Love by the Lake Page 4

  “Not if he agrees to keep you, but we will have to ask him very nicely to take care of you. Has he any children of his own?”

  Simon shook his head.

  “No, Uncle James is not married.”

  “Now where exactly does he live?”

  Simon drew in his breath and she knew he was thinking.

  “In a castle by a big, big lake,” he said. “Papa used to swim in the lake when he was my age.”

  “Where is the big, big lake?”

  “Long, long way.”

  “Do you know its name?”

  “It’s a funny name – like an owl,” Simon replied.

  Lolita looked at him.

  “Do you think you mean Ullswater?”

  Simon smiled.

  “That’s right – Owlswater. Very big lake – and very big castle. Papa told me all about it.”

  Lolita felt it was such an extraordinary coincidence that her father’s family had lived near Ullswater in the beautiful Lake District in the County of Cumberland.

  She had vaguely thought of going there to try to find a cousin or distant relative who would help her in her present predicament. Yet, as she was sure that as none of them was at all well off, she did not wish to encroach on them. She had considered, however, that if she could stay with one of them for a little while, she could decide on what she could do to earn a living – perhaps teaching or looking after children.

  All these ideas which had passed through her mind were still distinct possibilities and now by an extraordinary chance this small boy wanted to go in the same direction.

  It was then, as she realised that the Hackney Carriage was coming to a standstill, another idea came to her.

  If her stepfather was looking for her he would be looking for a young woman on her own and if, as was likely, Simon’s cruel stepmother came looking for him, she would be looking for one small boy alone.

  So she said to Simon in a very low voice,

  “Listen Simon. Because you must hide from your stepmother, I am going to pretend you are my son. So remember, when you speak to me you must call me Mama.”

  “I want to hide from Step-mama and I want to find Uncle James.”

  “She may try to prevent you from going to him and therefore no one must tell her where you are, no one!”

  She emphasised her words so that he would understand.

  And then she added,

  “You are disguised and your name is now Bell and I am Mrs. Bell. Do you follow me?”

  She thought Simon nodded and next the door opened as the driver had climbed down from his box.

  “’Ere you are, ma’am,” he said, “and as they be friends o’ mine they’ll help the little boy where he’s ’urt himself.”

  “You are very kind.”

  She paid him what he asked for, giving him a tip she thought he would expect. She had learned in the past that it was a great mistake to over-tip anyone as later they remembered who had tipped them and she felt the driver was quite content with her gratitude.

  He strode in through the door of what was a small restaurant and shouted for the proprietor.

  “’Ere, Bill,” he called, “there’s a lady with a little boy who’s ’urt himself. I says as you’ll ’elp ’em.”

  An elderly man from behind the counter looked up. He did not seem very enthusiastic at what he was being asked to do until he saw Lolita and then as he realised she was ‘quality’ he was effusively polite.

  “Can I ’elp you, ma’am?” he enquired.

  “My son has hurt his hand and I would be very grateful if I could just wash the wound before I bandage it.”

  “’Course, ’course,” Bill agreed.

  He took them into a room where there was a sink and as it was too early for anyone to come in for luncheon, everything was clean and tidy.

  Lolita put Simon’s hand under the cold tap and while the water was running on the weals from the sharp whip, Bill produced a bandage.

  Lolita thanked him and once Simon’s hand was neatly bandaged, she asked if he could have something to drink, perhaps a ginger ale.

  Bill produced a bottle and they sat down at a table. He also gave them some chocolate biscuits and Simon ate them with relish.

  “What I would like to ask you,” said Lolita, “is if there is a livery stable nearby. My son and I need to travel to the country.”

  “That be an easy question to answer,” replied Bill. “There’s one just round the corner. It ain’t very large like those up West, but you’ll find him an honest man, and his ’orses are goin’ strong and they’ll carry you right enough.”

  “That is exactly what I want and thank you once again for being so kind.”

  Lolita paid him for the ginger ale and chocolate biscuits and he refused to take anything for the bandage.

  “It’s been a pleasure to ’ave you ’ere, ma’am,” he said, “and I ’opes you’ll come again if you’re passin’.”

  “We will certainly do so,” Lolita replied enthusiastically.

  She shook his hand as he took her to the door and pointed out the direction of the livery stables.

  When they reached the stables, Lolita thought it would be a great mistake to tell the proprietor exactly where they were going.

  She therefore told him that their destination was Nottingham which would take at least two days.

  “If you can get us halfway there tonight,” she said, “I am sure we can find another livery stable if you want your carriage returned.”

  “I’ll send you the whole way, ma’am,” said the proprietor, “if you can afford what it’ll cost.”

  Then he told her how much it would be and Lolita thought it seemed very little for the number of miles they had to travel.

  However she was not a particularly good judge as she had never had to pay the fees of hired carriages herself. They had always been paid for by her father and for the last two years, since her mother had married Ralph Piran, they had travelled in carriages owned by him.

  When Lolita and Simon set off in the Hackney Carriage, she liked the middle-aged man who was the driver and the horse was young, spirited and should not tire too quickly.

  The proprietor had advised them where they would be wise to stay the night, but Lolita wanted a small quiet village even though the inn might not be very comfortable.

  Finally she agreed to stay at a place which the driver said he knew, and that the inn, though small, was clean and respectable.

  As he made his recommendation, he glanced at Lolita and she recognised that he was thinking that she was too young and too pretty to be travelling alone, accompanied only by a small boy.

  She had waited until they had set off before she opened her handbag and took out her mother’s ring. She had wrapped it in a piece of tissue paper so that it would not be damaged and had placed it carefully at the very bottom of her bag.

  Now she slipped it on her finger and turned it round.

  When the three diamonds set in it could not be seen, it looked like an ordinary wedding ring.

  As they drove off Simon slipped his hand into hers.

  “This is so exciting, I hope our horse will go very, very fast.”

  “If he pulls us too fast at first,” Lolita had said, “he will get tired and we have a long way to go before we can stop for the night.”

  “If we go very fast, Step-mama will not catch us up!”

  That was logical, Lolita thought, and for that matter nor would her stepfather.

  Although he would not know until tonight that she was missing, it would be a mistake to underestimate his power or his determination.

  She was certain that he would be determined to fetch her back and would therefore set into action everything he possessed to get his own way.

  ‘I am sure,’ Lolita comforted herself, ‘that he will never imagine for a moment I am on my way to Ullswater or that I am accompanied by a small boy who is supposed to be my son!’

  To make sure there would be no mistakes,
she rehearsed Simon about their disguise.

  “I am hiding and you are hiding, Simon. We have to be very clever about it, otherwise I shall be taken back to the house from where I have run away and you will be taken back to your stepmother.”

  She knew by the quiver which shot through him that he was frightened at the very idea.

  “We have therefore to be intelligent enough not to make a mistake,” Lolita told him, “and I think if anyone asks your age you must say you are six years old.”

  She knew that she looked very young to have a child of Simon’s age and she might have been wiser to say he was her brother.

  But in that case, as she was a lady, she would be expected to travel accompanied by a chaperone, but if she was a married woman it was possible for her to be without one.

  When they stopped for luncheon, it was at a small inn in a very picturesque village after they had come through a number of larger villages.

  The driver had suggested they might like to stop earlier, but Lolita had refused.

  In one village there was a horse fair and in another there were signs of a large garden party taking place that afternoon in aid of a local hospital. The next village seemed empty with only the ducks on the pond on the village green to welcome them.

  The black and white inn was small but clean and was called the Queen’s Head.

  By this time both Lolita and Simon were hungry and they were provided with a cold luncheon of ham, tongue and a fresh salad from the inn’s garden.

  Simon ate every one of the strawberries which were brought for their second course, while Lolita enjoyed the local cheese.

  Then having washed and tidied themselves they set off again.

  Now Lolita had tried to make herself look a little older. She swept back her hair more severely from the side of her small pointed face and arranged it at the back in a way that was not so fashionable or, as she thought, so becoming.

  She could not alter her shining eyes or the perfection of her pink and white skin.

  If a stranger spoke to her she thought she would frown a little and look reserved and perhaps then they would think she was a responsible married woman rather than a young and excitable girl.

  She encouraged Simon to tell her more about his life.

  At the end of his story she could put together what she thought was a reliable picture of his family history. She had to invent some of the gaps, but she felt she had very likely guessed correctly.

  What she understood was that Simon’s father had been the Honourable Rupert Brook, but had married Simon’s mother with the disapproval of his grandfather.

  They had therefore left Cumberland where Rupert Brook had lived all his life and moved South.

  They made new friends and according to Simon were very happy. His father, who was a good rider, bought some young horses which he broke in and sold them for a great deal more than he had paid for them.

  Until two years ago when Simon was nearly five years old they had been living contentedly in a small country house in the County of Hertfordshire.

  Then unexpectedly Simon’s mother died of pneumonia in the winter when it had been very cold and as far as Lolita could understand they had not sent for a doctor as quickly as they should have done.

  Both her husband and son were broken-hearted and Rupert Brook felt after she was buried that he could not bear to live in the house where they had been so happy.

  Nor could he continue breaking in horses which had provided them with enough money to be comfortably off. He had therefore decided to move to London, where he had taken a small flat for himself and his son while he worked out what he should do.

  It was from here that Lolita had to piece together a great deal of what had occurred from the fragments Simon could give her.

  What she thought had happened was that Rupert Brook, who was handsome, young and charming, had been pursued by quite a number of beautiful young women and one in particular.

  But Simon had never liked her.

  She had pretended she loved him and had given him a number of expensive toys and then, if Simon could be believed, she had persuaded his father to marry her, although he still loved his mother.

  As she was exceedingly well off, Lolita thought it was perhaps the most sensible thing for him to do.

  Then just a year after they were married, Rupert had a fall when hunting with a very well known pack of hounds.

  He was jumping a fence and his horse rolled on him. It broke his spine and he died.

  His new wife was genuinely upset, but at the same time she had no wish to be hampered with her late husband’s son.

  Instead of making a fuss of Simon as she had before, she beat him because he annoyed her and found fault with everything he did.

  She also tried to get rid of him by writing to his Uncle James who had now inherited the family title. She asked him to take the boy, but the new Lord Seabrook was unmarried and continually travelling, so he replied that it would be best for Simon to stay with her.

  She was, according to the boy, furious when she received the letter and beat him unmercifully.

  “She hates me – she hates me,” Simon cried, “and she wants me to die – like Papa.”

  “You must try to forget about her,”

  Lolita attempted to calm him down. She could not bear him to be upset, so she kissed him and told him a story so that he would not think any more about his stepmother.

  Equally she could not help wondering, if her stepfather found her, what she could do about Simon. She knew that she could not abandon him to his stepmother as she was sure that what he had said of her hatred for him was true.

  Lolita’s conclusion was actually confirmed when they spent the first night in a quiet village at the inn recommended by the owner of the livery stable.

  The inn was a little larger than the one they had stopped at for their luncheon. Their two bedrooms were clean and communicated with each other and the meal they ate was plain but well cooked.

  When they went up to bed Lolita helped Simon undress. She had noticed during the evening that the shirt he was wearing was sticking to his back.

  When she helped him take it off she was horrified at what she saw.

  The weals from the whip crossed and recrossed his skin and quite a number of them were bleeding.

  She managed to obtain from the inn-keeper’s wife a soft cream, which she rubbed very gently onto Simon’s back.

  As her fingers went over the wounds she became aware that there were others which had already healed. He had not exaggerated when he had said that his stepmother continually beat him.

  How anyone could do anything so cruel to a small defenceless child, Lolita could not understand.

  She had already found Simon to be good-mannered and well-behaved. His own mother had brought him up well and his father, Lolita thought, had been a real gentleman.

  Even to think of a man who was like her own father made her remember how she was menaced by Murdock Tanner.

  Perhaps by this time her stepfather would have told him that she had disappeared and the resources of both these ambitious men would be expended on bringing her back.

  Later that night when she thought it over more calmly, she doubted if Murdock Tanner really wanted to marry her and additionally it was unlikely that her stepfather would really force her up the aisle, as he had threatened in anger.

  It might be advantageous to him where money was concerned for her to be married to such a very rich man, but it certainly would not advance his social ambitions.

  What he really wanted, she concluded, was for her to pander to Murdock’s interest in her and that she should flirt with him as an older woman would do and not resist his caresses.

  The mere idea of him kissing her made Lolita feel sick and she knew that however hard she tried to act the part her stepfather desired, it was impossible for her to even contemplate.

  She could not even bear the thought of Murdock even touching her with one finger.

&nbs
p; ‘I hate him, I hate him,’ she said to herself, ‘and if I have to starve in the gutter, I will not go back. Nothing will make me.’

  *

  The next morning having slept badly, Lolita was anxious to get away quickly. She wanted to put as many miles between herself and her stepfather as was possible.

  When they set off again it was a relief to find the horse was a spirited as it had been the previous day and the driver was just as good-tempered.

  Simon said that his back was feeling better and the inn-keeper’s wife was kind enough to allow Lolita to buy the pot of cream that had assuaged his wounds for a few pennies.

  When they set off it was a sunny morning with just a little freshness in the air and it was exciting to be driving through the twisting country lanes. The hedges were covered with honeysuckle while the fields were golden with buttercups.

  They covered about the same distance as the previous day.

  They enjoyed a good luncheon and stopped at a small posting inn at about six o’clock. It was like the one they had stayed in last night, but not so comfortable and the food was indifferent and only just edible.

  Both Simon and Lolita were glad when they could retire to bed.

  She was just drifting off to sleep when she heard Simon scream in the room next door and for a moment she thought she must have imagined it, but then as the sound came again, she jumped out of bed.

  Without stopping to put on her dressing-gown she opened the communicating door. She had carefully locked her outer door and Simon’s and now she thought someone must have intruded on him.

  Then as she reached his bed she could see him in the moonlight coming through the window.

  He was still asleep and dreaming.

  She put her arms round him and he clutched at her convulsively.

  “Save me – save me!” he cried. “Don’t let her beat me. Please – save me!”

  “You are quite safe, Simon,” Lolita told him gently,

  “Wake up, you are dreaming.”

  He opened his eyes.

  “Oh, it is – you. I thought it was – Step-mama.”

  “We have left her a long way behind,” Lolita assured him.

  Simon burst into tears.

  “I am frightened. I am so frightened. I thought she had caught up with me and if she does – she will beat me again.”