Wickham Read online

  Wickham’s hours of duty were finally, and thankfully, over for the day. He was tired and his feet ached. What he wanted was a hot meal and a peaceful and relaxing evening at home. However, home was the last place he found peaceful at present. Unwittingly, his feet found the path to the Red Lion. The mist was starting to roll in from the sea and Wickham pulled his cape tighter around his neck as he walked. The air grew colder and he yearned for a warm fireside and a hot cooked meal in his belly.

  When he arrived at the Red Lion, the place was heaving with people, and he had difficulty spying an empty seat. The landlord caught his eye from behind the bar and motioned with his head to the back room. Wickham passed a rowdy bunch playing a game of darts and made his way through the smoke-filled bar out to one of the smaller private rooms in the back. Poynter and Turpin were already there with their tunics off and their cravats undone, as were Chapel and Parkes, two other officers who drank with them from time to time. They hallooed to him from across the room and Chapel and Parkes shifted along the bench to make room for him. He sighed heavily as he sat down on the end of the bench and took an eyeful of the buxom wench who brought him a flagon of ale and poured him a jug. He could feel himself relaxing even now as she gave him a cheeky smile and wink. A grin spread across his face as he reached out one hand to grope the woman’s backside, and the other brought the jug to his lips.

  “Ee saucy! That’ll cost you extra, y’ know.” She winked at him again. “Are you in the mind for buyin’?”

  Wickham cocked his head as he downed more of the ale. “I may well be, my dear.”

  The wench giggled. “Don’t you talk proper. It makes me go all weak at the knees.”

  “That’s not the only place he’ll make you go weak.” Poynter guffawed from across the table. “Come on, lass, bring us some more ale and then we’ll see what sport is to be had this night.”

  Wickham’s eyes sparkled as he watched the woman fetch another flagon of ale. She was just the sort of soothing he needed that night before he had to go home. Lydia’s time to give birth drew near, but the closer to it they drew, the more irritable and whiny she became. Solace was what he needed and the Red Lion, it seemed, was just the place for that this night.

  The cards were brought and they played a few rounds of Loo, but Wickham’s mind was not the game and he lost easily to Chapel. He was at least thankful he had not bet very much money yet. His mind and eyes were firmly on the serving wench. She was a pretty thing—a little past her prime, mayhap, but still pretty. Her blue eyes were rimmed with lines, but they still twinkled with plenty of naughtiness with which to entice him. She had obviously borne a bastard or two, judging from the size of her hips and heaving bosom. Yes, she will do nicely. Besides, he was not getting far with his latest conquest, and he was frustrated.

  The miller’s daughter, Patience, was the young lady Wickham really wanted; however, she was playing hard to get. He smiled at the irony of her name. He enjoyed the chase, but she was making a song and dance out of it. She was enticingly beautiful and was a real tease. He knew he would win her over in the end, but in the meantime, he needed some loving. Nelly Parsons, he discovered the serving woman was called, was still giving him the eye. He knew she would give him all the loving he needed—and much more—before he found his way home that night.

  Lydia endured an entire afternoon of Mrs Sullivan. She discovered—after two whole hours of tedium—that the colonel’s wife had actually come to find out if she needed anything. Lydia was unconvinced. She was sure Mrs Sullivan truly only wanted to pry into her affairs and obtain gossip-fodder to take back to the other regiment wives and entertain them with. Apparently, though, the officers’ wives generously wanted to donate some of their baby things to her. Lydia felt quite insulted at the assumption she did not have means enough to clothe her baby well, appalled at the very idea of a child of hers wearing used clothing. But she still managed to smile at Mrs Sullivan and mutter, “How kind.” However, for once, and just before she flatly refused the offer, she remembered the almost-empty state of her pocket-book and what Wickham would say should she refuse their offer of assistance. Therefore, she smiled sweetly at Mrs Sullivan and humbly accepted the offer.

  Once the lady finally left the Wickham home, however, Lydia breathed a heavy sigh of mixed relief and irritation. She sat back down on the settee and replayed the entire afternoon in her mind, chewing her lip as she did so. The more she dwelt on the visit, the madder she became.

  Wickham arrived home within an hour of her guest’s departure and Lydia hardly noticed that her husband was a little worse for wear from drinking—she was far too incensed to see.

  “The nerve of the woman!” she blasted at him the very instant he entered the parlour and asked how her day had been. “How dare she and all those meddling busybodies assume that a child of ours would lack for clothing?” She waddled up and down the room rather than paced.

  Wickham sighed. “My dear, you forget that you are not at Longbourn now. Neither are we as rich as your sisters are who can, I am sure, afford seamstresses to fashion as many baby things as they could wish for. We cannot clothe our child in pride, and so must accept charity where it is kindly given.”

  “Why must we? Oh, for goodness sake!” She huffed and sat down heavily on the settee. “Sometimes you really are impossible, George.”

  She did not notice the look of irritation on his face. “Why am I impossible, my dear? It is because I am being realistic, Lydia?” He rose and left the room a little unsteadily and Lydia glared in his direction, thinking him truly a bad husband.

  When he returned to the parlour, he was washed and changed, but Lydia still did not wish to speak to him. She felt put out by his not agreeing with her. She was the daughter of a gentleman and wished to be treated thusly. Why could he not see that the women of the regiment looked down upon her? In her opinion, it was about time that came to a stop.

  They ate simply for dinner that night. Wickham was not very hungry anyway, having had a small plate of cold meat and potatoes in the Red Lion, which he kept quiet about, but Lydia bemoaned their meagre meal all the same. There was no money left for meat; consequently, the bones from Sunday’s roast were boiled with vegetables. The resulting stew was not so bad in flavour, but certainly was not to Lydia’s more refined tastes. Tess had done her best with what she had to cook with and Wickham complimented her on a job well done, as it seemed Lydia would not.

  “Oh! How can you say such a thing to her?” She scowled at Tess, who fled the room lest she partake of Lydia’s increasingly bad mood. “This is pauper’s food!” She pushed her dish away from her in a fit of bad humour. “Today is Friday.” She pouted. “At Longbourn, we always had fish on a Friday.” She gazed fondly at the table before her, as though transported back to Hertfordshire. “Mama would have the table set as usual with a finely embroidered linen tablecloth. I wish we had a tablecloth, my love.” She snapped out of her daydream, sighed, and looked up at Wickham.

  He continued to eat his supper, seemingly oblivious to the fact she had spoken at all.

  Lydia took a deep breath and continued with her whining. “At Longbourn, we also had good tableware and well-polished cutlery, not this chipped rubbish and mismatched stuff.” Her pout deepened as she picked up the spoon in front of her, turned it over in her hand, and inspected it, seeing clearly each and every flaw in its surface.

  Wickham finally looked up at her. “Well, my dear, it was your choice to marry me, a lowly soldier. I never was a rich man. I am merely the son of old Mr Darcy’s steward.” His jaw clenched and Lydia knew he bit back a crueller retort. “If you don’t like it, then I can always pack you off back to your dear mama and papa.” His grin was patronising, and Lydia felt its sting. She could not prevent it and started to cry. Her tears had no affect whatsoever on her husband. Wickham merely rolled his eyes and continued with his meal.

  “You are so cruel to me,” Lydia whined. He would not see things her way and, not for the first time, she regrette
d marrying him. She longed to be back at Longbourn, but buttoned her lip and ate her food. Something told her that Wickham would indeed carry out his threat and send her packing back to Hertfordshire if she continued to moan, and then what would people say of her?

  The evening did not improve. They sat in the parlour in front of the fire without uttering a single word to one another. Wickham read in his wingback chair and Lydia tried and failed to concentrate on her darning. Inwardly, she bemoaned the state in which she now found herself. Never had she needed to darn anything before. She always had servants for that. She was not very good at it, and never applied herself to it either—seeing it as beneath her to darn. The stitches were far too big and the repair on the bottom of Wickham’s stocking was glaringly obvious. Somehow, though, she had to contrive a way to improve their lot. Writing to her sister, Elizabeth, would be of no use. She was stubborn and immovable on the subject of money, and Lydia did not relish the thought of another lecture from her on living within their means. However, her eldest sister Jane could always be depended upon to fall for one of Lydia’s hard-luck stories, especially after she embellished it here and there.

  It was at a quarter past one the following morning when Lydia let out an ear-piercing scream that was sure to have awoken half the neighbourhood. Labour pains had begun in earnest. The baby was on its way.

  Wickham leapt out of bed and fled the room and down the stairs only in his nightshirt.

  “George! Don’t leave me!” Lydia screamed, sitting on the edge of the bed and gripping the bed sheets in fear. She was terrified. She hated being in pain, and she knew what she was about to endure was the most dangerous thing she would ever do. As was her nature, she feared for her own life the most. She worried that this child would also be born dead, and it would all be her fault once again. She burst into tears as another contraction came upon her and screamed in pain. “Please make it stop!” she cried out.

  Within minutes, however, George was back and informed her he had sent Tess out to fetch the midwife. After half an hour—and not a moment too soon, as far as Lydia was concerned—the midwife arrived. She was a portly woman in her forties, with her hair pinned tightly back and dressed simply in a grey-ish blue muslin dress that could not hide the stains it bore of her trade.

  Wickham had hurriedly dressed in breeches and shirt and had just put on his jacket as the midwife ushered him out of the room whilst he tried to tie his cravat. “You’re not needed now, Lieutenant Wickham. This is no place for a man. Get! Get!” The robust-looking woman shook her head and tossed his black buckled shoes to him. “What use would a man be in the birthin’ room, eh?”

  Lydia looked up at her with fear in her eyes. “George,” she whimpered.

  “Now, now, Mrs Wickham. We have been through this before, remember? It will all be over soon enough.” To Lydia, it seemed that was the extent of the midwife’s compassion. Within minutes, she was busying herself around the room, reorganising and tidying as she went, and, to Lydia’s chagrin, ordering her to quieten down when the pains came. “Ooh, lass,” she said, shaking her head at Lydia, “you’d think you were the only woman to ever have a baby, with all that racket you’re makin’!”

  Despite the fact that Lydia felt the midwife had no compassion on her feelings, she did somehow manage to instil a sense of calm and discipline around her in the room, which, in part, succeeded in imbuing a soothing effect on her patient. She was grateful the old woman was there, despite how much she scolded her over the noise she was making. Lydia was scared. The pain was so intense. She was certain it was worse than last time.

  “There, now, Mrs Wickham. This is your second child, and by the third, well…” She chuckled as she folded muslin squares and piled them on top of the dresser by the door. “…it’ll almost walk out of its own accord.” She shook her head and continued to laugh at her own joke.

  Lydia did not care one iota for the birthing-room humour. She was horrified by the image that the woman’s words flashed through her mind. However, she did not have time to dwell on them; the contractions were increasing in intensity and she wanted to push. She gripped the bed sheets so hard with each wave of pain that washed over her that her knuckles went white.

  “Not yet. Don’t you push now. Wait a little,” the woman cooed as she examined her and then wiped her brow.

  “I cannot! I need to push now!” Lydia yelled with tears running down her face.

  “I’m afraid if you do, you’ll tear, lovey.” The woman frowned. “Let me prepare you a brew to calm you a little, eh?”

  Lydia’s eyes opened wide in shock. The thought of tearing scared her nearly witless. She knew she needed to calm down, so when the woman presented her with a herbal brew, she gratefully accepted it. However, it was so bitter she almost spat it out the very moment it touched her tongue.

  The midwife sniggered to herself as took it from her. “Let me add a little honey to sweeten it for you, dearie.”

  Whatever the concoction was, it worked its magic quickly and before long, she found herself able to doze a little in between the contractions. The midwife settled herself into the chair next to the crib by the window to wait. Lydia’s body was not ready to bring forth the babe, but now that she was relaxed, the woman told her that things would progress more smoothly. Lydia hoped rather than believed that to be true.

  Wickham waited downstairs in the parlour and paced up and down with worry. No matter how mad Lydia made him, or how disappointed he was with his life, she was still his wife, and she was screaming in pain with each contraction. With each yell that issued from the bedroom above him, he looked up and winced. Giving birth was a part of life he had witnessed many times throughout his life, but, he admitted as he listened to Lydia scream once again, it was far more unnerving when it was one’s own wife.

  He felt helpless. He was unable to do anything to aid her. All he could do was sit, or pace, and wait. Nevertheless, as he did so, his mind preyed on him. He remembered a similar night, less than a year ago now, when Lydia’s birthing pains began in earnest, just as they did this night. For hours, the midwife ministered to her whilst he helplessly wore down the flagstones in the parlour with his pacing back and forth. Lydia screamed so much that night that Wickham feared for her very life, and wondered at which point he ought to run and fetch the vicar. His friends and the men in the tavern had told him so many horror stories connected to birthing that he imagined them all coming to pass in the room above his head. However, when the screaming ended, the nightmare continued, for no infant cry issued from the room.

  He remembered moving to the bottom of the stairs and turning his head to hear better, but there was nothing—only silence. Carefully and quietly, he crept step by step up to the landing, but still could hear nothing at all. No cries, no screams, not even the murmur of hushed voices did he hear from the room.

  Wickham leant against the doorframe and breathed deeply, fighting the lump in his throat at the memory of when the midwife presented him with that still, blue baby in her arms. He was unprepared for the depth of his grief for the little babe. He named her Mary, after his mother. He could not comprehend why Lydia refused even to look at the child and did not attend the quiet funeral on the next day, either. Even now, almost a year later, she did not tend to the little grave. He felt he was the only one who remembered their tiny daughter. He was the only one to lay flowers, which he picked from the garden, by the small gravestone in the churchyard, bearing simply her name and one solitary date.

  Wickham gasped and looked up as Lydia screamed once again from the room above. The birthing pains were getting closer together and longer in duration. Surely, that was a good sign that the baby would come soon. He stumbled nervously across the room to the sideboard, poured himself another glass of wine, and grimaced as he tasted it. Lydia had watered it down too much neither to taste pleasant nor to be of any effect on his nerves. He tipped his head back and swallowed the entire contents of the glass without tasting it. Then, with great yelp of joy, a smil
e spread across his face and he breathed a heavy sigh of relief as the air was filled with the joyous and hearty cries of a new-born baby.

  Without thinking or waiting for the midwife’s permission, Wickham put the glass back on the sideboard, turned, and shot out of the room. He took the stairs two at a time and raced up to their bedroom where Lydia and the new babe were. He tried the latch, but the midwife had wisely secured the door from the inside, denying him entry. He banged on the door and, after what seemed an eternity, the midwife opened it a crack and smiled toothlessly at him. The wriggling, crying bundle in her arms took his whole attention immediately. He reached out and touched the little pink arm that waved at him. The hand instinctively grasped his finger and took his breath away.

  “Congratulations, Lieutenant Wickham. It’s a boy.” The midwife grinned at him. “Mrs Wickham is fine, but extremely tired. If you come back in a little while, I’ll have them both ready for a visit.” Gently, she closed the door on him and his new-born son was forced reluctantly to relinquish his grip on his papa’s finger.

  Wickham could not have been happier. He had a son.

  The only thing Lydia wanted more than anything after the birth was to sleep. Her body ached all over and she felt grubbier than she ever had. The midwife helped her to have a thorough wash down, and then she slipped into a freshly laundered nightgown.

  She knew Wickham arrived, saw the boy, and then was dispatched promptly by the midwife. Lydia wished he were there. She wanted to be held and, more importantly, someone had to take care of that screaming thing in the crib. She stared down at it, unsure of what she should do.