Amy bent over the crib, scrubbing brush in hand. She had bought it secondhand, just as she had promised, and was eradicating every trace of its previous occupant. Made from light oak, it would be perfect once she’d waxed and polished it. Upstairs, the smallest bedroom awaited its arrival. It would join the cupboard that Amy had painted white to match the prettily patterned yellow and white curtains and the cream rug.
The parlour also had a new rug, one that Amy had pegged out of an old blue coat of Bessie’s and a brown one of her own. The old couch kept company with a small table and an old bookcase Amy had refurbished, Jude grudgingly admitting that these new acquirements took the bare look off the place. Amy said that the shelves filled with books gave them their own little library and the table made it look more like a home fit for a new baby. With the purchase of every item, Jude saw his hopes and dreams slipping away.
*
Up at Intake Farm, Raffy was now more or less accepted as a permanent member of the family. In the months since Hadley’s death, the farm had teetered on the brink of bankruptcy so, for Bessie’s sake and his own security, Raffy toiled night and day. Chivvied by their mother, Hadley’s sons reluctantly worked alongside him.
Big, blond and blue-eyed, Samuel and Thomas were Hadley Elliot’s sons to the core in all but his work ethic, yet they knew the value of their inheritance and were covetous of the land. To this end they tolerated Raffy, grudgingly acknowledging his worth, and Raffy, to suit his own ends, turned his hand to any task without presuming any kind of authority or ownership. He left that to Bessie; she still held the purse strings.
It hadn’t taken long for Raffy to worm his way into Bessie’s bed, although neither of her sons was aware of this. Had they been, they most likely would have killed him. Bearing this in mind, every now and then and long after they were asleep, Raffy cautiously left his room behind the scullery and mounted the stairs to Bessie’s bedroom, leaving long before Samuel and Thomas woke. Bessie was a happy woman.
Each morning she counted her good fortune, her mirror telling her she looked younger than her years, no matter that she was somewhat plumper than the girl in the fairground almost thirty years before. She was the mistress of a fine farm and, to all intents and purposes, a respectable widow. Sure in the knowledge that she still captivated Raffy and confident he would never reveal the truth about Beatrice and Jude, Bessie buried her fears.
*
Raffy was in Barnborough to buy flour and dried fruit so that Bessie could bake her Christmas loaves. It being a chill November day threatening snow, she had declined to accompany him. Deep in thought, Raffy strolled along the street to the grocery. He had no objections to being an errand boy but, of late, Bessie’s domineering manner had begun to irk. He could pack his bags and leave, but winter was a bad time to go travelling and, furthermore, roaming the roads no longer held any fascination. Besides, he had a son and a daughter in this town, and by rights they should know he was their father. He saw no reason to persist with the secret now that Hadley Elliot was dead. It would be grand to have kin of his own, mused Raffy, and Jude was a son to be proud of. As for Beatrice, he couldn’t say. He didn’t know her.
The flour and fruit stowed in the trap, Raffy was about to head back to Intake Farm when who should he see but Jude, walking past the yard behind the Red Lion. He called out to him. Jude came into the yard, and at Raffy’s suggestion he joined him for a pint before returning home.
Inside the pub, Raffy deliberately chose seats in a secluded corner of the bar. He perched on a low stool, his eyes and face mysteriously alight. Jude took the stool opposite and sipped at his pint. Raffy made small talk and Jude, intrigued, responded by asking him about his past life. Raffy reeled off the names of numerous places he had been. Jude was fascinated to be in the company of a man who, amongst many other journeys, had seen dawn rise at Stonehenge, dug for coal in the Rhondda Valley and crossed the Clifton suspension bridge.
Raffy called a second pint, and over it he turned the conversation to Jude’s earlier days in Bird’s Well. Jude was shocked to the core when Raffy, gazing enigmatically at him said, ‘Henry and Jenny? Not your natural parents, be they?’
Jude listened, aghast, as Raffy told his story, doubting what he heard then utterly convinced when Raffy swept back the long, greasy curls dangling below his left ear to reveal his mark. Jude leapt up so quickly his glass smashed on the floor. Then he ran.
Amy was washing cabbage for the dinner when Jude burst into the kitchen, his face ashen. As he struggled to catch his breath, Amy dried her hands and hurried to his side. ‘What’s the matter?’ she cried, thinking something dreadful had occurred at the pit.
‘Him! Raffy!’ Jude cried. ‘I met him on my way home – stopped for a pint – good God – my father – Beattie’s…’ Incoherent, he rattled on, Amy trying to make sense of it until a loud knock at the door diverted her attention.
Before she could answer it, the door opened and Raffy stepped inside. ‘I be sorry for upsetting ye,’ he cried, reaching out to Jude.
Jude shook him off, shouting, ‘Go on, tell her what you told me.’
Then it was Amy’s turn to listen to Raffy’s story. Wide-eyed and trembling, she struggled with the detail, and when it came to Raffy admitting that he was Jude and Beatrice’s father she let out a howling wail. If Beatrice and Jude were Bessie and Raffy’s children, she had married her brother.
Then it was her turn to run, out of the house and up the street, the baby in her womb heavier with every step. Unable to run further, she flopped down on a low wall outside the Methodist church, and nauseated by the hideousness of what she had heard, she vomited onto the pavement. Jude found her there.
Amy stared up at him, the look in her eyes and the lines etched round her mouth bearing all the horrors of the world. ‘You’re my brother,’ she croaked. ‘I married my brother.’ Her shoulders sagged and she would have slipped from the wall had Jude not grabbed her in time.
He held her closely, afraid she had lost her sense of reason. ‘I’m not your brother, I’m your husband,’ he said gently.
Amy began to gabble, and as Jude listened, he began to chuckle. ‘Oh, my poor love, you’ve got it all wrong. Beatrice is Raffy and your mother’s daughter. I belong to Raffy and some other woman, not Bessie.’
*
Back in the house, sitting round the kitchen table over a strong cup of tea Raffy reiterated his tale, Amy feeling slightly foolish for the misunderstanding and hugely relieved to learn the truth. Even so, she found it hard to believe her mother’s duplicity. And now she understood why Bessie behaved so strangely towards Beattie and Jude. It felt like swallowing stones to take in so many truths all at one go.
‘Will you tell Beattie?’ she asked, the question no more than a whisper.
‘The girl have a right to know who her father be,’ Raffy said solemnly.
Apart from clarifying some of Raffy’s story, for Amy’s benefit, Jude had said very little. Now, Amy looked searchingly at him to see what effect the revelation had on him. Calmly, he returned her gaze, and almost as though he had read her mind he said, ‘Raffy might have provided the seed that gave me life, and if that’s the truth so be it, but it was Henry and Jenny Leas made me who I am and nobody can replace that.’
Shadows lengthened and still they talked, Jude asking a hundred questions and Raffy, in that practised way of his, supplying him with vague answers. Amy stood to light the lamps. As she stretched to reach the lamp on the mantelshelf water whooshed down her thighs, spattering the flagstones. She grabbed the edge of the mantelshelf, her heart lurching and her cheeks reddening that this should happen in front of Raffy. In all the recent confusion she had blamed her flight up the street for the nagging pains in her back and abdomen. Through clenched teeth she managed to say, ‘Jude, fetch May Jackson.’
Jude tore his attention from Raffy, and seeing Amy’s agonised expression and the puddle at her feet he ran for the midwife.
*
Dawn’s early light streaked the sky, probing fingers of watery winter sunlight slanting between the gaps in the bedroom curtains. May Jackson laid the baby in Amy’s outstretched arms, saying, ‘Well done, lass. You’ve got a bonny daughter.’
Amy sank back into the pillows, the baby against her breast, a rapturous feeling of release suffusing her body. She gazed into the puckered face of this perfect little stranger, her heart swelling with a love so powerful it made her catch her breath. She lay, almost in a trance as May completed her duties then, everything tidy, she smiled and nodded at the midwife. May marched out to the landing and at the head of the stairs shouted, ‘You can come up now. Your daughter’s waiting to meet you.’
Thudding feet sounded in the stairwell, Jude the first to arrive in the bedroom. He stood, gazing in awe at his wife and child. Up until now, he’d thought of the birth as far off. It seemed unthinkable that now his daughter was here in this room. Amy met his gaze, love and pride gleaming in her eyes, and Jude felt as though his heart would burst. He knelt beside the bed, one hand gently stroking Amy’s flushed cheek and the forefinger of the other carefully tracing his daughter’s face.
Raffy stepped closer, peering at the snuffling baby. ‘She’s yours all right, boyo,’ he said, glancing at Jude for confirmation that the tiny girl’s swarthy skin, limpid brown eyes and straggling black locks were similar to those of her father.
‘I never doubted she was, you old fool,’ Jude replied tersely, feeling annoyed that this man who had suddenly claimed to be his own father was there to share this momentous occasion. Jude had had time to do some deep thinking whilst they waited for his daughter to be born, and in that time he had wondered what kind of man could so easily hand over his child to a woman he barely knew then disappear for twenty years. Now, looking at his daughter asleep in her mother’s arms, he knew he would fight tooth and nail to keep her by his side. He also wondered how he could ever have regretted her conception. His eyes settled on the baby’s rosebud mouth. How could a college course compare with treasure such as this?
‘I’ll be off,’ May Jackson said, picking up her bag. ‘I’ll call back in a couple of hours. You’ve two lovely lasses there, Jude. Make sure you look after ’em.’ Jude assured her he would, and he meant it.
‘What be you calling her?’ asked Raffy.
‘I’d like Catherine, but Jude prefers Jennifer,’ Amy said.
‘You should call her Kezia,’ Raffy said, leaning forward to take closer look at the sleeping child.
‘What sort of a name is that?’ Amy asked.
‘Jude’s mother’s name, that’s what sort of name it be,’ Raffy replied tartly. ‘Child is the image of her.’
Jude scanned the tiny heart-shaped face the colour of cinnamon and cream. He saw, a short, straight nose and brown eyes the shape of almonds and above them a high forehead banded with ribbons of oily black hair. Had his mother looked like this?
Raffy nudged Jude. ‘The image of your mother, isn’t she so?’
Jude spun round to face him, his eyes glittering angrily. ‘How the devil would I know?’
‘I suppose not, boyo,’ Raffy said softly, ‘an’ I’m sorry for that.’
The last thing Amy wanted to do right now was referee a row between her husband and father-in-law, so she said, ‘It’s a pretty name. Different. I like it, Raffy. Thanks for telling us.’
‘Do you mean that, Amy?’ Jude’s expression had changed from belligerent to sad and thoughtful. ‘Would you really call her after my mother?’
Amy didn’t answer immediately. She had seen how disturbed he was to learn that Raffy was his father, and knew that his present anger stemmed from the shocking realisation of his true identity. She also knew that with Raffy now part of their lives it was up to her to build bridges and keep the peace, because the last thing she wanted was a dark Raffy-shaped cloud hanging over Jude’s head.
‘I think it’s a perfectly beautiful name,’ she said, genuinely liking the name and knowing she had done the right thing when she saw Jude’s smile. ‘How do you spell it, Raffy?’
‘K-E-Z-I-A,’ Raffy explicated.
*
Much to Amy and Jude’s surprise, Beattie accepted Raffy as her father in much the same way as she had accepted the callous treatment doled out by Bessie and Samuel when she was younger.
‘I always knew I wasn’t an Elliot,’ she said, shrugging carelessly and grimacing when Jude told her he was her half-brother. ‘An’ I don’t just mean because I don’t look like them – it was the way that bitch looked at me. I knew from no age that the miserable cow had something against me.’
Amy cringed when Beattie referred to their mother in such ugly terms but she didn’t condemn them – as far as Beattie was concerned, they were true. What she couldn’t understand was Bessie’s acceptance of Raffy. There he was, living and working alongside her mother, Bessie forever praising his loyalty to her whenever Amy and Jude paid their weekly visits. Later, when she mentioned this to Jude he replied, ‘She needs Raffy more than he needs her. Without him Intake Farm would go to the dogs and she knows that. She’s as cunning as a fox is your mother, not that I hold it against her. When she gave me to Henry and Jenny, she did me a favour.’
‘Will you tell her that you know Raffy’s your father?’ Amy asked Jude and Beattie.
Beattie snorted. ‘I’ll not be telling her. I haven’t spoken to her since that carry-on at your wedding, and I don’t care if I never speak to her again.’ She tossed her head dismissively.
‘Aye, what difference does it make to Beattie who her father is?’ said Bert. ‘She’s a grown woman wi’ a family of her own. She doesn’t need anybody but us.’ Bert lifted Kezia from her pram as he spoke, cradling her with such consummate ease that Jude, still nervous of the precious little bundle that was his daughter, felt a twinge of jealousy coupled with guilt. He hadn’t wanted Kezia but now she was more precious than anything he could imagine.
‘I never did need Bessie bloody Elliot an’ I’ve managed this far without Raffy,’ Beattie sneered. She glanced at Jude. ‘You can tell her if you want.’
Jude shrugged. ‘I think we’ll let Raffy tell her,’ he said, grinning as he added, ‘although I don’t think she’ll be pleased to hear it.’
Amy was inclined to agree.
Visits to Intake Farm became something of a trial, Amy seeing her mother in a new light, and often finding it difficult to keep the secret. Whilst she had always been aware of her mother’s cruelty towards Beattie, she still didn’t understand why. Bessie plainly adored Raffy, anyone could see that, so why had she treated his daughter so abysmally? Guilt, she supposed for having deceived Hadley. And as for giving Jude away then pretending she didn’t know who he was, Amy didn’t know what to think. Fortunately, with Kezia the centre of attention on these occasions, Amy was sufficiently distracted and Bessie none the wiser that her secrets were secret no more.