It was decided to tell Oswald that his mother was expecting a child when he arrived home for the Christmas holidays. Then they would also tell Lucy that she was to have a cousin.
Oswald was embarrassed when he was told and didn’t know what to say or how to respond. He went up to his room; William went up to see him later, knocked on his door and spoke confidentially to him.
‘Look here, Oswald, I’ve been thinking, old fellow,’ he said genially. ‘I know it’s been rather difficult for you over the last few years, with me coming into your life and sharing your mother. You’d only be two or three when your mother and I married, weren’t you?’
‘I don’t know,’ Oswald said, pushing his glasses up his nose. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘Lucy doesn’t recall much from when she was that age either.’ William linked the two concepts to make the children equal. He sighed. ‘She was three and a half when her parents died, and that’s not so long ago.’
‘Was she?’ Oswald looked up. He frowned. ‘But she’s got the same name as you.’
‘That’s because she was my brother’s daughter,’ William reminded him. ‘So this is what I’m proposing. When your mother has the baby it will have the name Thornbury, and I was wondering – how would you feel about changing your name from Milburn to Thornbury, so that we’re all the same?’ He paused. ‘We can do it through adoption, so that legally you’d be my son, just as our new son or daughter will be, but if you don’t want to do that, then you could simply change your name by deed poll.’
Oswald pondered and his eyes roamed from side to side of the room. ‘Would I have to call you Father?’
‘Only if you’d like to,’ William said patiently. ‘Though I would rather like it if you did. Or Pa, if you prefer; that’s what my brother and I called our father. But only if you want to. But we’d have a proper grown-up relationship, wouldn’t we, now that you’re no longer an infant and don’t have to rely on your mother any more?’
It was as if a light had been switched on and Oswald’s face lit up. ‘Especially as she’ll be busy with the new baby,’ he agreed, ‘and it being sick and other smelly things.’
‘Exactly.’ William grinned. ‘My thoughts precisely.’
‘I expect Lucy will enjoy all that though, won’t she? Being a girl.’
William laughed. ‘They do seem to, don’t they? We haven’t told her about the baby yet, by the way. We wanted you to be the first to know and I wanted to sort out the business of the name. So, what shall we do? I mean, if you’d prefer to stay as Milburn then that’s all right, but you know, if I introduced you to anyone, I’d rather like to say Have you met my son Oswald? What do you think? Would you like to sleep on it? You don’t have to decide now.’
Oswald stood up and hesitated before speaking, biting on his thumbnail. Then he said, ‘I – don’t want to be left out of it, different from everybody else … not part of the family. So, if you don’t mind, sir, I mean Pa, I’d like you to adopt me.’
William stood up too and put out his hand to shake Oswald’s before holding out his arms to give him a hug. ‘Splendid!’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s go and tell your mother.’
‘Can I tell Lucy?’ Oswald asked eagerly. ‘And tell her that we’ll be sort of related cos we’ll be part of the same family?’
‘Yes indeed.’ William smiled. ‘She’ll be delighted, I’m sure, just as we all are.’
‘She will be, won’t she?’ Oswald drew himself up tall at the prospect. ‘Splendid!’
‘So does it mean I’ll have two cousins when the baby comes?’ Lucy asked eagerly when they explained about the baby and Oswald’s change of name.
Nora and William glanced at each other. ‘Yes,’ they said simultaneously.
‘That means I’m nearly catching up with Edie,’ she said excitedly. ‘She’s got hundreds of cousins.’
‘Not hundreds,’ Oswald said pragmatically, and conscious of asserting his place within the family and enjoying the sense of belonging he went on: ‘but she’s got a lot more than us. Shall we try and add them up?’ He went to the bureau to pick up his notebook and gave her a sheet from it. ‘You write down how many you know and I’ll write down how many I know, though I expect you’ll know more than me cos you went to that wedding.’
But it turned out that Lucy could only remember Max and none of the names of any of the others so she wrote down Edie’s brothers’ and sister’s names instead: Ada, Bob, Stanley, Joshua and Charlie.
‘You’ve forgotten another cousin,’ Nora reminded Lucy. ‘You’ve forgotten Mary’s new baby, Sally. She’s a cousin of Edie and Joshua, isn’t she?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Lucy said, and wrote down the name, and then she remembered Max’s sister Jenny, whom she didn’t know, but who was also a cousin of Edie’s, and Oswald gloomily remarked that he didn’t think they would ever catch up, whilst Nora and William glanced significantly at each other again, delighted that at last the two children were having a conversation together.
The baby was due in August and Lucy hoped that it would be born on her birthday, but it missed by two days and was born on the twelfth, when a girl with a mass of dark hair was delivered; Lucy now knew what delivered meant and much to her delight Uncle William told her that she too had had a lot of hair when she was born.
‘People might think we’re sisters,’ she said excitedly, ‘and not cousins.’
Oswald had peered down at his new half-sister and murmured, ‘Mmm. She’s very small, isn’t she? Look at her tiny fingers and toes and little fingernails. What do you think, Mother? Will she grow all right?’
Nora smiled. ‘She will, Oswald, but we’ll need to take care of her, won’t we? All of us?’
He nodded solemnly, ‘Oh yes, we will. I don’t think I dare pick her up until she’s bigger, but I’ll listen out for her in case she cries.’
‘Thank you, Oswald,’ his mother said. ‘I’m so pleased to think I can rely on you. What name shall we give her?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know many girls. Perhaps we should ask Lucy.’
Lucy suggested many pretty but unsuitable names and in the end it was left to William who suggested Eleanor; he smiled at his wife and said, ‘Your name is a derivation of Eleanor, isn’t it, so why not give our lovely daughter the same name as her beautiful mother?’
Lucy put her head on one side and wondered why it was that grown-ups cried when something nice was said about them, as Aunt Nora was doing now.
The new century was fast approaching and although there was anxiety over the second Boer War and the British military that was once again fighting against the Boers in the Transvaal, amidst great celebration the year 1900 was ushered in; the city of Hull was thriving and almost every area had electric trams to convey passengers cheaply into and out of town. There were still many horse-drawn carriages, omnibuses and delivery wagons, but now that wide new roads had been cut through old properties and many, although not all, slum properties had been demolished there were more motorized vehicles, less congestion and fewer accidents than previously.
Electric lights had been installed in the theatres, brass bands played in the parks and many of Hull’s citizens developed a passion for cycling on the flat roads of the city. William, as a respected bank manager, had elected to join several charitable committees and Nora too had re-joined her women’s group as soon as she felt confident about leaving Eleanor with a nursery maid.
There were others, however, such as Mary and Joe Harrigan, who were not faring as well. Nora surreptitiously suggested to Ada from time to time that she might take bread and tea and any leftover meat from a joint or a chicken to her aunt, but without indicating it had come from her. She was sure that Mary would feel she was being patronized even though she was in need. They still lived in the same room and Joe’s work was never regular; Mary was also pregnant with another child and told her sister Dolly that she didn’t know how they would cope.
‘Honest to God, Dolly,’ she wept one day. ‘If I’d known how it would be, then I swear I’d have remained single all my life.’
‘You’d not be without your Sally, though, would you?’ Dolly commiserated. ‘Such a sweet bairn.’
‘Of course not.’ She wiped her tears on her apron. ‘But how am I going to feed another? We can’t keep tekking handouts, it’s not fair, and it’s not right to have to rely on all of you. You’ve got your own bairns to feed.’
‘But we’d not have you go short, our Mary,’ her sister insisted. ‘And once Joe gets back to full-time work you’ll be able to manage.’ She became thoughtful. ‘Who do we know in a position to help you?’
‘Nobody,’ Mary said. ‘And I wouldn’t ask if I did. I onny want what we can work for.’
‘Aye, that’s right. Course you do,’ Dolly said. ‘It’s what we all want. But there’s one rule for us who have nowt and another for those who have everything.’
It was the beginning of July and William pondered over his Saturday paper as he drank his coffee. He’d claimed his brother’s study off the hall as his own, and often thought of him as he sat in the deep leather armchair. This morning, though, he was troubled by the disturbing news he was reading.
During his various meetings he and his peers often discussed the topics of equality and the unfair distribution of wealth and success, and as a bank manager he was frequently asked for his opinion. There were also many hushed conversations and anxieties over what the new century might bring; conversations that the gentlemen didn’t take home to their wives. The Boer War was still giving rise to great concern and although it was looking increasingly likely that Britain would win, the methods employed against the South African farmers and their families were considered unworthy.
Increasingly, though, William was noticing the dissent throughout Europe as new challengers – Germany, Italy and Russia – battled for possession of lands held by the old colonial and imperial powers of Britain, France, the Netherlands and Spain; and in Germany in particular there were rumblings of nationalism and more worryingly anti-Semitism.
There were many in Britain unaware of the mobilization of troops, the crumbling of old alliances and the creation of new as their concern was concentrated on South Africa, but increasingly over the last few years Britain had found itself becoming isolated, and it was this in particular that was disturbing William as he considered the implications. Then, too, there was great concern over the queen’s health: it was rumoured that she was failing.
Nora had noticed on re-joining the women’s group that there were some individuals among them who were more keen to promote the cause of women’s suffrage than to support charitable concerns such as helping the local poor with their soup kitchens or speaking to councillors in charge of rehousing on behalf of those who had lost their homes as the city was bulldozed and modernized.
She knew she was one of the lucky ones who had escaped poverty and destitution and so could empathize with women who had been less fortunate, but as for voting rights, it wasn’t something she had ever considered. What she had thought about before she met William was how to keep body and soul together; but now she was beginning to consider the importance of the subject as she heard of women who were kept in subjugation by their husbands and allowed no say in the control of their lives or those of their children, let alone the choice of who should be in power.
She sat in an easy chair across from William’s and asked his opinion on whether women should be given the vote. ‘The oddest thing ever is that we have a queen on the throne and yet her female subjects are not allowed a voice.’
‘I have heard that her opinion is not in favour of the suffragettes,’ he said, ‘but like all monarchs she has no choice in the matter, as they do not have a vote.’
‘It’s an unfair world,’ Nora complained, and William agreed with her that it probably was.
‘But you made choices, didn’t you?’ he said. ‘You worked to keep yourself and your child and,’ he added, ‘agreed to marry me when I might have turned out to be a terrible husband, for we hadn’t known each other very long.’
She shook her head. ‘Working wasn’t a choice,’ she said. ‘It was a necessity. And I suppose when I met you I knew in my heart that you were a very honourable man.’ She hesitated; was it now time to be completely honest? ‘There are many men who are not, and I had known some of them.’
‘Including the father of Oswald?’ he asked softly.
She gazed at him through soulful eyes. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Even so. William, I should tell you—’
‘No.’ He stopped her. ‘There’s no need.’
‘But there is. Especially now that we have a daughter of our own.’
‘We have a son too. Oswald is legally mine as much as he’s yours.’
‘But you don’t understand,’ she said weakly. ‘I lied to you. I wanted to be seen as respectable so I told everyone I met that I was a widow with a son.’
‘I know,’ he murmured.
‘I knew I wouldn’t get work or a room if I said I was unmarried with a child, so— Wh-what do you mean?’
He got up from his chair, and going over to her he took her hands and drew her to her feet. ‘I have always known. Since the day I went to arrange our wedding and you gave me your birth certificate as you professed you couldn’t find your marriage one.’ He smiled teasingly. ‘Milburn was your name before your so-called marriage. You forgot about that, didn’t you?’
She screwed her eyes up tight and opened them as he put his arms round her. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I did. So – so you’ve known all this time and you never said?’
He kissed the tip of her nose. ‘What was there to say? I had asked you and I wasn’t going to change my mind just because of a piece of paper. Besides …’ He hesitated. ‘I suppose in a way I thought I would be an absolute heel to back out when I guessed what you’d been through, bringing up a child on your own. I thought it showed great strength of character and determination on your part. Don’t cry,’ he begged as she began to sob.
‘I just wish I had had the strength to say something before,’ she wept. ‘But I was afraid to.’
‘I know,’ he said, and smiled over the top of her head as he saw the door slowly open. Oswald, who was home for the spring holiday, stood there with a look of disgust on his face as he saw them locked in an embrace and quickly closed the door again.