Edwin smiled lovingly. ‘You look very pensive all of a sudden. Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind about our trysts? It can’t be that you don’t love me any more.’
‘Of course I love yer,’ she exclaimed. ‘Edwin—’ Emma hesitated and swallowed. The words she knew must be said were lodged in her throat.
Edwin touched her shoulder fondly. ‘Well then, why are you hesitating about meeting me?’
‘Edwin, I’m going ter have a baby!’ she blurted out harshly, not knowing how to tell him more gently, no longer able to carry this worrisome burden alone.
As Emma spoke her eyes did not leave his face, and she clasped her hands together to stop them trembling. In that tortuous moment of silence that hung between them like a lead curtain Emma’s heart dropped. She was acutely aware of the stiffening of Edwin’s body, the imperceptible drawing away from her, the look of disbelief that wiped the smile off his face, the dawning horror that followed swiftly and settled there, a frozen mask that bespoke his shock.
‘Oh, my God!’ he cried, slumping back against the bench. He gaped at her, his face now pale and twitching. Edwin felt as if he had been dealt a violent and crippling blow in his stomach. He was utterly devastated. He vainly endeavoured to still the shaking sensation that seized him, but with little success. At last he managed to speak. ‘Emma, are you absolutely certain of this?’
She bit her lip, eyeing him, trying to assess his attitude. ‘Yes, Edwin, I am.’
‘Jesus bloody Christ!’ he cried, forgetting his manners in his anxiety. He gazed into space, a spasm working on his face. A smothering feeling enveloped him. He thought he couldn’t breathe. Eventually he turned and stared at her, his eyes wide with apprehension. ‘My father will kill me,’ he gasped, envisioning his father’s towering wrath.
Emma threw him a swift and knowing glance. ‘If yours doesn’t, mine will,’ she informed him bluntly, her voice low and hoarse.
‘What in God’s name are you going to do?’ he asked.
‘Don’t yer mean what are we going ter do, Edwin?’ This was asked mildly enough, but Emma was conscious of the alarm rising up into her already constricted throat. Not for one moment in the past few weeks had she anticipated such a reaction from him. She had known he would be disturbed and upset and worried at her news, just as she was herself. But she had not thought he would act as if this was her responsibility, and hers alone. It frightened her.
‘Yes, of course I mean we,’ he answered hastily. ‘Emma, are you really and truly certain? Couldn’t you just be – be – late?’
‘No, Edwin. I’m positive.’
Edwin was silent, his mind floundering, a thousand thoughts pounding in his head. He had never contemplated this eventuality in his entrancement with her beauty, and the flaring passion she aroused in him. What an imbecile he had been not to have considered such an inevitability, the most obvious natural consequence of their lovemaking.
Emma broke the silence. ‘Please, Edwin, talk ter me! Help me! I’ve been ever so worried while yer’ve been away, knowing about the baby, not knowing what ter do. I couldn’t tell anybody else. It’s been summat terrible for me, it really has, waiting for yer ter get back ter Fairley.’
Edwin racked his brains. Eventually he cleared his throat, somewhat nervously. His voice was shaky. ‘Look, Emma, I’ve heard there are doctors – doctors who take care of such matters, in the early stages of pregnancy, for a goodly sum of money. Maybe there would be one willing to do it. In Leeds or Bradford. Perhaps we can find one. I could sell my watch.’
Emma was flabbergasted. His words were like daggers plunging into her flesh. Their very cold-bloodedness was so shocking and repugnant to her she went cold all over. ‘Go ter some quack!’ she cried angrily and with increasing amazement, her eyes widening. ‘Some charlatan who’ll butcher me up with a knife and maybe kill me! Is that what yer suggesting, Edwin?’ Her eyes were now immensely cold and darkly green and watchful. She could hardly believe he had uttered those dreadful words.
‘But, Emma, I don’t know what else to suggest! This is an absolute disaster. A catastrophe. You can’t have the baby.’
Edwin continued to gaze at her in stupefaction, his mind in chaos. The decent thing to do would be to marry her. They could elope. To Gretna Green in Scotland. He had read about couples being married there. It was legal if you resided twenty-one days. He opened his mouth, about to say this, and then clamped it shut. But then what? The thought of his father’s fury paralysed him. Of course, his father wouldn’t kill him. He would do much worse. He would disown him. Cut him off with nothing. Edwin thought then of Cambridge, his future as a barrister. He couldn’t be saddled with a wife now, at his age, at this most crucial time of his life. His eyes roved over her. She was a beautiful girl. This morning her russet-brown hair was swept up and away from her face, plaits forming a circle on top of her shapely head like a crown. The oval face, paler than usual, was like gleaming porcelain, exquisite and refined. The widow’s peak protruding on to her wide brow, and those large emerald eyes lifted her beauty out of the ordinary. She was startling, there was no question about that. The right clothes … elocution lessons … an invented background. Such things were possible, and the proper tutoring could work miracles. Perhaps there was a way to solve this. No, there is not. It would never work, a small voice insisted at the back of his mind. He would be ruined. He could clearly evaluate his father’s reaction. He would be infuriated to a point of madness. She was a girl from the village. Edwin’s eyes rested on Emma and he thought of her with calculated objectivity, and for a split second her beauty dimmed. She was a servant, after all. The class differences between them were too enormous to be bridged.
And so Edwin swallowed hard and remained silent, biting back the words he had originally been ready to utter. And that was a mistake he would live to regret, for had he spoken up, claimed her as his own, braved his father and the world, Edwin’s life would have been so very different.
Emma now saw with unmistakable clarity the renunciation on his face, was bitterly aware of the repudiation in his eyes. She straightened her back and her head flew up sharply on her slender neck. It took all of her self-control to speak normally, for she was shaking and her anger, hurt, and disgust were living organisms in her heart. ‘I won’t go ter one of them doctors, and yer silence tells me that yer not prepared ter marry me, Edwin.’ She laughed lightly, but it was a cynical laugh. ‘It wouldn’t be proper, would it, Master Edwin? The gentry and the working class going so far as ter actually marry,’ she pointed out with her usual stringent perception, her voice icily biting.
Edwin flinched. He had the peculiar sensation that she had just read his mind, and he flushed deeply. ‘Emma, it’s not that. It’s not that I don’t love you. But we’re too young to marry,’ he equivocated. ‘I’m about to go to Cambridge. My father—’
‘Aye, I knows,’ she cut in, ‘he’ll kill yer.’ Her brilliant eyes narrowed as she spoke, resting on his face with great intensity.
Edwin recoiled, and he knew then that he would never forget that piercing stare which condemned him so ferociously and with such loathing. He would never be able to eradicate it from his mind.
‘Emma, I – I – I’m s-s-sorry,’ he stammered, becoming scarlet, ‘but it—’
She interrupted him again with stinging sharpness. ‘I shall have ter leave Fairley. I can’t stay here. I can’t answer for what me dad would do. He couldn’t stand the shame, for one thing, and he has a real violent temper.’
‘When will you go?’ he asked awkwardly, not meeting her eyes.
A look of total disdain slipped on to Emma’s face. He couldn’t wait for her to leave. That was most patently obvious to her. Her disillusionment was complete. ‘As soon as I can,’ she snapped.
Edwin