It was an odd question, one she didn’t understand. Unable to find whatever appropriate reply she was meant to give, she took what he was holding out to her and saw it was the sketch she’d made the day before of what she’d meant to depict as her father or someone like him. The amount of scrubbing out surprised even her. Had she done all this to it?
‘Why have you kept it?’ Doctor Lowe’s voice broke through her confusion. ‘Why didn’t you throw it away if it was no good?’
Why hadn’t she thrown it away? Was it that she needed to remind herself over and over how much she loathed the man? Anyway, what did Doctor Lowe mean by his question? How could she say why it should worry him? Surely he knew his mind better than she would.
‘I don’t quite know what you mean,’ she said finally.
He smiled for the first time. ‘To tell the truth, I don’t know what I mean either. Perhaps I’m being a little over-reactive, but…’ He reached out and took the drawing paper from her to scrutinize it. ‘All this. Why? What thoughts went through your mind as you effaced what you’d drawn? – and so efficiently drawn, by what I can see is left of it.’
She wished he wouldn’t use words she couldn’t understand, but she had already grasped his concern.
‘I ain’t gone daft!’ she said, reverting to her old way of speaking. He didn’t correct her.
‘I did not say you had.’
‘But that’s what you’re thinking.’
As he continued to regard her levelly, she felt herself breaking down. All her rebelliousness leaving her, she was left unguarded against what was beginning to surface.
She could feel it rising up inside her, being caught, trapped in her throat. In a strangled voice she blurted, ‘I didn’t intend it to be my father when I started. I just drew a figure, but that’s how it turned out, and I hated it. I hated… hate him! What he did, and I couldn’t stop meself. I just kept on tearing at it with me pencil. I don’t know why I didn’t tear it up. I just felt I wanted to hurt him.’
‘Child!’
The word interrupted the flow. He was holding out his arms and, as she burst into tears at the gesture, she automatically threw herself into them, felt them enfold protectively about her, felt herself being gently rocked, hearing him croon, ‘There now, it’s all over now. All over…’
It was odd being held this way by the man who employed her; yet he felt suddenly more like a father than any she had known. In the midst of her weeping came the knowledge that from now on she could get him to do whatever she wanted. She had achieved what she’d first set out to do. She’d schemed, planned, never getting very far, yet by this simple gesture of his it had come about, and she hadn’t even done it intentionally.
‘What do you think you’re doing, Bertram? Have you gone completely mad?’
Mary was glaring at her husband, her rounded face suffused with the anger she could hardly contain. Giving him no time to reply, she swept on, ‘If you think I am going to stand for this nonsense with that girl, you are sadly mistaken.’
She could hardly stop shaking as she stood facing him in the lounge. Whether or not the whole house could hear her raving, she didn’t care any more. He had gone too far this time. She was devastated and so deeply hurt that she could hardly contain her emotions.
It felt utterly inconceivable that a man like him, a medical man with a background of sober habits could let a slip of a girl twist him around her little finger. How could he have been so foolish, refusing to see the dangerous situation staring him in the face?
He’d ignored all her warnings of trouble if he didn’t get rid of the girl and, as the months had passed, little things had arisen to alarm her: Jay doing less and less work about the house, seeming to have more days off than she was entitled to. When she warned Bertram about it, he maintained that she worked hard to warrant it, which wasn’t true and had even raised discontent with the rest of the staff.
Servants talked – were bound to talk. In larger houses containing a multitude of servants, tittle-tattle was rife, passing from mouth to mouth, especially if it concerned one of themselves or was of the juicy kind, and before long would reach their employer’s ears. In this house there was only Chambers and that little kitchen maid who these days seemed to be taking on duties Jay should be doing.
It was that which had first alerted her that something wasn’t quite right. Mrs Jenkins was the one who knew everything that went on, but Mrs Jenkins hadn’t breathed a word of anything out of the ordinary, so she had assumed her fears to be all in her imagination. Mrs Jenkins, who had the family at heart, was very loyal but apparently misguided. She should have confided in her all she had gleaned, since it directly concerned the doctor’s wife. She felt very angry towards Mrs Jenkins for withholding any information, even if it would have been painful to hear, with probably little she could have done about it.
Chambers had been the one to let it all come out.
‘I’m not sure I should say, madam,’ she’d said when asked why she was looking so glum.
‘Say what?’ she’d demanded.
‘Well…’ Chambers had looked across the bedroom to young Dora, but noting she was busy putting away the gowns her mistress had rejected for an evening out with the master, she went on cautiously, ‘Well, what’s going on between the master and Jay.’
Mary’s heart had missed a beat. Surely it couldn’t
