Ellie Pride

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Gideon’s head was aching and there was a sour taste in his mouth. Slowly, like a trickle of rancid milk, memories of the previous evening came back to him.

He had taken Nancy to the music hall, where they had both had too much to drink. They had then made their way back to his lodgings, but when they had got there, and Nancy had offered to come inside with him ‘to finish off the evening’, Gideon had suddenly sobered up and recognised that the last thing he wanted was to take her to bed.

He had tried to be tactful, but Nancy had a very straightforward attitude to life and she had immediately objected to being denied the end of the evening she had been anticipating. What had begun as a quiet conversation had quickly escalated into a very noisy argument, at least on Nancy’s part. Before too long she had been joined by some of the other mill girls, who had gleefully egged her on.

Gideon winced as he recalled their frank and bawdy comments about his refusal to ‘show her what he was made of’.

To make matters worse, some of the clients of the nearby whorehouse had objected to the noise and had come out into the street with their whores, whereupon a fight had begun between the two groups of women.

The mill girls, robust though they were in their attitude to sex, considered themselves very much a cut above the whores, who sold sex, and the opportunity to air long-standing offences and give vent to festering insults was not one either party had been readily prepared to relinquish. In the end it had taken the threat of sending for the police to break things up, and even then one of the whores had claimed triumphantly that they would have to get the local sergeant out of her bed first.

After everything had quietened down, Gideon had finally made it into his lodgings to be greeted by his stony-faced landlady, who had informed him grimly that she kept a clean and respectable house, thank you very much, and that if he did not mend his ways and his choice of company he would be looking for new accommodation…

Ellie’s mother was being buried today. Gideon blinked his gritty eyes at his clock. The service was to be at eleven o’clock. It was nearly nine thirty now.

Quickly he got out of bed, groaning as he felt the alcohol-induced pain thudding in his head. In the yard shared by all the houses, he sluiced himself down with cold water from the pump, gritting his teeth as its cold bite increased the fierce pounding of his hangover.

Upstairs in a neighbouring house, one of the mill girls stood and watched him admiringly. He was a fine-looking lad, that Gideon Walker. No wonder Nancy had warned the rest of them off him.

It was over. Her mother had gone to her rest. Ellie shook with the reaction she was still feeling to that moment of sickening dread when she had thrown her handful of earth down onto the shiny wood of the brass-bound coffin.

Now they were all to go back to Aunt Amelia’s where a funeral tea would be served, to fortify the mourners, and the will was to be read to those it concerned.

As they started to make their way back to the waiting carriages, Ellie was conscious of her Aunt Lavinia walking alongside her. Of all her mother’s sisters, Aunt Lavinia was the one Ellie knew the least – the one who had married the most successfully. Her husband was the senior partner in a firm of solicitors based in Liverpool, and they lived in a huge mansion in Hoylake.

Their house had its own separate coach house and stables, as well as a tennis court and a croquet lawn, and their neighbours were the wealthy shipowners who were clients of Josiah Parkes.

They had no children, a fact that Ellie had heard being spoken about in hushed tones by her mother and Aunt Gibson.

‘Ellie, you will ride back with your Aunt Lavinia,’ Amelia announced firmly, putting a restraining hand on Ellie’s arm as Ellie started to make to join her cousins.

Blank-eyed, Ellie did so. Her Aunt Lavinia had a soft plumpness that the other Barclay sisters lacked, and when she walked she seemed to gasp for breath slightly. She smelled of lavender water, just as Lydia had done. Ellie felt her eyes fill with hot tears.

Numbly Ellie headed for the carriage, and then froze. She had no idea just what had made her stop and turn round to look behind her, to where a group of non-family mourners were keeping a respectful distance as they said their final farewells. There at the back of the small group stood Gideon, his uncovered head bowed as he stood in silence, the wind ruffling his thick rain-slicked hair, the mourning clothes, which Ellie guessed he must have hired for the occasion, suspiciously tight across his chest.

Gideon! Ellie felt her heart leap inside her chest, her emotions churning in wild confusion. What was Gideon doing here after what she had said?

Ellie! Gideon felt his heart soar and then crash as his eyes recognised the truth his heart did not want to accept.

Across the rain-sodden space they looked at one another. Ellie’s face was set, her eyes cold as she focused on him and then dismissed him with a single blank look.

For one wild moment Gideon was tempted to cross the distance separating them, to take hold of her and shake the coldness from her, to demand that she return to being his warm, laughing, gentle Ellie and not this cold, haughty girl-woman who was looking through him as though he were too far below her for her to acknowledge him.

‘No!’ He wasn’t even aware that he had shouted his furious denial out loud until Robert Pride touched him on the shoulder.

Robert had aged dramatically since his wife’s death. Gone was the proud jauntiness of his step, his shoulders were stooped and his expression more apologetic than proud.

‘Gideon, lad!’ he exclaimed warmly. ‘’Tis good to see you here –’

‘I wanted to see Ellie,’ Gideon cut him short, his own emotions too sore to allow him the luxury of good manners. ‘I need to speak to her.’

The look of pity in Robert Pride’s eyes made Gideon’s stomach roll in despair.

‘Leave her be, lad,’ Robert told him wearily. ‘It’s for the best. I know that you and Ellie…’ He paused. ‘Things are different now, Gideon. You’re best forgetting about her.’

‘Forget about her? How the hell can I do that?’ Gideon exploded, but Robert was already walking away from him to talk with other mourners.

Desperately, Gideon looked past him to where Ellie had been, but she had gone.

He had come to the church in part to pay his respects to Lydia – no matter what she had thought of him or he of her, his parents and especially his mother had given him a lovingly strict upbringing – but, of course, he was here mainly so that he could see Ellie.

Well, he had seen her and she had seen him, even if she had refused to acknowledge his presence.

He knew that she had a stubborn strength about her and he admired her for it, but then he had not realised that that strength and that stubbornness were going to be turned against him, and against their love!

Lydia’s will was brief and straightforward.

To her sisters she left those mementoes she had brought into her marriage from the home she had shared with them: the silver dressing-table set she had been given by her grandmother; the pretty golden necklace that had been a confirmation present from her godmother; her personal books and small pieces of jewellery – apart from the rings Robert had given her.

Those, her engagement, wedding and eternity rings, were to be given to her daughters, her will stated – her wedding and eternity rings to Ellie, and her engagement ring to Connie.

Holding them in her cold, closed hand, Ellie fought fiercely to stem the jealousy she felt at knowing her mother had left the things that were most precious to her not to Connie and herself but to her sisters. The silver dressing-table set in particular had been a favourite of her mother’s, and Ellie could picture her now, using it, smoothing the heavy polished metal, for Lydia had allowed no one other than herself to clean it. It had been a family heirloom, given originally to her grandmother by her mother, and Ellie ached to be able to pick it up and touch it; to lift it to her face and breathe in any last traces of her mother’s scent that might lie hidden in it.

There were, however, letters for Ellie, Connie, John and for the new baby as well.

In Ellie’s, her mother told her how much she loved her and how much she hated having to leave her before she was fully grown up.

I have spoken already to my dearest sisters about my fears for you and for Connie, Ellie, and I have spoken to them too of my hopes and desires for you. They have assured me that they will do everything within their power to help you to achieve my hopes for you. You MUST be guided by them in all things, as you would be if they were me. Their words to you will be my words; their experience will guide you as mine would have done. You are to be obedient to them at all times, and in every way, and to remember that they are protecting your Barclay heritage.

When I disobeyed my mother to marry your father I believed I knew my own mind. I have loved your father, Ellie, and I honour him as a good man, but there have been many, many times when I have regretted my wilfulness, and envied my sisters – and never more than where you and your sister are concerned.

Your future now lies with your aunts, and I beg you, for my sake, to be guided always by them.

The plans and arrangements they will make for you have already been discussed with me, and if my worst fears come to be, and I do not survive the birth of my child, then you will read this letter in the knowledge that everything your aunts do for you is with my knowledge and approval. Always remember that I love you and that what I have done I have done in your best interests and out of my love for you.

May God bless you, my darling daughter, and may I rest in peace knowing that you will be dutiful and obedient to your aunts, my sisters.

I am your loving mother,

Lydia Barclay Pride

However her mother may have signed herself, the letter had been written as Lydia Barclay and not Lydia Pride, Ellie recognised bleakly.

People were starting to leave. Dutifully, Ellie went to say her goodbyes to them, gently guiding Connie with her.

Connie’s normally expressive face was blank, her clothes for once uncreased and unmarked, her agile body stiff and unyielding.

‘Ellie, what is to happen to us?’ she burst out in a frantic whisper. ‘In her letter to me, Mam says that I am to obey my aunt and be a good daughter to her, but I am not her daughter, am I? I am Father’s daughter.’