The Widow’s Secret, page 23
It made her ache to think of her father reading those reports, putting them carefully in a box. With a sigh of resignation, she pulled another box towards her – more school reports. Rachel picked one up; it was from Year 8. Rachel has had a very difficult year, but she continues to work diligently.
A ripple of realization went through her, making her fingers clench the page as her stomach churned. Year 8 – that would have been the year her father died. He couldn’t have saved these reports, put them all in a box, along, she saw, with her English essays, her artwork, a project she’d done on deep-sea diving. Her father couldn’t have saved her stuff, because by this time he’d been dead.
Which meant her mother had done it.
Rachel sat back on her heels, the crumpled report fluttering, forgotten, from her hand. Why had her mother saved all this? Why do something that suggested she cared, when she so clearly hadn’t and still didn’t? You’ve left me alone for the last thirty-seven years.
Rachel looked through the rest of the box, and then another and another. They were all filled to the brim. She even found a poster she’d made for a stupid science project in Year 9. Her mother had kept all of it. Why?
She got up, taking the first report with her, and went downstairs to find her mother. Deborah was in her usual place in the drawing room, the position Rachel remembered from childhood – sitting on a blue, floral-patterned wingback chair by the window, her back to the door of the room.
“Mum.” Her voice sounded croaky.
Deborah didn’t answer.
“Mum.”
“What is it?” She sounded tetchy, as usual. Rachel couldn’t tell how with it she was; over the last couple of days she’d seemed irritable but cognizant. Mostly. There had been occasional spells of confusion, but her mother snapped out of them quickly and always seemed irritated at Rachel for noticing.
“I – I found some of my old school reports.”
“Yes?” Get on with it, in other words. Why would I care?
“Did you keep them all?” Rachel didn’t know why she asked. She’d already found the evidence.
“What if I did?”
“But…” She swallowed. “Why?”
“Why?” Deborah repeated. “Why wouldn’t I? You’re my daughter.”
“Yes, but…” She swallowed again, her throat getting tighter and tighter. “You’ve never acted as if you cared, Mum.” She’d never said such a thing out loud before. She’d never dared. Her whole life had been about pretending she didn’t care that her mother didn’t care, acting as if it were normal or at least just the way it was, even though it tore her up inside, shredded her self-esteem along with her soul. What was wrong with you when your own mother didn’t care about you?
“Oh Rachel, don’t be so melodramatic.”
Which was exactly the kind of response Rachel would have expected her mother to give. “But why, Mum?” she pressed, even though part of her didn’t want to. Surely this wasn’t going to lead anywhere she wanted to go. “Why would you keep all that when you didn’t even seem to notice while it was going on?” When she’d been growing up, her mother had never asked about her day, or her friends, her worries or fears, dreams or desires. She’d seemed utterly indifferent to the events of Rachel’s adolescent life, never mind the inner workings of her mind or heart.
“You’re my daughter,” Deborah said again, flatly, and some faint, fragile thread Rachel had been clutching on to her whole life finally snapped.
“That’s not a reason. It wasn’t a reason when I was growing up, it can’t be a reason now.” Her mother just sighed. Rachel took a step towards her, the old school report now crumpled in her hand. “Why keep all this stuff when you don’t care about me?” she asked, decades-old pain throbbing in every syllable.
Her mother stared at her for a long moment, her face utterly expressionless, as blank as marble.
“Why?” Rachel asked again, this time the word a cry.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I care about you.” Deborah turned away with a dismissive sniff. “You always had a flair for the dramatic, Rachel, just like your father. It’s so tedious.”
Rachel sank on to a chair, her mind still spinning. Memories of meals eaten in silence, endless weekends drifting around the house like two ghosts, wanting her mother to ask anything about her life but she never would. It had been like that, hadn’t it? She was remembering it the way it was, and not just the way it had felt?
It was so unsettling to doubt herself now, to doubt everything. Her father’s love, her mother’s coldness. Which one was real? Which one mattered?
“I don’t understand,” she whispered.
“You don’t want to understand,” her mother replied. “Just like I didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“Better not to understand something than to have to forgive it.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Her mother craned her neck to look out of the window. “When is Will coming back?”
Will? Rachel sat up, jolted as if she’d missed the last step in a staircase. “Mum, it wasn’t Will who was here; it was Anthony.” My husband, not yours.
Her mother tutted impatiently. “That’s what I meant, of course. When is he coming back?”
“He’s not. He’s gone back to Bristol.”
“Bristol?” Her mother looked blank.
“Where I live.”
“Oh. Right.”
Deborah looked away and Rachel struggled to know what to say, how to feel. It was almost as if her mother was playing mind games with her, toying with her fears. Will. Anthony. Two larger-than-life men – one she’d adored and one she was scared to love. Was her mother pretending to be confused, or in her mind had she really morphed Rachel’s husband and father into a single person?
Rachel shook her head slowly. She felt no nearer to any answers, and she wasn’t ready to ask any more questions. “I’m going back upstairs. Do you want something? A cup of tea?”
“I don’t want anything,” Deborah said, and with her lips pursed, she turned away, her face set against Rachel.
Back upstairs Rachel stared at the mess of boxes, with papers and photos spilling out. She couldn’t cope with any of it right now, even as part of her yearned to dig through all the detritus and see if those forgotten memories held any clues, offered any answers.
Not now, though. She wasn’t ready yet. Her brain hurt, along with her heart, so she did what she’d been doing since she could remember – she forgot the present in favour of someone else’s past.
In her bedroom, the double bed she’d been sharing with Anthony still rumpled, she reached for her laptop. With pillows propped up behind her she opened her email and downloaded the attachment Soha had sent her a few days ago. The Fenton Collection, which sounded far grander than it was, as the collection comprised only six letters.
She read the short introduction written by an archivist, giving the basic details of James and Abigail Fenton. She was the daughter of a wool merchant, he was a ship’s captain turned trader, who had decided to captain his last ship, The Fair Lady, which sank off the Caribbean with a full cargo of sugar and rum. All facts Rachel already knew.
James Fenton’s first letter was written from the west coast of Africa, when he first arrived on The Fair Lady in the summer of 1766, to procure slaves to trade in the West Indies. It is believed he gave the letter to the captain of a ship returning to Whitehaven, to be delivered to Abigail Fenton. As there was no reliable mail delivery service during that period, he would have had to depend on others’ goodwill and charity to pass his letters on to his wife. It is not known when Abigail received the letters; it could have been after his death, as often letters were lost, mislaid, or remained in a port until they could be passed on to another ship.
Rachel felt a little ripple of curiosity and excitement as she clicked on the next page and began to read. “Dearest Abigail…”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Abigail
Whitehaven, 1766
Abigail stood by the window of the drawing room, oblivious to the cold draught coming from it, her husband’s letter in her hand.
It had been five months since he had left for Africa, five long, difficult months. After discovering the lack of funds in his strongbox, Abigail had been left spinning, having no idea what to do. She’d slipped past a silent Adelaide and gone to the parlour, where she’d paced uselessly, completely at a loss.
Was there really no money? Had James left her with no funds at all? Finally, rousing herself as if from a stupor, she’d taken what little there’d been in the box and used it to pay the butcher. It had felt to her a matter of honour as well as a point of pride, and the man’s compassionate look had made her cringe.
“Thank you kindly, Mrs Fenton.”
It was only afterwards, when she’d returned to the house, that she realized how foolish she’d been. Now she had no money at all. Over the next few days, others came to the door of the house on Queen Street – men with bills and merchants who had no more credit to extend. They must have heard of the to-do at the butcher’s, and now everyone wanted what they were owed, except that Abigail didn’t have it.
After several days of putting off her creditors and then simply not answering the door, she’d gone, as she’d known she would have to, to her father. She wilted inside with humiliation and grief that it had come to this – that James had allowed it to.
“Clearly it’s no more than an oversight,” she told her father, sitting in the front parlour, her hands clenched in her lap. “Mr Fenton would have seen to the bills if he’d remembered, but his preparations for The Fair Lady were so consuming.”
“Of course,” her father murmured. Abigail knew she was not fooling him one bit. “All gentlemen make such oversights now and again,” he said, and he paid off all the bills, and gave her extra money besides. Abigail had never felt so humiliated, so ashamed, and yet she could not deny the relief she felt at keeping the wolf from the door for a while longer.
Now her gaze flicked to the page she held, with James’s schoolboy letters filling it so carefully, his penmanship earned through many painstaking hours of practice. The letter had been delivered this morning, with the arrival of The Mercy, a ship returning from Africa through Spain.
Dearest Abigail,
I write these lines from the Slave Coast of Africa, a hot and uneasy place. I thank Providence, who directed the Wind and Weather, to have us land safely near Sinagal. However, I was Much Disappointed to discover that the Trade of which so many speak highly was not the Reasonable Endeavour I had come to expect. In truth there are very few slaves in prime health who would be sold at an Advantage. Many are sickly, although Traders of all kinds use Oils and such Perfumes to hide their great Deficiencies. After several Disappointments, we sailed on to SereLeon, in the hope of finding Prime Slaves who will remain in Good Health for the Great Voyage to the Indies. I confess, My Dearest, that this Voyage has made me Uneasy in both my Mind and Spirit. I Wonder at the Stone Prisons where Slaves are Kept – they are Mighty Fortresses, unlike any you have seen in our own Pleasant Land. At times it doth seem like a Dread and Fearful Business, and yet I Trust that God, in Whom all Enterprises are Ordained, will Bless my Voyage and bring me Safely back to you.
Yours, as ever,
James
Abigail looked up from the letter, her gaze unseeing. In her mind’s eye she saw not the busy harbour prickling with masts visible out of the drawing room window, but a mighty stone fortress built on the shores of some dark and tropical place, filled with the lamentable groaning of those who, in their great misfortune, had become enslaved. She could not imagine it; she did not want to.
But as she read her husband’s letter through yet another time, she wondered at what he was not willing to write. Why was he so uneasy in both mind and spirit? Had his conscience been pricked, just as hers had, by the great suffering he was, by his own hand, inflicting on humanity?
She put the letter aside, resenting the ferment of emotions it caused within her. Why was nothing simple? It had been several weeks since she’d removed Adelaide to her dressing room, and it had not brought any great peace to her household. Jensen was still sullen, Cook fearful and suspicious. Adelaide was mostly so very silent, even though Abigail knew her English was much improved.
She, at least, had begun to rest easy with the girl sleeping so close, yet she still felt a vague and restless sense of dissatisfaction; a feeling that the arrangements she’d made were somehow not sufficient. She pictured Mr Wesley speaking to her again, regarding Adelaide’s little bedroom with a silent look of censure, and she cringed inwardly with shame even as part of her rose in defiance.
I am doing so much more than anyone else. What would that great man ask of me?
She could hear Wesley’s response as if he were standing in the room with her. It is not I who ask anything of you, Madam, but God.
Very well, then, Abigail thought petulantly, why cannot God be satisfied with what I give?
“Ma’am, Mrs Heywood is here to visit.” Jensen stood in the doorway, as polite and proper as ever, yet Abigail sensed the woman’s animosity. It had not abated even though Adelaide had been in the household for over six months.
“Show her in, please, Jensen.”
“My dear Abigail,” Caroline fussed as soon as she entered the room. “I have become so concerned for you of late.”
“There is no need, Mama.” Abigail knew it was her mother’s oblique way of referring to her financial woes; neither of them had ever spoken of it directly, and Abigail doubted they ever would.
“You are faring well?” Caroline asked, eyebrows raised as she took the chair opposite Abigail with a satisfied sigh and a flounce of her skirts.
“I am well,” Abigail affirmed, and then lifted her gaze to Jensen. “Will you bring tea, please, Jensen?”
The maid nodded crossly, the sulky swirl of her skirt as she turned away bordering on insolence.
Caroline clucked. “She is getting airs, that one. And to think I trained her myself. She was naught but a scullery maid when she came to us.”
“You are right,” Abigail agreed in a low voice. “But I am not altogether certain that I can do anything about it.”
“Of course you can! Good servants are not as hard to find as all that.”
“Yes, but…” Reluctantly Abigail’s gaze flitted to Adelaide, who was sitting quietly on her stool, her lowered gaze fixed on her chapbook.
“If Jensen objects on those grounds, it is a nonsense,” Caroline said after a moment. “She is perfectly well trained, and when she says anything she speaks well. I must say, you have done marvellously with her, Abigail. Georgiana will have to come to you for all her advice.”
“Georgiana?”
“Have you not heard? She has requested a child the same as you, but she wants a little boy. I, for one, could not countenance it, but she is quite determined.”
For some reason she could not entirely understand, this bland pronouncement as good as made Abigail’s skin crawl. “You say Georgiana is getting a little slave boy?” she asked in a low voice. Adelaide did not move or lift her gaze, but Abigail felt her listening. The girl’s English was now nearly as good as her own, even though she still said very little, making her question all over again her husband’s determined assertion that slaves did not think or feel as they did. How could he believe such a thing, when it was obvious to Abigail that slaves could speak as well as they did?
“Yes. She asked Mr Fenton before he left on The Fair Lady, and he promised her he’d look out for a little boy especially. I must confess, I am surprised he did not tell you.”
“No, he did not.” Abigail felt a coldness steal through her. James had kept such knowledge from her? Why? And yet she knew why. Because he’d known some part of her – a part she could barely understand – would resist. And yet how could she, when Adelaide sat right beside her, and Abigail would have her nowhere else? Why should she protest at Georgiana having the same situation?
“I suppose it slipped his mind,” Caroline declared with a little shrug of her shoulders. “He had so very much on his mind, as you remarked.”
A silence settled upon them at this unnecessary reminder of James’s dire financial straits. Abigail stared into the fire, a sense of disquiet that she’d been attempting to keep at bay threatening to rise up and overtake her yet again.
“Why don’t you visit Georgiana?” Caroline suggested after Jensen had brought in the tea tray with a great rattling of cups, and set it down before Abigail. “You could take Adelaide with you,” Caroline continued as Abigail began to make the tea, pouring hot water over the leaves with great deliberation.
“Visit Georgiana,” she repeated neutrally, not quite a question.
“Yes, you can tell her how you’ve managed to train Adelaide so admirably. Really, she is quite the little madam, isn’t she?” Caroline flicked a glance towards Adelaide with uncertain approbation. “You would hardly know…”
“You would hardly know?” Abigail prompted, a bit sharply, when her mother had trailed off. “What is it you would hardly know, Mama?”
Caroline looked flustered. “Well, I only meant that you would hardly know she is… she is an African.” She blushed and bit her lip, looking unhappy. “Of course, I can tell from the colour of her skin, so I could hardly mean that. I only meant as to her manners and suchlike. Oh Abigail, why must you be so stubborn and difficult still?” Irritably she nodded towards the silver teapot, a wedding present from an uncle. “Is it not ready yet?”
Abigail poured the tea in silence.
Later, as her mother was preparing to leave, she urged her to visit Georgiana again. “I know she would look kindly upon a visit from you. She is quite worn out, I think, from her last confinement.” Abigail thought she’d kept her face blandly expressionless, but she must not have, for Caroline regarded her unhappily. “I am sorry, my dear. I did not mean –”
