A Fallen Woman. Nancy Carson

a child.’

      ‘Yes, her second…But whose child? Not yours.’

      ‘Oh? Who else’s could it have been?’ He reached for his necktie, also hanging on the bedrail.

      Haughtily, Maude shook her mane of mousy hair. Here was the perfect opportunity to really make him see. ‘Benjamin,’ she began, leaning forward and pronouncing his name with charged emotion, ‘in the first place, your beautiful wife left you for another man, and she came back when that man spurned her just as soon as he knew she was carrying his child. Either he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, have anything more to do with her. So she came back to you. It’s the easiest thing in the world for a woman to dupe her husband into believing the child she’s carrying is his. She did that to you, and you fell for it good and proper.’

      ‘You don’t know it for a fact, Maude,’ he replied defensively. The notion that somebody might have made a cuckold of him he dismissed, for he considered himself too smart to be duped by a mere woman, however much she might be admired and desired by other men. So he tried to convince himself that Aurelia could not have been unfaithful, that it was not in her nature to be unfaithful. Yet he tried to recall the times he might have coupled with her, rare as they were, during the time when she must have conceived.

      ‘You don’t have to be Sir Isaac Newton to work it out, Benjamin,’ Maude went on. ‘I know what women are capable of, even if you don’t. Whenever you went away on business, she’d be off as well, flying her kite somewhere with somebody else. Some nights she didn’t even come back home.’

      ‘Hearsay, Maude. That’s only what Mary, that damned unreliable slut of a maid we used to have, told you. She was a mischievous little bitch with an axe to grind, and the biggest liar in Christendom to boot…’

      ‘I lived in that house as well, Benjamin, remember. I was nanny to your son, almost from the moment he was born. I knew what was going on.’

      He paused, pondering again the strength of the allegations, and the conviction with which Maude delivered them. ‘If Aurelia had been unfaithful I’d have known,’ he said with dwindling certainty. ‘She’s a fine-looking young woman, so it ain’t surprising men fancy her, but who on earth could she have been carrying on with?’

      ‘I would have thought that obvious.’

      ‘Well, it ain’t obvious to me. Pray, enlighten me.’

      ‘Clarence Froggatt, who else? That nincompoop whose wedding you’re going to…She was engaged to him once, you told me so yourself…’

      ‘You think she was seeing Clarence Froggatt behind my back?’

      ‘Yes, for ages.’

      ‘Never.’

      ‘Oh, I’m sure of it.’

      Benjamin pondered the suggestion a second or two more. ‘But it doesn’t add up,’ he said eventually. ‘He would hardly be marrying that girl Harriet Meese. I mean to say, compared to Aurelia she’s a gargoyle. God must’ve given her the plainest face he could find, and then hit it with a shovel. So why would he settle for a plain Jane if he could have a pretty one? It ain’t in a man’s nature. Aurelia is a good-looking young woman, even you have to admit that.’

      ‘But maybe he realised he could never have Aurelia – she being already married to you…Anyway, as far as her looks are concerned, beauty is only skin deep,’ Maude added with another outpouring of scorn, for she could never admit that Aurelia was beautiful.

      ‘But your beauty goes deeper, eh, Maude?’ He winked at her and grinned, in an effort to remove the intensity, which was becoming rampant in the discussion.

      ‘Oh, go on with you.’ Maude allowed herself a smile; there really was no doubt whom he preferred bedding, and the knowledge induced a renewed warm glow. She was reassured that at least she had this hold over him, this delectable sexual allure. He kept coming back for more. He loved it, and so did she. ‘So I might see you later, then?’

      He picked up his jacket, went over to her and kissed her. ‘I reckon,’ he grinned, and tiptoed down the narrow, twisting staircase.

      * * *

      Benjamin Augustus Sampson, twenty-seven years old by this time, was the sole issue of the late Benjamin Prentiss Sampson, and thus the sole beneficiary to the old man’s estate. Part of that inheritance was the once thriving Sampson Fender and Bedstead Works, which the son Benjamin had contrived to expand, albeit unprofitably, into the new and challenging world of bicycle manufacture. For young Benjamin Augustus lacked the acumen, commitment, integrity and foresight of his father, who, from excruciatingly humble beginnings, had become a self-made man.

      Young Benjamin, however, was not particularly interested in the manufacture of anything. The factory existed merely as a tap to provide a continuous but diminishing supply of money; money that he took for granted and spent unwisely. He failed to understand the mysteries and mechanics of how it was generated, or indeed why it should dwindle. It was a tap that dripped uncontrolled, always lowering the level of the reservoir that had been its working capital.

      As an only child Benjamin had wanted for nothing, and in adulthood expected everything. He understood little about, and appreciated less, what his father had achieved, or how he had achieved it. Nor had he ever come close to appreciating the astonishing setbacks his father had overcome to be so successful.

      For the record, the old man had been one of three illegitimate children, born in 1831 and raised in the area aptly known as Lye Waste, east of Stourbridge. He knew of nothing other than the absolute squalor he was born into, but from the age of three he had learned from his unmarried parents how to make nails. When his mother and father died of consumption, he and his two sisters ended up in the care of the workhouse. While they were being unceremoniously carted thence, he looked about him and noticed the way other people lived; he saw fine houses, neatly tended gardens, and other children at play. This indelible memory of a superior world was the stimulus the intelligent Benjamin Prentiss Sampson needed to better himself.

      His two sisters died of consumption in the tender care of the workhouse, but Benjamin contrived to escape it, and he thrived. He saved what money he earned and, in 1856, had enough to start his own small business making fenders and hearth ware. In 1862, having shed the shackles of poverty and gained the respect of the business classes, he met and married a respectable girl and found time to father a son, Benjamin Augustus.

      Old Benjamin gladly paid for the lad’s schooling, another privilege that money could buy, and nurtured high hopes for him. Education ensured that the lad spoke more correctly than the father, distancing him from the likes of the workhouse inmates and his employed workers. Ultimately, there was something about the son that the father admired and even envied; his demeanour, his confidence, the undeniable charm of which he was capable. If expensive schooling had taught him little else, it taught him the benefits of fine manners – when, how and whom to beguile; social tools which make it easier to get what you want.

      When he left school he joined the prosperous Sampson firm to learn the business. Young Benjamin, however, could muster enthusiasm for little except cricket, his first love. If he could have spent his life playing cricket he would have happily done so.

      It was cricket that eventually brought Aurelia Osborne to his attention. She was the older of two daughters of Murdoch Osborne, a well-known local butcher, womaniser, and a key member of the local Amateur Dramatics. For all his dubious reputation, Murdoch had nobly insisted his daughters received a proper education. It had endowed Aurelia with confidence, cordiality, grace, and an eloquence that surpassed Benjamin’s; so the charmer was also charmed.

      Because of her innate politeness when they first met, she seemed amenable to his attentions, even flattered, willing to talk about him. He was encouraged. Eventually, after several weeks of insistent love notes, posies of flowers and packages of delicious chocolates swathed in ribbons, she agreed to meet him – alone. A few more short weeks saw the departure of Clarence Froggatt from her life. Soon after, Aurelia’s mother passed away, having lived a life of abject disillusionment and unhappiness, due to