Read Online Children of the Tide by Valerie Wood - Free Book Online Page B

Rayner as a child and another as he had been in his capacity as chairman of the board of directors. Between the two was a smaller picture set in an oval gilt frame. It showed an older man, his wrinkled hands clasping a cane, this was Isaac Masterson, uncle of John Rayner and founder of the company.
    ‘Will you excuse me for a moment, Ma? I must just see Hardwick about the accounts I’m working on. They’re bringing you some tea.’
    ‘I don’t want to keep you from your work, Billy. Tea would be lovely. Off you go, I’ll rest for a while and, if Isaac hasn’t returned, I’ll go home. You know how your father worries if I’m late.’
    ‘You didn’t say why you were here.’ Billy paused with his hand on the door. ‘Shopping, I expect?’ He gave her a quick merry smile as she nodded her head in response.
    No point in discussing the issue of the child with him yet, not until it was resolved. He obviously hadn’t heard or he would have mentioned it. There were nosecrets between this branch of the Rayner family. Open discussions were always the order.
Mildred would be most uncomfortable to listen in to our conversations. A respectable family!
She mused over Mildred’s statement.
She will think that we are morally decadent and quite irresponsible, bringing up our children to see animals being born, to know about babies and how they are conceived. And
her
children were not allowed to play games as ours were! They were shut up in the nursery with their nurses or taken for decorous walks in their fashionable little suits and gowns. They never knew what dirt was!
    Such ignorance. She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes, and meditated; yet it was one of Mildred’s own sons who had committed the unpardonable sin of bedding some poor girl and had given her a child!
    The door opened and she opened her eyes, expecting the maid with the tea.
    ‘Aunt Ellen!’ Gilbert’s face flushed, he’d pushed open the door into his father’s office, totally oblivious of her presence. ‘I, er, how nice to see you!’ He stammered out a greeting and dropped the papers he was carrying.
    ‘Hello, Gilbert. I’ve been to see your mother, and thought as I was passing through Hull, I would call in to see your father.’
    ‘My father?’ He rubbed his chin nervously.
    Strange
, she thought as she watched him.
He is the one who appears so debonair, such a sport, such a very merry young gentleman, yet here he is acting like a schoolboy
.
    The maid brought in the tea and Ellen drank it gratefully. ‘I didn’t see James while I was at Anlaby; I was hoping to,’ she added.
    Gilbert shuffled amongst the pile of papers which he had retrieved from the floor and heaped onto the desk. ‘He – er, left me a note to say he has gone to York.’
    ‘Oh?’ You’d know a Rayner anywhere with that red hair, she thought and watched him as he stared outof the window. No, she corrected herself. The red hair came from Grandmother Sarah, and before that,
her
father, Will Foster. Yet the Foster cousins in Tillington were all as dark as gipsies, their colouring coming from a different stock.
    ‘James has gone back to his old school, Aunt Ellen, to see his drawing master,’ he said quietly. ‘He’s gone to ask him if he can recommend him to a tutor who can improve him in his artistic abilities and gain him employment.’ He turned and gazed at her from his dark brown eyes; she couldn’t tell, as he had his back turned to the light, what expression to read from them. ‘Mother says he must leave home over this – this catastrophe. She says if it gets out it will be the ruination of our respectability and position in society.’
    ‘Indeed! And what of the child?’ Her eyes flashed. ‘Is he simply to be abandoned? Does no-one care what becomes of him?’
    She saw him draw breath, and briefly and swiftly he put his hand to his eyes, then withdrawing it said falteringly, ‘It is so regrettable. I will speak to my father on – on James’s