Heritage of Shame Read online

  Lost in her shadowed world Anne heard none of the woman’s words, only the pain was real, the pain and the odium blazing in her father’s eyes.

  ‘Father!’ It was a helpless whisper, a cry for understanding and forgiveness but as her own hand reached towards the one raised in censure the tall figure merged into shadows which swirled and receded, then swirled again, each time filled with faces – a bearded, grease marked face which laughed as it lifted from her body, the angry face of a woman who threw a bucket of icy water, her mother, tears streaming down her sunken cheeks, and behind them all her father… but now he lay peacefully asleep.

  ‘Father.’ She whispered again but the murmur was caught by a sudden cold breeze which carried it to merge with a louder, stronger voice.

  ‘… in the true and certain knowledge…’

  Beneath closed eyes Anne Corby stared at the rough wooden box, crudely cut corners no proof against the icy blasts slowly hardening freshly excavated mounds of black earth to stone. The touch of winter gripped more tightly by the day. Soon it would be too late…

  ‘… ashes to ashes…’

  At her shoulder, huddled in her thin coat, her mother’s sob was snatched by the wind.

  ‘… ashes to ashes…’

  The hard voice strafed against her half frozen ears but was lost against the voice of her thoughts. Did it matter the box was no protection against the wind, could it make the body inside it more stiff than it had been when living, was the blood more cold now than when it had coursed its wasted journeys through the veins of the man lying inside it? A man as devoid of feeling in life as he was now, a dead empty shell.

  Turning her shoulder, seeking some protection from the nerve deadening gusts screaming in from the steppes, she fought the rising urge to walk away, to ignore what was happening to the remains of the man she had so very long ago grown to hate, to leave this cemetery now, to ignore the man who had so often ignored her. But she would stay, stay for her mother’s sake, stay while her father was lowered to his grave. But she could pretend no pity, no love.

  Closed eyes were no barrier against the pictures playing in her mind as she watched herself standing at the open grave, heard her own thoughts as she stared at the plain box, no flower alleviating its severity. But then there had never been any alleviation of her father’s severity so it was a perfect match. A hard, self-opinionated man, he had driven his wife and daughter as hard as he had driven himself, giving very little time or thought to either of them; Jacob Corby had had little time for anything but his God.

  And now you will meet Him, Father. Anne watched the priest raise his hand over the coffin. May He reward you as you deserve, give you the crown you strove for by dragging my mother, half starved, across the world.

  ‘It be all done, wench, the child be ’ere.’

  Unity Hurley gathered the tiny living bundle into her arms as she looked at the young woman she had helped give birth. Seeing the rapid movement behind the mauve shadowed lids she shook her head. The wench was suffering still, but from a pain no midwife could heal. Wrapping the infant in a piece of white cloth she laid it aside and covered its heat soaked mother with a blanket.

  But Anne heard no word of sympathy, felt no touch of comfort. In that strange netherworld, held in its greyness, she felt only the rush of air, bone cracking in its coldness, as it swept across a tiny churchyard whistling through trees stripped of every leaf, moaning as it whirled about headstones in its unseen search.

  In the bed Unity had laid her on, Anne Corby shivered as the freezing fingers of that wind seemed to wrap about the thin figure she was watching – a figure she knew was her own – and seemed to clutch at ragged skirts, pulling with breath snatching gusts to the very edge of that open pit, dragging her even now as her father had dragged her in life, forcing her to follow his footsteps into death itself.

  Trembling as from intense cold, she did not hear Unity call for the bricks left heating in the oven or feel their warmth as they were laid beside her; her closed eyes saw only the glittering drops of holy water, her ears heard only their tinkling when they fell like tiny frozen tears on that wooden box, and her heart said they were the only tears Jacob Corby deserved.

  Watching the shadows of semi-consciousness she saw herself dig the heels of worn out boots into the hard ground then lower her eyes, not wanting to see more. She could not remember a time when she had truly felt love for the man who had fathered her and she could shed no tears for him now, but her being ached for the frail woman sobbing quietly beside her, the one person in her whole life who had shown her any love, her mother, Viola.

  ‘Whither thou goest I will go.’

  The umbilical cord severed, Unity Hurley paused in her washing of the girl’s bloodstained legs as the words whispered into the now quiet bedroom. What horror had this wench suffered? One thing was clear, rape was not the all of it.

  ‘Whither thou goest…’

  The familiar words repeating in her shadow misted mind, Anne saw herself reach for the slight, black draped figure, drawing it close against her.

  ‘… I will go.’

  That Viola Corby had done: true to her Old Testament namesake, she had followed the journeyings of her loved one. But, unlike the Biblical Ruth, her journeying had not ended in happiness, she had been trawled from country to country, following without complaint, trying only to protect her child, to give her the love her father never gave. Convinced he held a mission from God, Jacob Corby had marched his pathetic family across the continent of Africa and on into Europe.

  Coughing, Anne had no knowledge of the gentle hand which wiped her mouth or felt her hot forehead. She felt only the acid gall rise in her throat, glad it prevented her joining in the prayer fighting its losing battle against a screaming wind. May Jacob Corby’s God show him forgiveness, for his daughter never would!

  2

  ‘The child be a scrap but all things considered that’s no surprise. But the wench, it be her I feel sorry for. She was all but done for when you fetched her here, and the birthing of that babby, well.’ Unity Hurley shook her grey head as she looked at the man sat finishing his evening meal, ‘the girl is going to need the help of heaven to get over that; days and nights of pain teks its toll of healthy women but when one be underfed as that one… all I can say is God help her!’

  Turning to the fireplace gleaming silver-black from the hours of her life given to polishing it, Unity busied herself with a large black bottomed kettle, hiding the concern she could not dismiss. Laban had always had a soft heart, he would give help to any who needed it and she would not deny him that, but to bring home a girl already in the throes of labour, a girl whose own family had turned her away… and that family supplying Laban with lorinery. Clara Mather would not take kindly to that.

  Like many another in Darlaston she knew the vindictive strike of that woman’s hand, had seen her father destroyed by it when it took away his job. Being given the sack had robbed his family of food but it had robbed him of more, he had lost his dignity, the pride a man felt in keeping his family, and he had died a broken man. That was the action of a grasping woman, so what action would her vengeance take – and she would be certain to visit vengeance on Laban once news of the delivery of that child reached her ears – would it be the same spite which could cause them to suffer as her father had suffered?

  ‘I couldn’t leave the wench, couldn’t turn me back on her.’ As though reading his wife’s thoughts, Laban Hurley rose quietly from the table.

  ‘I know you couldn’t and neither should you,’ Unity answered quickly, masking the guilt of her own thoughts.

  ‘But…?’

  Turning to face him, all of Unity’s dread showed on her face. ‘But,’ she said, ‘you asks me “but” when you knows yourself the nature of her who lives along of Butcroft House, knows the spite of her. Clara Mather wants none of that niece of hers, you said that yourself, told it as that wench upstairs told it to you, and what Clara Mather don’t want don’t find no pla
ce in Darlaston and for sure not here in Blockall.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ Laban smiled at the woman he had married forty years before. ‘Would you have me lift the girl from that bed, carry her and her newborn to the workhouse?’

  ‘No!’ Unity’s head shook rapidly. ‘You know I wouldn’t want that, Laban Hurley, but – but are you not feared of what might happen?’

  Taking her in his arms the love that had endured from his years as a lad surged fresh in Laban’s heart. ‘I don’t be feared of nothing so long as you be with me,’ he said, kissing the lined cheek, ‘and the day don’t be yet dawned when I be feared of Clara Mather.’

  He was not feared. Unity rested her head against her husband’s chest. But maybe he should be, maybe they all should be. Jacob Corby’s sister had been resentful all her life and with the return of that man’s daughter, and now a grandson to challenge her, who could tell what resentment and spite might turn to… or upon whom its shadow would fall?

  *

  ‘I tell you it was her!’

  Across the small town, in the house her father had built then bequeathed to her brother, Clara Mather glared at her son.

  ‘She came to this house, stood in this very room. Do you think I don’t recognise my own niece!’

  She should recognise her. Quenton Mather moved to a chair and dropped into it. No doubt his mother had dreamed of that child and its parents for fourteen years, dreaded the day when one or all of them would return, and now it had happened.

  ‘Then if it was Anne Corby where is she now, why is she not here?’

  ‘Like father like son!’ Clara spat. ‘He thought things just took care of themselves but they don’t. Jacob’s daughter is not here because I sent her packing.’

  ‘You sent her packing.’ Quenton sounded amused. ‘And what of your brother, did you pack him off also?’

  ‘Jacob is dead.’

  ‘And his wife?’

  What of his wife? Clara’s fingers tightened. There had been no mention of her. If she still lived she was Jacob’s next of kin, his legal beneficiary. But if Viola were alive would she not be with her daughter, the child she had doted on? Of course there was the possibility she had been left to rest somewhere, had let the girl come to Butcroft House in her place… There were many possibilities but none that could not be taken care of, and her sister-in-law when found would receive all of that care, just as would her child and her offspring!

  ‘Your aunt was not spoken of,’ Clara answered, feeling her son’s eyes on her. ‘Seeing the state of the daughter, how exhausted she looked, then I supposed her to have remained behind to rest.’

  ‘So when next our relatives pay us a visit there will most likely be two of them?’

  ‘Three!’ Clara replied bluntly. ‘Jacob’s daughter was carrying a child.’

  A child! Quenton’s eyes narrowed. One more contender in the game. No wonder his mother was agitated, she could see the fruit of her malice being snatched from beneath her nose; but if she lost the race then he lost the trophy, Butcroft House together with the Glebe Works would belong to the cousin he detested.

  ‘That puts a new aspect on things,’ he said, rising to his feet. ‘A daughter and soon a grandchild; I would say Uncle Jacob has left his affairs nicely worked out.’

  Watching him walk from the room Clara felt her anger flare. His father had much the same thought. Married to the daughter of the owner of the Glebe Works he had imagined his own affairs nicely worked out, but she had had other ideas. Clara Mather had no intention of being the docile little wife, grateful to be married, content to follow a man in all things and have a say in nothing, acquiescent and malleable. No, that had not been suitable to her, so she had changed it. Slowly… so slowly! She had taken her time, always appearing so devoted, so caring of the husband who became gradually more and more ill, experiencing breathing difficulties and increasing tiredness.

  ‘You must be prepared.’

  Clara smiled as the often remembered words crept again into her mind. The doctor had murmured them on one of his visits, visits she timed to fall well between those bouts. Her husband, he had said, was suffering a disease of the heart, one which could end his life quite suddenly. And so it had, except the real cause of death was a little extra dose of the poison she had been adding to the prescribed medicine. Aconite, the common Monkshood also known as Wolfsbane was a very useful plant… and it still grew in a corner of the garden!

  *

  Unity Hurley touched the brow of the girl lying half conscious in the narrow iron framed bed and felt the heat of fever. The girl had given her all in bringing her child into the world, now only heaven could help her. Laying a cool wet cloth where her hand had been she collected bowl and towel then, before leaving the bedroom, murmured a prayer to ask heaven’s help, but Anne Corby neither heard nor felt. Cocooned in her grey world she watched those terrible yesterdays, stared across the black hole which waited to close over the remains of her father. Through the dark mist of semi-consciousness a priest dressed in the long black robe and high black hat of the Russian Orthodox Church lifted a hand, tracing the sign of the cross while intoning his final invocation to the Almighty, asking His blessing on the soul of the man who had sacrificed a wife and daughter on the altar of self-righteousness.

  Behind their fragile shield her eyes followed the movement of icy air weaving the breath of the priest into delicate lacy patterns of white hoar frost before laying them reverently across his dark, bush like beard.

  His duty done the priest snapped his prayer book closed. It was too cold to be outdoors, too cold to be at the task of burying a foreigner; one more week and the ground would have been frozen solid, too hard for a grave to be dug and the body would have been stored in the waiting house on the outskirts of the village until spring, and he would have been in Roskoyeva’s Inn with his feet on the stove and a pot of hot wine in his hand.

  Without a word to either of the two women standing opposite him at the graveside he turned, thick fur lined boots crunching his farewell on the ice filmed snow as he hurried towards the huddle of houses grouped close around the tiny, spire topped church as if they sought divine protection from the horrors of a fast approaching winter.

  Placing an arm about her mother’s shoulders Anne held her against the drag of the wind. They were alone, there was no one in this whole vast continent who might help them or give them comfort, no other single human being stood with them in the bitterly cold cemetery; even the carter who had transported the rough coffin up the hill from the village had departed the exact moment his cart had been relieved of its burden.

  In her trance like state Anne watched herself gently turning her mother away from the black gash in the ground that would hold no headstone to tell of who lay buried there, her dreaming eyes following the marks of the cart’s wheels, black serpentine lines creeping across the virgin whiteness of freshly fallen snow. She could not really blame the carter for leaving them, he need hold no loyalty towards perfect strangers, and she had long since forgone expecting sympathy. They were foreigners here, she and her mother, and until yesterday her father also, strangers in a strange land. Jacob Corby had dragged his family across the face of Africa, Europe and into Russia, month after long month in a lifetime of searching, and for what? With her free hand she pulled her shabby brown cloak from the clutch of wind which increased its fury, holding the thin cloth tight against her. What had Jacob Corby searched for except his own selfish salvation!

  The picture real in her fevered mind, the thoughts returning as if new, Anne seemed to feel that same anger hard and chilling as the wind trying its damnedest to rip them apart while she held her mother close, the bones of her wasted body biting through the layers of their clothing.

  Waste! That was the legacy Jacob Corby had bequeathed his wife, waste both of her body and of her life, and she, his daughter, hated him for it. She was glad he was dead, glad that the monotonous sermonising, which dismissed and denied every comfort to his own life and to
theirs in the name of a God he preached as love, was silent for ever. Her father had looked for salvation but nowhere in her soul could she hope he had found it. Holding her mother as they stumbled together against the biting wind, she hoped only that he had found damnation.

  Bending her head before the invisible screaming spiral that sought to hold them in that ice bound cemetery, sought to force them back towards the open grave, to reunite the living with the dead, Anne Corby walked away from the remains of a father who had given her nothing but a lifetime of misery.

  *

  ‘Do you take me for a fool, Fanny Simkin? If I believe you then I believe in the Christmas fairy!’

  ‘Then you best hang up your stocking, Polly wench, for this year it’ll be filled to the top.’

  As she pored over a fillet of steak Clara Mather’s ear caught the talk of two women stood at the counter of the butcher’s shop.

  ‘Unity ’Urley buying teats… you’ll tell me next her give birth to a babby and we both know that can’t never happen for her be past childbearing long gone, same as we does, thank God! And Laban keeps no livestock that might need hand rearing so I reckon whoever told you that story were pulling your leg.’

  ‘I’d have held to that belief meself if it weren’t for what me own eyes seen. I’ll take two of them but you trim the fat afore you weighs ’em, I can get fat for free along of the slaughter house!’ Her attention temporarily transferred to the butcher, the woman pointed to a tray set with mutton chops then turned again to her friend, resuming their conversation.

  ‘So what did them eyes o’ yourn see?’

  ‘They sees fat where there ain’t none!’ The butcher’s remark was quick as he placed the chops on the scale.

  ‘They sees plenty as some folk thinks they don’t.’ Her tone holding a hint of caution, the wax cherries on her bonnet nodding, the woman turned her face to his. ‘Like where a certain somebody went after a certain shop closed last Saturday night… and who that somebody went with.’