Barrass dropped the length of timber he had been carrying up to where the alterations were under way, and ran up the stairs.
‘I want you to take this bill and this letter and hand it to either Mistress Ddole or her husband. No one else, mind.’
Barrass promised and set off to walk to Ddole House.
* * *
Olwen was walking back down the steep hill, pushing her empty cart. The morning was dull, the rain had eased to a fine drizzle, filling the air and making visibility poor. She could not see the line of fishing boats along the shore until she was almost upon them, and when she did, the figure jumping suddenly out at her with a roar made her scream with shock.
‘Barrass! You nearly made my heart stop!’
‘Where are you off to? Still selling your fish?’ He peered into the empty cart and added, ‘Oh, I see you are finished. Best to get home then out of this rain.’
‘I went to Ddole House and they bought all I had. It seems they have a lot of guests this evening and intended to send the boy into the market. I arrived just in time to sell them mine. Wasn’t that lucky?’ Her sun-freckled arms stuck out from the sleeves of her cloak like pea-sticks, so tiny compared with his, and she bent back to look up at him as she spoke. He smiled and touched her fair hair affectionately.
‘That’s where I’m going, to Ddole House,’ he told her. ‘Special delivery of a letter from Mistress Palmer.’
‘So, you are a post-boy after all,’ she teased. ‘Where’s your leather bag then?’
‘When Kenneth retires, perhaps I’ll be old enough to take his job.’
‘And marry Ivor-the-Builder’s spoilt daughter too?’ she jeered. ‘Fine life she’ll give you, that one!’
He darted at her as if to pull her hair and she stepped away and rumbled on with her empty cart.
She stopped and turned to watch him walking away. His hair was thick and as black as the coal that colliers dug from the earth, and with the dampness of the day, tightly curled. When he had been an object of ridicule, his face had been like a faded picture – dull, spotty and unworthy of anyone’s time – but with a frame of dark hair, the dark brown eyes had been given a setting that increased their luminosity, and that same face had a sense of importance. Now there was interest shown by all who looked at him. No one jeered any more and no one ignored him.
She sighed dejectedly. He was catching everyone’s eye now. Oh why couldn’t he have kept his old fleas for a few more years? What chance do I have now, of him waiting for me to grow up? Even Blodwen looks at him with a sparkle in her eyes. Why was I born so late? Why haven’t I grown faster?
As she walked along, her hair and clothes soaked through from rain, the hem of her skirt dragging on the wet roadway, she suddenly gasped out loud as she remembered Penelope. William Ddole’s daughter had spoken to her about Barrass when she had called to sell her fish. Of how she had heard that his appearance had dramatically changed from oddity to appealing young man. And Barrass was going to see her!
Oh, fancy lady or not, she was another one to save Barrass from. Olwen sighed, and leaving her cart turned over near her father’s boat, ran to follow Barrass and hopefully prevent him finding favour with Penelope, however unlikely that might seem. She had no idea what she would do, but at least there was a chance of preventing him from captivating Penelope and making her cow eyed about him like the rest!
With the rain on the ground she had felt no discomfort as she walked around selling her fish. But now with the sun, watery at first, showing itself in a brightness that surprised her, she became conscious of soreness in her bare feet. She dawdled and wandered away from the direct route to Ddole House, forgetting temporarily her need to watch Barrass. When she found herself wandering in the wrong direction, following a stream, marvelling at its clearness and the fish visible in its depths, she hurriedly left the coolness of the water and the shade of its willows and ran across the fields to the big house.
To her relief, when she went to the kitchen door and asked for Barrass, Dozy Bethan said he had seen the mistress and was already on his way back. She was glad she had come, for now she would not spend the early hours of the night imagining them together.
Olwen did not go home. The sun, once a soothing comfort, was blazing in complete disregard of the time of day and she felt the need to cool herself off near the sea. Cutting across the field where the ruins of Barrass’s barn stood, she slid down through the steep wood and on to the beach. Her eyelids were heavy with the need to sleep and seemed determined to droop. She picked her way slowly across the warm pebbles, working her way towards the beach below her home and, with words her mother would have been surprised that she knew, cursing Barrass for being so handsome.
* * *
Darkness fell suddenly as if the sun was ashamed of its unreasonable behaviour, a shy performer unexpectedly aware of an audience, and sank hurriedly from sight beyond the dark blue, calm sea in embarrassment. Mary and Spider looked anxiously at the path from the Village, wondering where Olwen could have got to.
As the evening became silent and still, Spider went to look for her. Within an hour, Barrass, Arthur, Pitcher, Kenneth and several of their neighbours were out on the roads and paths, calling her name. The moon rose, spreading its eerie light across the water, and they were still searching.
It was Arthur who saw her. He leaned over the sheer edge of the cliff and looking down, saw her spreadeagled far below.
‘She’s fallen! Quick, over by here! Fallen over the edge, she has.’ His high-pitched voice carried to where Barrass and Spider were searching among the thick hedges bordering the small fields on the cliff top. They ran with a wail of anguish, to where Arthur stood, dancing up and down in distress, crying and pointing downwards.
‘By there she is, down by there,’ he kept repeating.
Barrass and Spider ran to the edge, where normally they would never have attempted to climb down, and lowered themselves over the side. With hardly a pause to feel for safe holds, they worked their way down to the still figure, slipping occasionally but never stopping to consider their danger. Believing in their grief and disbelief that they could, by their very speed, alter what they would not accept.
They reached her together, and as they called her name, despair in both their voices, she stirred and said sleepily, ‘My feet, Dadda, they’re a-w-ful sore.’
Barrass and Spider turned their heads in unison to where her feet rested in a cool, weed-fringed pool. It was Barrass who carried her home.
Chapter Four
At first, Olwen could not understand her newfound popularity. Girls who had rarely even noticed her – let alone stopped and spoken to her – were suddenly calling her, asking her to share their activities, and treating her like a young woman instead of a child. She stared hopefully in a mirror whenever the opportunity arose, hoping for a change in her appearance, but so far as she could see, there was none. She was still small, skinny and very much a child. She swelled with importance when Blodwen invited her to come along on an errand for her father.
Then realization hit her like a wild gust of autumn, with a fierce humiliating violence that threatened to dislodge her heart from her flat chest. They were friendly with her because of Barrass! They followed her with the assurance that eventually she would meet him and ease the first moments for them.
She almost hated him then. Barrass, whom she had befriended when no one would even stand close to him! When he looked funny with his bald head and spotty skin. Now he was pursued by everyone, and she was being used. Very soon, she saw with mature clarity, she would be left out.
She was standing at the bottom of the bank on which Blodwen’s house was built when the realization happened. She and Blodwen were intending to go to the alehouse with a message for Emma. Olwen was wondering how best to deal with the situation when Blodwen’s appearance on the step decided her.
Blodwen was dressed for visiting in a full-length coat and skirt of fur-trimmed blue that fitted around her waist in a
way that made her look taller and, Olwen’s jealous heart told her, elegant. Blodwen even had a hat riding on her piled-up hair, feathers waving in the breeze. Worst of all, she had colour on her face: touches on her cheeks and something brightening the already red lips.
‘Wait till your mam sees you in that lot!’ Olwen shouted. ‘If you think you’re walking with me looking like that, you’re wrong!’ She flounced off – leaving Blodwen to hurry after her in shoes that were probably her mother’s Sunday pair – and then ran ahead to tell Barrass to be prepared for a laugh.
Barrass did not laugh. He looked in amazement at the beautiful girl who stood before him, a letter for Emma Palmer in her gloved hand.
‘Called on Enyd I did, and her mother asked me to bring this for Mistress Palmer.’
She held out the letter, not a chink in her confidence to show how she had had to plead with Ceinwen to be allowed to bring the letter. He stuttered shyly and offered to show her up to where Emma was sitting sewing a new flannel shirt for her husband.
Olwen watched his behaviour with growing dismay and when Blodwen had slipped into the room above and closed the door, she picked up the nearest object, a copper jug, and threw it in Barrass’s direction.
‘You aren’t fun any more,’ she condemned.
‘I have to be polite to her,’ Barrass reasoned, picking up the dented jug. ‘It’s her father I want to impress. I won’t stand a chance of him putting in a good word for me with the King’s Mail when I apply for work if I tell his daughter she looks daft, now will I?’
‘And you think she looks daft?’ Olwen asked hopefully.
‘Nearly as daft as you when you try to look angry with me,’ he said.
But something in his voice told her that he was not being truthful, that Blodwen’s appearance with her newfound adulthood had disturbed him. She tried to convince herself that the dishonesty was the greatest hurt.
* * *
Emma sat looking out of the window after Blodwen had gone, reading the outside of the letter the girl had brought. It was from Ddole House and for a moment she had savoured the excitement, not opening the seal, just staring at it, trying to imagine what it might contain. An invitation? An opportunity for her daughters to meet marriageable sons of the Ddoles’ wealthy friends? Her fingers fiddled with the seal until it finally broke and the letter was unfolded. Then her plump, beringed hands trembled as she read and reread the brief note.
Mr and Mrs William Ddole
request the pleasure of the company of
Mr and Mistress Palmer and
the Misses Pansy, Daisy and Violet Palmer
at a party
given in the garden of
Ddole House
on Tuesday at four o’clock.
It was signed in the large, curlicued hand of Dorothy Ddole. Emma stared at it, tears of joy brimming in her eyes. Then she clutched her heart in an exaggeration of alarm.
‘Pitcher?’ she called in her loud voice. ‘Pitcher, come here at once, there is some urgency.’
Pitcher came running up the stairs, still carrying the pewter mug he had been idly polishing with a duster.
‘VVhat’s happened, wife?’
‘This!’ she said dramatically. ‘An invitation to Ddole House for our daughters and after you sent that rude note to Mistress Ddole demanding money. Money! Oh, Mr Palmer I’m so shamed.’
‘I sent it? Mrs Palmer, it was you who insisted!’ He went on reminding her of how the firm demand for payment had come about, but Emma was not listening to him.
‘Dresses! They will have to have new dresses. And a cloak in case the weather is inclement. New gloves. What they have are quite unsuitable. Oh dear, where do I start!’
Pitcher left her, still clutching the precious invitation and clucking like a broody hen, and went back downstairs. He was pleased. All the expense of the School for Ladies and the never-ending demands for new clothes might after all be worth while if even one of his daughters made a good marriage.
At eighteen the twins were already showing their mother’s inclination to plumpness. Violet, the older by four years, was a constant worry to Emma with her lack of interest in the young men her mother introduced.
Emma gathered her daughters around her and produced the long-hoped-for invitation with a flourish. The twins began to discuss with great excitement the new clothes and accessories they would buy. Violet tried to sound enthusiastic, but the thought of an evening feeling like an unwanted piglet on the last day of the fair did not move her to joyous imaginings.
There was very little time for all the arrangements and Emma sent at once for the dressmaker. Mistress Gronow had some difficulty in convincing her that it was impossible to make three new dresses by Tuesday, and Emma, with tears of disappointment, had to agree to having their newest dresses freshened up.
‘I’m quite happy with mine,’ Violet told her, ‘so let Mistress Gronow concentrate on Pansy and Daisy.‘
Her mother applauded her generosity, not knowing how the ordeal of the pinching and pulling and standing for an age while pins were poked into the hem irritated her eldest daughter, and how glad she was to avoid it.
* * *
Barrass was sent with the acceptance to the party, and was invited into the kitchen to wait for Mistress Ddole’s response. It was Dorothy’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Penelope, who came back telling him there was no reply but to thank Mistress Palmer for her promptness.
Penelope, who did not remember ever having seen him before, asked him ‘You are new in the village?’
‘No, Miss. Born here I was, in the house of Ivor Baker on Village Hill.’ He showed no nervousness as he met her gaze steadily, the ale that Bethan had handed him still in his hand.
‘I don’t remember seeing you before,’ Penelope said, as she looked into the deep brown eyes in the tanned and handsome face. ‘Do not let me interrupt your refreshment,’ she added as he was about to put the pewter mug down on the scrubbed wooden table.
‘Pardon me, Miss, but you have seen me before. I had no hair then, and I suppose it makes a difference to how you remember me. Barrass they call me although I doubt it’s my real name.’
‘Barrass? But…’ She stared at him, trying to see in this curly-haired, personable and confident youth the ill-kempt beggar boy that everyone said bred fleas as if cursed. There was no sign of the sores and spots that had once encrusted his face and neck.
‘And what do you do, Barrass? she asked. ‘Work for Palmer as a potman?’
‘More as a general handyman.’ He leaned casually on the high-backed rocking chair that stood close to the cooking range, wondering why Penelope, who had never given him more than an occasional word, should be staring at him with such intensity. He was relieved when she finally nodded and left the room.
‘You’ve made a triumph there, boy,’ Cook chuckled. When Barrass asked what she meant, she went on, ‘Miss Penelope sees the man and not the errandboy, you might say. There, what do you think of that, then?’
‘I think I could drink another mug of ale,’ Barrass replied.
* * *
Dorothy Ddole knew she was seriously ill. She also knew that, no matter how encouragingly he spoke, Doctor Percy could do nothing. For the time left to her while she was able, she decided to concentrate on getting a husband for Penelope. Her son, Leon, was a major in the army and could manage well enough with his father’s help, but a girl needed a mother to guide her in such an important matter. To this end, she decided to arrange several parties.
It had not been her intention to invite the boring Palmer girls, but having been let down at the last moment by the four daughters of a friend, who had suddenly been afflicted with summer colds, she had thought it the best way out of her difficulty. The woman had hinted often enough after all, and surely wouldn’t mind being told so near the date. My desperation helped her in hers, she reasoned.
She took a spoonful of the medicine Doctor Percy had sent over and went on compiling lists of food, guests and s
eating arrangements for the entertainments. At least she would go out with the house ringing with laughter and music, and perhaps see her much-loved daughter happily betrothed.
* * *
Pitcher was pleased with the way Barrass was working. The boy learned fast and was already beginning to form letters and read some of the simpler words sufficiently well to check that the deliveries were correct and there was no shortfall. Gradually, in the few weeks he had been there full time, he had become almost indispensable, especially now when Emma called her husband every other minute with a new problem over this fast-approaching party. So it was with a shock that he was called upstairs to be greeted with the words,
‘Barrass must go!’
‘Mrs Palmer. What you do up here in your domain is yours to decide upon and rightly so, but down there, where I earn the money that allows you to deal with your domain, that’s my domain and will continue to be so.’
Immediately, they stood glaring at each other like fighting cocks, walking around each other as if preparing to go for the jugular. With the words ‘He’s paying attention to your daughters, Mr Palmer!’ Emma touched it.
Since the brief encounter with Penelope Ddole, Barrass had gradually become aware of his attraction for women. She had opened his eyes to something that everyone else had seen for some time. His reaction was not the expected one. His own sensuality had not become a strongly felt need so it was with amusement that he reacted to his newfound power.
He watched the unease in the eyes of women he met, and quickly learnt ways of pleasing them – or adding to their discomfort. The first girls on whom he practised, simply because of their propinquity, were Pitcher’s daughters.
Violet succumbed first and would wait about in the passages for a word or a glance. The twins were too wrapped up in their party arrangements to notice him for a while, but one day he managed to remind all three of the change in him.
Summer’s Last Retreat Page 6