Taking Heart - Rowena Summers

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One

As the family gathered in the sitting-room of the tall Bristol house that Sunday afternoon, Quentin Caldwell looked at his three daughters with immense satisfaction and pride. There were none who could touch them for beauty as well as brains – and that was rare enough. Women were not supposed to have any intelligence at all, or if they did, they were not supposed to show it. He prided himself that they got the brains from himself, while the looks were all down to his beautiful wife.

At the thought, his composure slipped a little. Frances was so frail and delicate now, her smile alarmingly vacant as she quietly hummed a ditty from the far-off days when she had danced on the stage in front of royalty. Quentin knew she was still there in her dreams.

Such royalty, too, he mused. So many changes, in so short a time. The sad death of the old king had plunged the country into mourning, followed by excitement over whether the dashing Prince of Wales would be crowned Edward the Seventh, or give way to his passion for Mrs Simpson. And then there had been the uproar and scandal when he abdicated and the new and hesitant George the Sixth had been crowned.

Such momentous matters of state – and the wild speculation surrounding them – could put the modest affairs of people like themselves into a different perspective. But only temporarily. Only until whole livelihoods were turned upside-down, and someone had the unpleasant task of relaying the news to his family as gently as possible. And to Quentin the family had always meant everything.

“Why so gloomy, Father?” his eldest and best-beloved daughter Imogen asked him with a smile. “It’s such a lovely day; tell us what’s so important so that we can all go out and enjoy it.”

“I wanted Baz to be here first,” Quentin said with a frown. “The boy has no sense of time.”

“You won’t tear him away from his old boats on a day like this,” eighteen-year-old Elsie chipped in. “He’ll happily spend all his spare time chatting with the ferrymen on the river, and nothing’s going to change that.”

Imogen hoped Elsie’s words wouldn’t upset their father. His shop was his pride, and despite having three vivacious daughters he hoped and expected that his son Baz would eventually take it over and carry on the family tradition. But Imogen was all too well aware that at nearly fifteen, and with schooldays behind him, Baz had definite ideas of his own. The lure of the fast-flowing river Avon and the old salts, who passed on tales of adventure that went back into history, had captured his imagination far more than the idea of working in a clothing and haberdashery shop. They all knew it, even if their father refused to acknowledge it.

“Anyway,” Daisy said, precocious at sixteen, and tossing back the russet curls that were her current vanity, “whatever the news is, it can’t be anything too terrible!”

Her father said nothing.

Imogen felt a sharp stab of fear and knew the truth of the old saying of a goose walking over her grave. She was more perceptive than her sisters and, seeing her mother drifting off into a world of her own as she gazed unseeingly out of the window as if to shut out everything else, she knew that something was terribly wrong.

It wasn’t her mother, was it…? But something was going to affect them all, and Imogen felt the strongest instinct to put her arms around all of them and protect them from whatever it was.

As the door burst open, she turned with a feeling of relief as her strapping young brother breezed into the room. He was closely followed by five-year-old Teddy, inevitably still trailing his blanket behind him.

Teddy’s traumatic birth had caused the mental and physical affliction that had gradually turned their mother into the frail creature she was now. To his credit, their father had never blamed the boy, but nor did he give him the attention he deserved, with the result that Imogen and her sisters had initially lavished far more affection on Teddy than was good for him, and Quentin told them more than once that they were in danger of turning the child into a monster.

“So you’ve decided to join us, have you?” Quentin said to Baz now.

The fact that he spoke so mildly and didn’t censure him added to Imogen’s sense of impending disaster. She couldn’t shake it off. Moments before, it seemed, the midsummer day had been so blue and sunny. It still was, and yet to her it was as if a big dark cloud had obscured the sun, though she couldn’t say why.

“Take the child to the nursery, Imogen,” her father went on, before Baz could make any sparky reply. “No, wait,” he added, as Frances’s incessant humming grew louder. “Your mother had better go too. It’s time for her nap, anyway. Ring for Miss Lindsey to see to them both.”

Imogen pressed the bell at once, thinking it heartbreaking that her once so-beautiful mother should be reduced to the status of a child with needs as simple as Teddy’s. But she knew it was true. When the doctor had stated plainly and bluntly that Frances’s mental state was declining rapidly into some kind of dreamland, the nurse-companion had become very necessary for both of them.

More than any of the others, Imogen remembered her mother as she had once been, enchanting them with her dancing at Christmas time and on birthdays, and entertaining them at the piano in the sweet voice that Daisy had inherited. Frances was softly singing a half-remembered song from those lost days now, but the mumbling words were no more than a parody of the lyrics she had once known so well.

Quentin swiftly crossed to his wife and drew her away from the window.

“It’s time to stop that now, Frances,” he said, his voice more husky than before.

“Stop what, my dear?”

He squeezed her hand before raising it to his lips. It was an old-fashioned, loving gesture that tugged at Imogen’s heart, and from the way her sisters averted their eyes, she knew they felt it too.

“Your singing is purer than a nightingale’s, my love,” Quentin went on gently. “But perhaps you could treat us to it another time.”

She nodded happily, and crossed her small delicate hands together, as demure as a nun. She was so thin now, her limbs so brittle that they almost seemed in danger of breaking if anyone hugged her too tightly. It was a relief when the nurse-companion came to take her and the complaining Teddy away.

“Well, thank goodness he’s gone,” Baz said feelingly. “He clings to me like glue lately.”

“That’s because you’re his hero,” Daisy said with a giggle. “You should be flattered, brother dear!”

“Well, I’m not,” Baz retorted. “I don’t care to be seen with an infant tagging along at my heels all the time. My friends will think I’m a milksop.”

“Seeing that most of your friends are those burly riverside fellows, and that you can keep up with them with your banter and your fists from all I hear, I doubt that there’s any danger of that,” his father said crisply. “But now that we’re all here, it’s time to get down to business. I wanted you all here together for a very special reason.”

He looked round at them again, knowing he was about to shatter their world, and thinking that he would give anything he owned to spare them what was to come.

His lovely girls were like three beautiful butterflies in their summer frocks, their complexions as fresh and clear as their mother’s ever had been, the three pairs of doe-soft brown eyes looking at him with expectancy and curiosity. Especially Imogen, his Immy. He knew she must have a shrewd idea that they weren’t meeting just to spend a Sunday afternoon together.

They were all growing up so fast. Even Baz was almost a man – and showed such assurance, he had to admit. The boy was lounging against the window now, his attention still drawn to far below the crowded hillside street where they lived, across the great seafaring city of Bristol, to the river whose whiff could be sensed even up here. And no matter how tainted or rank it was, it still seemed as pure as the finest wine to his son.

“Please come and sit down, Baz,” he said abruptly. “I need everyone’s full attention.”

Baz flopped into an armchair, his thoughts diverted from how soon he could broach the subject of working for one of the ferrymen instead of continuing behind the shop counter, which in his opinion was no occupation for a young man. Let the girls do it, he thought loftily. They seemed to enjoy it well enough, especially when any of the young men of the town brought their mamas in to browse for their fripperies.

Daisy wasn’t averse to flirting with them, flashing her big eyes at them and pushing out her small bosom as far as it would go. Baz sniggered to himself, feeling a tug in his loins at the thought. Not with regard to his sister, of course, but remembering some of the tales the sailors told him about the women in every port, and the games they got up to.

Elsie wasn’t interested in flirting, as far as he knew, though you never knew much about what Elsie was thinking. And Immy was already secretly courting a young man. He knew, even if no one else did.

He’d followed them one day and seen how Morgan Raine had pushed his laughing sister down into the hollow on the grassy hill above their street and covered her mouth with kisses. She hadn’t objected either, and he doubted that their father would be pleased to know of it. It was a little piece of information Baz was keeping up his sleeve in case he should ever need it.

“Are you actually with us, Baz?” he heard his father say more sharply, and he pulled his thoughts back to the sitting-room where everyone was looking at him now. He felt his face redden, thankful that they couldn’t see into his mind.

“I’m sorry, Father. I’m all yours,” he said quickly.

Daisy giggled, and he glared at her. But some of Immy’s anxiety was starting to transmit to all of them now, and she glared back at him.

Their father cleared his throat, picked up a pile of papers from a side table and shuffled them.

“I’ve had several lengthy discussions with our accountant, my dears. I won’t bother you with all the details, but since Immy has been dealing with the business side of the shop lately, she can go through the figures later and see that what I’m about to tell you cannot be changed.”

“Why should Immy understand things any better than the rest of us?” Baz said at once.

“Because you’ve never shown the slightest interest in figures, and it’s a little late to start now.”

Baz’s face reddened still more, even though he knew the slight was true. He was a dunce when it came to figures; his skills were more practical.

“Listen to what Father has to say, Baz.” His oldest sister turned on him. “What do you do to earn your keep, anyway? You’re always down at the river—”

“I don’t have to do anything to earn my keep yet!” Baz whipped back. “That’s what fathers are for!”

As Elsie gasped and Daisy’s hands flew to her mouth, their normally tolerant father lunged at him.

“You insufferable young prig! You’ll be eating those words before this meeting’s finished.”

“If it ever gets started,” Baz muttered, crimson now, and knowing he’d gone too far.

“Then let me start it at once by telling you that you will very soon have to think about earning your keep, my boy, because we are in serious financial trouble.”

“What!” Imogen gasped. “But we can’t be.”

“Daddy, that can’t be true,” Elsie said uneasily. “The shop has always done good business – and still does, surely.”

“Caldwell’s Supplies – or ‘the shop’, as you all persist in calling it – will not continue to do the business that will keep us all in the same standard of living we’ve always enjoyed for much longer.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” Daisy said, nervous now as the nightmare prospect of having to be a penny-pincher like the people who lived in hovels along the riverside suddenly dawned on her.

“Well, I don’t see how there can be any problem,” Baz put in, determined to show that he was sufficiently involved in the business to know what was what. “There’s never a shortage of customers and we’ve always been on good terms with our regulars, so I don’t see—”

“That’s the trouble. You never see what’s not right beneath your nose,” Quentin retorted. “If it doesn’t smell of fish, or have two oars and a few fathoms of water beneath it, you don’t want to know, do you?”

“Well, I know it suits the girls, but I never wanted to stand behind a shop counter for the rest of my life,” Baz retorted, too wound up now to mind what he was saying. “Any ignorant female could do that!”

“Well, thank you!” Daisy said indignantly. “You’ve got a nerve, Baz Caldwell. I’d say any idiot could row a boat and ferry a few paying passengers from one side of the river to the other. Where’s the skill in that?”

“Will you please calm down?” Quentin begged as their voices rose. “We’re not going to get anywhere if we all shout at one another. I want no squabbling, and I need to tell you what’s to be done.”

“Is it all cut and dried then, Father?” Imogen asked.

“There was no choice,” he answered, his voice as flat as if someone had stamped on it.

In the small silence that followed, Elsie, normally the quietest of them all, spoke more assertively than usual.

“Won’t you please tell us what’s happened, Daddy? Nobody’s fatally ill, or going to die, are they?”

They all looked at him as her words fell away, their thoughts immediately flying to their mother. As if he knew at once where their anxieties would lie, he shook his head.

“Nobody’s ill or going to die, my loves,” he said more gently. “But we’re going to have to make a change in our circumstances.”

“But why?” Elsie persisted, for once taking charge of the questioning, since the others seemed to have been temporarily silenced. “What’s happened?”

“What’s happened – is Preston’s Emporium.”

As they stared at him, he gave a resigned sigh. And to Imogen’s eyes, he seemed to shrink physically from the larger-than-life figure they all knew.

“You’ll all have heard of the name,” he said at last.

“Of course,” said Immy. “It’s been mentioned enough in the retail circular. Its owners seem to have bought up half the north, if you believe their boastfulness.”

“Believe it, darling,” Quentin said heavily.

“You’re not saying they want to buy out our lease, are you, Father?” Imogen asked quickly, when no one else seemed willing to put the thought into words.

“They buy out whatever and wherever they want to, apparently. And now they’re coming south to build on their little empire.”

“But they’re a northern company,” Baz burst out, wanting to prove that he knew at least something about the retail trade. “They’ve never opened shops in the south before, have they? It must be a mistake.”

“It’s no mistake. We’re only leaseholders of the property, and Preston’s are intending to buy out the entire row of shops and turn it into another Emporium, which will establish them in Bristol.”

“Well, why can’t we just open another shop somewhere else?” Daisy said at once.

Quentin chewed his lip. “I’m afraid that’s not possible, my love. It pains me to have to tell my children of our financial situation, but in recent years we’ve had to take far more out of the business than has been coming in. And then there were the riots last year, when we had to replace all the broken windows and the shop front and restock after the looting.”

Immy guessed where the other expenses were coming from. Their mother’s medical bills were heavy, and so was the salary for the nurse-companion who looked after her and Teddy. She ached that her father was obliged to explain all this to them.

“What does the landlord have to say about it?”

“A verbal apology, followed by a letter of explanation,” her father said, suddenly bitter. “But since he’ll make a killing from Preston’s, I suppose you can’t blame him.”

“Well, I think it stinks,” Baz said passionately.

“Do you, Baz?” his father queried with the glimmer of a smile. “That’s the most encouraging thing I’ve heard you say yet about Caldwell’s Supplies.”

“It won’t be that any longer, will it?” Elsie said sadly. “We won’t be Caldwell’s Supplies any longer, will we? It will be Preston’s. Will we have to work for them now?”

“Well, I won’t,” Baz raged.

“None of us will,” Quentin said carefully. “But I’m afraid you haven’t heard the worst of it yet. We have been living on credit for some time, and there are simply too many debts for us to continue living in this house.”

“What!”

He couldn’t have said which of his children spoke first, since the sound seemed to be a collective cry that tore at his heart. He was a proud man who had always provided for his family, and never had he felt such a failure as he did at that moment.

Immy’s throat was tight, but she knew she spoke for all of them. “Father, you can’t mean it. It will break Mother’s heart if we have to leave here.”

“There are other houses, my dear. Other parts of the world that are just as beautiful as Bristol. Look how your Aunt Rose and Uncle Bertie have settled in Weston-super-Mare. You’ve all enjoyed visiting them at the seaside.”

“You’re not suggesting we go and live in Weston-super-Mare, are you?” Baz said at once. “I won’t go, anyway.”

“I’m not suggesting it,” Quentin reassured him. “I’m merely pointing out that a house is just a house. It’s the people inside it who make it a home.”

“But there’s no place where Mother will feel as comfortable as she does under Doctor Wolfe’s care,” Elsie pointed out, her voice catching.

Daisy went to her father and put her arms around him, pleading with him. “Daddy, please don’t say we have to leave here. I couldn’t bear it.”

“You’ll find young men to flirt with wherever you go, ninny,” Baz said, lashing out in his bewilderment.

Daisy ignored him, but Immy too felt her heart sink. Leaving Bristol would mean leaving Morgan Raine, and she was still only on the brink of love and learning what it meant to feel like a grown-up woman from the more experienced Morgan.

She wouldn’t have known what to expect if she hadn’t discovered the slim booklet inside a brown envelope in Baz’s bedroom one day recently, detailing the kind of intimate information best kept out of childish heads. He had sworn it had been loaned to him by a boy from his old school, and she had demanded he give it back at once.

Before she’d confronted Baz, however, she had taken a sneaking look through the pages herself and been astonished and embarrassed at what she had learned, since sex education didn’t enter the Caldwell household.

Her father would probably deny that physical intimacy had ever taken place between himself and his wife, Imogen thought, trying to diffuse her heightened senses with some cynical amusement. As if all the children had been virgin births. She immediately felt her heartbeat quicken uneasily at the unconscious blasphemy of such a thought. But it was true that the frank details of how love could be expressed between a man and a woman was simply something she could never have asked her mother about, even when Frances had been sensible enough to answer them.

So Imogen had been left as ignorant as Baz and the rest of them, until Morgan Raine had begun to enlighten her about what their vicar would undoubtedly call the sins of the flesh – which didn’t seem at all sinful to Imogen and were deliciously intoxicating to the senses.

As the memories threatened to make her head go dizzy, she forced her mind back to the present, and what was happening here in this room today.

What Elsie had said was true. Her mother relied heavily on the family doctor for her welfare. She trusted him, and a less caring physician would have suggested long ago that Frances Caldwell’s mind was wandering so rapidly that she would be better off with specialist care in an institution.

None of them dared say it, of course. But they must all realise now that whatever debts had been incurred during recent months, much of it must be due to the medical bills, and to Miss Lindsey’s exorbitant salary, as the nurse-companion their father insisted that their mother needed.

“Father, if the worst comes to the worst—” Imogen began, hardly knowing what she intended to say, but knowing she had to say something to take away the greyness of his face.

“It’s already here, my love.”

But Imogen was nothing if not practical and quick-thinking. If a thing could not be saved, then you had to think of something else to take its place. A compromise that was half as good, or even better.

The shock of losing the business seemed inevitable and was a trauma they would all have to deal with, but it was receding a little in her mind now and being taken over by her reaction to her father’s decision about the house.

“I agree with Elsie and Daisy that Mother will hate having to leave here, and it’s surely the last thing we want. There’s a way out of that, if you would only consider it.”

“If you’re a miracle worker, my dear, then let’s hear it,” he said without any conviction.

“Why couldn’t we take in paying guests? It’s a perfectly respectable situation, and the house is large enough.”

The reaction was instant. “Lodgers, you mean? Have strangers living in the house, and have to share the bathroom and your mother’s kitchen with them, and finding them underfoot every time we turned around? Your mother would hate it, and I certainly won’t have strangers treating her like an – an – imbecile, because of her odd ways!”

He suddenly choked, and she was the one now to put her arms around him and hug him.

“Daddy, please don’t dismiss it out of hand,” she said quietly. “This part of Bristol is familiar to Mother, and it’s about the only thing that is now. Sometimes she seems hardly aware of us these days, and she behaves towards us as if we’re the strangers.”

She knew he didn’t like what he was hearing, but she plunged on. “As for her kitchen – well, I know you like to think that on Cook’s afternoon off Mother does a little baking herself, but Miss Lindsey can’t be her eyes and ears all the time, and one of these days I think Mother will either gas herself or set the house on fire!”

She spoke recklessly, but she should have known his response to any censure of his adored wife. He shook her off, his eyes flashing angrily – but before he could say anything Baz had put in his spoke.

“It’s not such a bad idea, Father. You’d need to know the people had good pedigrees, of course, but I daresay Immy would see to that, since she’s so good at organising.”

“Of course I would,” Imogen replied, not rising to his bait. She was just thankful to have an ally, however unlikely – and however much Baz was acting in his own interest, of course, she added silently. Baz wouldn’t want to move too far away from his beloved river.

“We’d have to interview them to see that they had impeccable references,” she went on, improvising quickly. “They would be elderly ladies or gentlemen with means, or respectable couples, or even theatrical people from the Old Vic. I’m sure that would please Mother. It would make her feel that she still had a toe in the door of her old life.”

She held her breath as her words sank into her father’s brain – and her own. The idea had quickly taken hold of her, and she couldn’t see anything wrong with it. Sometimes the best ideas were the ones that came spontaneously. Her mother used to say it was as if fate was giving you a little prod in the right direction, and like Frances, Imogen was a great believer in fate.

As for the shop…well, they all knew that the shop was the fulfilment of their father’s ambition, not theirs. Baz wanted to be out of it altogether, and she suspected Daisy had always had secret hankerings to follow a stage career. There were always auditions being held at the Hippodrome and the Old Vic, and who knew where her pretty sister might go if she got the chance?

Elsie was clever at hat-making and took orders from many of the well-to-do ladies who frequented the shop. She could surely pursue that idea. Then there was herself… What was for her? What did she really want out of life?

She felt a sudden small thrill of excitement in her veins. Her young man, Morgan, worked in the print shop of a local newspaper: and perhaps she too could find some kind of work to do with journalism. It must be exciting to interview people, to attend dramatic events and report back to the newspaper, and to see your name in print.

More realistically, she knew that was most unlikely to happen. Young ladies didn’t usually become proper journalists – but she had learned shorthand in order to take down customers’ orders speedily, and she could type on her father’s old black typewriter, so perhaps she could start off in a lowly department and work her way up. Maybe.

“This needs a good deal of thinking about.”

She heard her father speak as if from a great distance, and she realised she had been totally wrapped up in her own thoughts for the last few minutes, dreaming of an ambition she’d never known she possessed. Until now. Until the chance had come to break out from a family business and follow dreams of her own.

Guilt immediately flooded through her mind. How could she be so ungrateful, when their father had provided a loving home and a comfortable living for all of them – until now? But until now, none of them had even thought of breaking away. Except Baz, of course – and she had no real idea of what her sisters might be thinking, come to that.

She wouldn’t know, until they left the room and had a chance to talk about it among themselves.

“Perhaps we all need to go away and think about things,” she said helpfully.

To her surprise, her father was nodding thoughtfully, looking a mite less harassed than before. Bringing bad news out into the open always helped. It was a trouble shared, and all that rot, Immy thought. Even if you didn’t always want to have to share it…

“If I’m to take this scheme of yours seriously, Immy,” he said slowly, “there are a few other things to consider. In normal circumstances I wouldn’t dream of dispensing with your mother’s companion. But there’ll be no need to keep her on when the shop goes, because none of you will be working there. Your younger sisters can help with the household chores, and you can take over Miss Lindsey’s duties—”

Imogen gave a loud cry as all her fleeting, half-formed dreams of independence melted away in an instant.

“You could also teach Teddy his letters and numbers until he goes to school,” her father went on blandly.

“Father, you can’t mean that,” she gasped. “I’ll be little more than a housemaid!”

“And so will we,” Daisy cried. “How will we ever meet young men, if we’re stuck indoors all day with old people and boring lodgers?”

“Is that all you think of caring for your mother?”

“I didn’t mean Mother,” Daisy said, scarlet-faced. “I meant the strangers Immy wants to fill the house with!”

“You were all for it just now,” Imogen snapped.

“Well, I’m not anymore,” Daisy sulked.

“And neither am I,” said Elsie.

Baz snorted. “Well, I can’t see anything wrong with it.”

“You wouldn’t!” Daisy rounded on him, all spiky curls and bristling temper. “You won’t be here all day. You’ll be out on your precious ferry-boats with those dreadful men you call your friends, all smelling of fish and the river—”

They suddenly realised that their father was laughing softly as the four of them wrangled.

“Daisy, my love, you do my heart good. You’re such a terrible snob, and no one will ever get the better of you!”

“All the same, Father,” Immy said quickly, deciding to leave the uncertain question of her own future for the moment, “I think you’re wrong to think about getting rid of Miss Lindsey. Mother does need professional help. Sometimes she wanders out of the house alone when Miss Lindsey’s taking her nap, and we’ve had to search for her to bring her back.”

His mood changed like quicksilver.

“What? Why haven’t I been told this before? That incompetent woman must be dismissed, and without references.”

“She’s not incompetent. She’s just exhausted from the worry of trying to keep Mother safe,” Immy told him.

“Well, she obviously hasn’t succeeded if she lets her go wandering about the city,” he snapped.

He swallowed convulsively. The house wasn’t too far from the river, and the thought of where Frances might end up was suddenly all too graphic in his mind.

But he was determined not to give way to an emotional breakdown in front of his children. He waved them away and told them to leave him to think.

“And you might all do a deal of thinking as well,” he added. “We all have to make sacrifices in this world, and it’s never too early for you to discover it. Life has been easy for you until now, but only a fool or an optimist believes it will always be so.”