She's been insolent and unfriendly from the first time I met her and you have always found excuses for her. I thought it was because you felt sorry for her and perhaps just a little guilty, and I was foolish enough to think it didn't matter; that she was just a rather unpleasant and perhaps even pitiable individual. I know better now. She dared to be the way she was because you were still sharing her bed.'

Oliver gazed at her in amazement. 'Are you mad, woman?' he said loudly. 'When on earth was I ever away from you long enough to conduct an affair with anyone?'

'Most evenings,' she shot back bitterly.

'You know where I was then. d.a.m.n it all, haven't we had more altercations about my gambling than the grains of sand on the seash.o.r.e?'

'It is not exactly beyond the bounds of possibility that you could manage to fit both pastimes into an evening,' she said with heavy sarcasm.

'For crying out loud!'