Gilding the Lilly

  Gilding the Lilly

  Rita Bradshaw

  Headline Publishing Group Ltd (2010)

  * * *

  Synopsis

  A heartrending tale of two sisters and their quest for a place to belong, from much-loved author Rita Bradshaw.

  Lily and Sarah Brown's childhood is an unhappy one. Sarah escapes by marrying Ralph Turner, a Sunderland dock worker, but Lily doesn't trust Ralph - a dark volatile man with a hidden cruel streak. When he tries to seduce Lily on his wedding day, her worst fears are confirmed. Ralph's younger brother John is cut from a different cloth, though, and Lily is increasingly drawn to him. But just when Lily sees a future for them, a terrible incident destroys her happiness. Heartbroken, Lily agrees to accompany the family she works for as a nursemaid to New York. As Lily boards RMS Titanic little does she realise that her decision will change the course of her life for ever..

  Gilding the Lilly

  RITA BRADSHAW

  headline

  www.headline.co.uk

  Copyright © 2009 Rita Bradshaw

  The right of Rita Bradshaw to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2010

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN : 978 0 7553 7595 0

  This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  PART ONE - January 1890 - A Divided House

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  PART TWO - May 1907 - Sarah’s Wedding

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  PART THREE - February 1908 - Trouble Begets Trouble

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  PART FOUR - June 1911 - Choices

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  PART FIVE - April 1912 - The Titanic

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  PART SIX - May 1912 - Breaking Free

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  This book is for our dear friends Peter and Dorothy, in memory of their beautiful, brave and very precious daughter, Lizzie.

  The night the Titanic went down the sky was alive with shooting stars; the brilliant shooting star that Richard saw when Lizzie went home to be with her Lord was a word to those she loved that she’s free from pain at last, wonderfully healed, and singing praises to the God she loved with all her heart and soul.

  I know you, and Phil and Richard, miss her more than words can say. Clive and I continue to pray that the Lord Jesus will give you songs in the night and treasures in dark places, and that he will carry you when all else fails and grief is overwhelming. We love you very much.

  Acknowledgements

  There has been so much written, and have been so many films, about the terrible tragedy when the Titanic went down in April 1912. I wanted to portray the facts of that disaster which could so easily have been avoided as seen by someone who was on board ship, without being confused by the many myths and fables that can colour things over a passage of time. To this end I gathered together a great deal of research, but one book which stands out above all others for clarity and objectivity has to be Unsinkable: The Full Story of RMS Titanic by Daniel Allen Butler.

  ‘Every city or house divided against itself shall not stand’

  Matthew 12:25

  PART ONE

  January 1890 - A Divided House

  Chapter 1

  For a long time afterwards he asked himself how things would have panned out if he hadn’t come home unexpectedly that sunny April morning. Would he have discovered the truth in time, or would he have carried on thinking he was the luckiest man alive to be married to Geraldine, even if she did pick fault with everything he did? But all that was relative. He had come home.

  Stanley Brown pressed his lips together, his eyes narrowing on the snow-covered fields in front of him. It was bitterly cold. The heavy blue-grey sky threatened further squalls of blustery snow, but chilled to the marrow as he was he preferred the icy landscape to the warmth of his house in the heart of Bishopwearmouth’s terraced streets. House . . . His wide mouth curled in self-derision. Two rooms, to be more precise. Rooms where at this very moment his wife was in the process of giving birth to a child who would be a sister or brother to their little Sarah.

  Hunching his shoulders against the raw January wind, he began walking along the Durham Road. He passed the north moor on his left. To the east of that was Silksworth Colliery but the mine would be silent today, it being a Sunday.

  No one was about, but why would they be on a day like today? He smiled grimly. You’d have to be mad to be taking a constitutional in this weather. Mad, or so sickened by what was at home that anything else - even this piercing wind - was preferable.

  He walked for over an hour before once again stopping to stand and gaze over farmland. The exposed blackened skeletons of a number of beech trees were being assailed by icy blasts but otherwise the normal laws of nature seemed suspended by the extreme cold of the January afternoon.There were no birds about, not even the odd seagull.

  Resting his elbows on the drystone wall bordering the narrow lane he’d turned into a few minutes before, Stanley ran his fingers idly over the raised scar covering the bridge of his nose. The accident had changed his life for ever. Funny how a moment in time could do that. It had been his own fault though, he’d forgotten the cardinal rule of the shipyards which declared you couldn’t afford to lose concentration for a second. He’d been working with a plater in the fabrication shed on a guillotine that chopped the steel plates. It had a little hand crane which you worked yourself and he’d got distracted. He hadn’t realised his finger was on the button of the crane when the sling was going up. It had caught the guillotine and snapped, hitting him full in the face and breaking his nose.

  He shook his head at his stupidity. They didn’t call Doxfords where he worked the blood yard for nothing, that and Thompsons Yard.They were the worst on the Wear for accidents. Only yesterday poor old Shane O’Leary had copped a load. Shane had been climbing a ladder between decks and his boot had got caught in the handle of his paint tin. He’d fallen on the tank top, landing on his hands and knees. The bones of his wrists had been sticking out through his skin when he’d climbed back up the ladder before passing clean out.

  Stanley straightened, as though throwing something off. You couldn’t dwell on what might happen though, you just had to get on with it. Mind, if he was being honest he wouldn’t want to work anywhere else. From a bairn he’d been fascinated by the shipyards, probably because his da and his granda had been shipwrights. He’d absorbed tales of what went on with his mam’s milk. Gantries collapsing, girders falling, men and boys losing fingers and eyes or having limbs sliced off. He’d heard it all long before he’d turned thirteen and started work as a rivet catcher boy. He’d thought he’d landed in hell that day. The deafening noise, the hammering and riveting and black belching smoke had made him all fingers and thumbs as he’d climbed the staging above the engine room. He’d looked down on the heaters’ fires and it had reminded him of a picture the teacher at Sunday school had showed them, Dante’s Inferno, he thought it had been called, by some French bloke. But he’d survived that day and the ones following it although two lads he’d started with hadn’t been so lucky.The fatalities among catcher boys was high.

  A gust of icy wind tried to snatch his cap and he pulled it further down over his forehead, tightening his muffler round his neck. Slowly he began to retrace his footsteps to the town.

  He’d broken his nose that April day because he had been worrying about Geraldine. For some weeks he’d had the notion there was something wrong with her but he hadn’t been able to put his finger on it. Once the infirmary had patched him up and sent him home for the day with a thudding headache, he’d walked to their rooms in a house in Church Street West at the back of the cement works wondering how he was going to tell Geraldine he was losing a day’s pay. In the event that had been the least of his troubles.

  Sarah had been in her play pen in the kitchen when he’d let himself in to the house the back way. She’d been crying earlier, if her tear-blotched face was anything to go by, although she h
ad been sitting quietly with a rag doll his mam had made her when he entered the room. She’d raised her little head and seen him and immediately clambered to her feet, holding out her arms, in spite of his knocked-about face. He’d lifted her up and cuddled her for a moment or two before placing her back in the pen. In hindsight he knew that even then he must have suspected something, although what he didn’t know. But something had been telling him not to make his presence known.

  Sarah had settled down with her dolly again and he had carefully made his way into the hall. The upstairs of the house was occupied by an Irish couple who worked during the day. He had stood for a moment outside the front room which was their bedroom, Sarah’s cot having been squeezed in next to their brass bed. All was quiet and Geraldine could have been merely lying down for a rest. Maybe it was her changed behaviour over the last weeks that had alerted him but when he quietly opened the door and saw the two bodies lying among the ruffled covers, he found he wasn’t surprised. Nauseated but not surprised.

  They must have had their fun because they were lying entwined with their eyes shut, the man’s white buttocks facing him. He hadn’t reacted for a moment, he’d simply stared at them. Geraldine’s hair had been in a fan on the pillow behind her and one full pink-tipped breast had been visible. That had perhaps enraged him more than anything else. Since the time they had found Sarah was on the way and had a hasty wedding, Geraldine had insisted on undressing in the dark. And this the woman who hadn’t been able to get enough of him. And there she was, in the middle of the day, lying as exposed as one of the whores who plied their trade down by the docks.

  The sound he’d made deep in his throat had brought them both jerking upwards seconds before his fists found their target. The fight had been short but savage and all the time Geraldine had been as silent as the grave, shrunk back against the bedhead clutching the sheet to her as though he’d never seen her naked before. The other man hadn’t stood a chance. Not only had he been taken by surprise but his nakedness, combined with the fact that he was slight and finely boned, had put him at a severe disadvantage.

  If it hadn’t been for the fact that the neighbours would have had a field day he would have booted him out of the house stark naked. As it was Geraldine’s fancy man had left fully dressed but looking as though he had been hit by a tram.

  The snow he had been expecting all afternoon was beginning to fall, great fat flakes that whirled and danced in the icy wind. He had reached the outskirts of Bishopwearmouth now but he didn’t hurry. His hands thrust deep in his trouser pockets, he walked steadily on, his mouth a thin line in his grim face.

  And now his wife’s bastard was being born and under cover of his name.Whatever Geraldine said, he knew it wasn’t his. She hadn’t let him near her for weeks before that April day and he hadn’t touched her afterwards. Just the proximity of living in the same house sickened him these days. No, this baby was her fancy man’s, all right. When he’d found out she was expecting a baby and done his arithmetic he’d told her to clear off to this fella and it had been then she’d admitted he was long gone, that he’d scarpered the day after he’d found them together. Should he have still thrown her out? Probably. But there had been Sarah. He hadn’t wanted to lose his bairn.

  The snow was fast becoming a blizzard but as he passed the grim confines of the workhouse its austere lines mocked what he was trying to tell himself. All right, so it hadn’t altogether been his love for Sarah which had stayed his hand, nor the fact that with nowhere to go Geraldine might well have ended up in the workhouse. It had been the thought of folk knowing he’d been made a cuckold of he couldn’t bear. The neighbours might have their suspicions because you couldn’t so much as sneeze before the old wives knew about it, but suspicions were one thing. Fact was another. He’d always prided himself on being the big man, in deed as well as stature. Stanley Brown, who’d won Geraldine Preston as his wife and her the daughter of one of the big nobs in the town who had his own engineering works. Never mind her da had cut her off without a penny once he’d discovered she was pregnant by a common steelworker, it had been him Geraldine had been mad about. At least in those first heady weeks and months.

  Pride goes before a fall. How often had his mam said that? But she was right. After her fancy man had limped off with his tail between his legs Geraldine had screamed at him that she hated the two rooms they were stuck in, hated having to wash and clean and cook from dawn to dusk, hated being a mother, hated him. Julian was the man she’d had an understanding with before she’d met him, the son of one of her father’s wealthy friends. He could have kept her in the manner to which she was accustomed and he loved her.

  Oh aye, he’d loved her all right, Stanley thought bitterly as he passed Millfield engineering works and approached the maze of streets close to the river. He’d loved her so much he’d high-tailed it off abroad leaving the thick, stupid, clodhopping husband to bring up his bairn. The words Geraldine had flung at him that night still rankled. And now the living proof of her betrayal was making an appearance.

  He ground his teeth together as he stood at the top of Church Street West. How often in the last months had he looked at his wife’s swelling stomach and loathed her and the new life growing inside her? Times without number. Some days he’d been unable to think of little else. He knew his mam and da were worried about him. His mam never missed an opportunity to press him as to what was wrong but he’d rather cut out his own tongue than suffer the humiliation of revealing the truth.

  The kitchen was empty when he walked in. Mrs McKenzie from next door had taken Sarah once it was evident the baby was on its way. He could hear Geraldine groaning in the bedroom and the midwife’s voice. So, it wasn’t over yet.

  The kitchen wasn’t as warm as usual, the fire in the range was low. After throwing some coal on, he lifted the kettle from its steel shelf at the side of the hob. It was empty. Walking through to the small backyard which housed the privy and the wash-house, he bent over the tap. When he turned it only a thin trickle of water dribbled out. He knew the signs. Within hours the tap would be frozen and it would take umpteen bits of burning paper pushed up its spout to get it going. With this in mind he took the full kettle through to the kitchen and placed it on the hob. Then he returned to the yard and filled two buckets of water and brought them into a corner of the room for later.

  Once the kettle was boiled he made a pot of tea and brought it to the kitchen table. At this stage of his Sarah’s birth he’d been frantic. In fact, he’d been so beside himself the midwife had come out of the bedroom where she was seeing to Geraldine and given him a bit of a talking to. ‘Your wife’s doing fine, man. This is perfectly natural after all.’

  When he had protested Geraldine wasn’t very strong and had a delicate constitution, the midwife had been even more forthright.

  ‘She’s stronger than she looks, Mr Brown. We all are. It comes from having to tend a family and do several things at once. I know your wife wasn’t born round these streets’ - this was said with a sniff and stated quite clearly the midwife was aware of Geraldine’s parentage and furthermore, he’d suspected, had been the recipient of what he privately termed Geraldine’s uppity side - ‘but she’s young and strong and healthy.’ He had thought the midwife somewhat hard and unsympathetic. He had been a fool in those days. But no more.

  He drank two cups of scalding hot tea straight down but still the chill inside him made his insides shake. Geraldine’s pains had begun just after breakfast and, deciding he needed more than a bowl of porridge in his stomach considering it was nigh on twilight, he made himself a sandwich. The bread was fresh, Geraldine had baked the day before, but he found he had to force each mouthful past the constriction in his throat. He had just finished and was drinking his third cup of tea when the back door opened and his mother walked in.