‘She’s not going to get the chance, conniving hussy! And anyway, she made quite sure she was going to have some place to go to, getting Father to leave the North Lodge to the cook. Really! it’s fantastic when you think of it. That’s an excellent lodge, better than the main one.’
‘Oh really!’ Luke thumped his forehead now with the palm of his hand. ‘Give me a war any day in the week.’ Then he turned towards John who was looking at Jessie Ann and was saying with hardly a stammer to his words, ‘You know something, Jessie Ann, you’ll l . . . live to regret this day. Trotter will come out on top, you’ll s . . . see. I’ve . . . I’ve got a feeling about Trotter, she’s different.’
‘Oh!’ – Jessie Ann waved her hand at him now – ‘don’t come the witch business, grow up.’
‘Well, witch or n . . . no witch, there’s something in Trotter, an attraction. I can understand Father . . . ’
It was on the point of Jessie Ann’s tongue to cry again, ‘Shut up!’ but thinking better of it, she stared from one to the other of her brothers, her plump breasts swelling with her temper; then she turned from them both and stalked out of the room; and John, looking at Luke, said, ‘’Tis all because she’s je . . . jealous, insanely jealous because Tro . . . Trotter’s beautiful. She is. Don’t you think so, Luke? F . . . Father thought her beautiful, and sometimes I thought Matthew did too, in spite of the way he w . . . went on.’
Luke didn’t answer for a moment, and when he did his voice had a thoughtful note to it as he said, ‘Yes, I think Matthew did too.’
‘You will leave the house immediately. You will take nothing with you but what belongs to you personally.’
‘Thank you. Is that all, Mrs Cartwright?’
‘That is all.’ It was as much as Jessie Ann could bring out without allowing herself to scream or stamp her feet.
Again Tilly said, ‘Thank you.’ Then after a slight pause, she added, ‘And may I wish you, Mrs Cartwright, all that you deserve in the life ahead of you.’
For a moment Tilly had the satisfaction of seeing the little madam look startled, there was the same expression in her eyes as used to be in those of the half-witted scullery maid Ada Tennant when she’d had occasion to speak to her sharply. But whereas Ada’s look would cause her to smile inwardly, the expression in Jessie Ann’s eyes was too much akin to that she had seen so often on the faces of the villagers to cause her any amusement, had she felt like being amused at this moment.
She went out of the morning room, across the hall and into the kitchen. There, they were waiting for her, and she looked from one to the other, saying in a voice from which she tried to withhold a tremor, ‘It’s as I expected, my marching orders, and right now.’
‘Oh my God!’ When Biddy sank down on to a chair, Tilly put her hand on her shoulder as she said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll not starve. Nor will mine.’ She now patted her stomach gently. ‘And for the present I’ll be well housed. And I couldn’t have a better companion than Mr Burgess, could I?’ There was now a break in her voice and no-one answered her.
‘The bloody unfairness of it!’
‘She’s a little sod.’
‘I won’t want to work for her long.’
At this Tilly, looking from one to the other, said, ‘Stay put all of you. When Master Matthew comes home things may be different.’
‘I don’t know so much,’ said Jimmy. ‘As I remember him, he was a bit of a hard ’un; had very little to say, snooty like.’
Nobody contradicted this, not even Tilly, but what she said now was, ‘Come and help me get packed, Katie; and as I won’t be allowed to use the carriage, will you see that my things go on the wagon, Arthur?’
She did not wait for Arthur to reply but hurried from them up the kitchen, through the green-baized door into the hall, and as she was crossing it, Luke and John came out of the drawing room, and when they met at the bottom of the stairs they looked at each other. And it was John who spoke first, saying, ‘I’m . . . I’m so s . . . sorry, Trotter.’
‘It’s all right. It’s all right.’
‘Me too. Me too, Trotter.’
She looked at Luke now, and he added, ‘When Matthew comes home he might see things differently.’
She gave no verbal answer to this but made a small movement with her head, and when they stood aside to allow her to pass, she went up the stairs, past the bedroom, past the dressing room, past the closet and into her own room. There, turning her face to the door, she pressed it into her hands, but she didn’t cry . . .
Half an hour later she was ready dressed but not in black. She wore a plum-coloured melton cloth coat with a fur collar and a matching velour hat with a feather curling round the brim, and as she walked across the gallery and down the stairs again she could have been the lady of the house going out on a visit.
She did not go to the kitchen again but walked straight across the hall and through the front door and down the steps to where Arthur was waiting with the wagon. Fred Leyburn, she knew, would gladly have driven her in the carriage, as he had done during the past years, but now he had his position to think about and that depended on his new mistress.
Arthur helped her up on to the front seat of the wagon, called, ‘Hie-up there!’ to the horse, and they were off.
As they rumbled slowly along the drive towards the main gates there rose from the deep sadness of her heart a thread of wry humour which said, ‘At least, this time of being thrown out you’re not leaving by the back drive.’
Arthur had already lit the side lamps and before their journey ended, two miles along the main road and another quarter mile up a rutted lane, the winter twilight had dropped suddenly into night, and so it was dark when the wagon pulled up at the small gate which opened into the equally small garden of Mr Burgess’ cottage.
Before she had alighted the old man had opened the door. A blanket around his shoulders and nodding his head at her, he cried, ‘I expected you. I expected you, my dear.’
She did not answer him, merely took his outstretched hand; then with her other hand pressed him back into the room towards the fire.
After Arthur had brought in two bass hampers, a bass bag, a wooden box and a hatbox, she turned to him and, her voice thick and her words hesitant, she said, ‘Thanks, Arthur. I’ll . . . I’ll be seeing you.’
He stared at her for a moment, then said, ‘We’ll be waitin’ for you, Tilly.’
Before turning towards the door he nodded to the old man, saying, ‘Ta-rah, Mr Burgess’; at the door, he looked at Tilly again and, his voice husky now, he said, ‘It isn’t the end, Tilly. You’ll see your day, you will, you will that,’ and, nodding confirmation to his words, he turned about and mounted the wagon.
Having closed the door, she bowed her head and paused for a moment before going towards the fire; and there she stood near the man who had taught her all she knew, with the exception of love. And yet in a way he had taught her that too because, as he often said, there were many kinds of love, and whichever one you were experiencing lessened your need for the others.
The first part of his particular philosophy she could agree with. There were, she knew, many kinds of love, but that one kind lessened the intensity of the main one wasn’t true, for no other feeling she had as yet experienced had lessened the love that had grown within her for Mark Sopwith. Perhaps Mr Burgess had never known the love of a woman, the only love he had ever spoken of was his love of literature; and it was evident in this room and right through the cottage.
She had lost count of the times she had arranged his books on the stout shelves she’d had one of the boys erect for him round the walls of the main room, but every time she returned to visit him there they were, strewn on the floor, on the table, and on the couch Mark had allowed her to take down from the attic rooms and bring here for his comfort.
He had dropped the blanket from his shoulders and was now taking her coat from her, saying, ‘Look, I have set the tea. Aren’t I clever?’ He pointed to the side of the firep
lace to a round table covered with a white lace cloth and holding crockery and a teapot and milk jug. ‘And I’ve kept the muffins in the tin; we’ll have them toasted. You must be frozen, sit down, my dear.’ But as he went to press her into a chair she took his hands and said quietly, ‘You sit down; I’ll see to things.’
‘No, no.’
‘Yes, please let me; it will ease my mind.’
Readily, he allowed himself to be persuaded, and sat watching her as she took off her outdoor things, then busied herself between the table and the open grate where the kettle was boiling on the hob, and not until she was seated opposite to him and had handed him his cup of tea did he say, ‘Well?’ and she answered, ‘Her little ladyship took great delight in turning me out.’
He looked down into his cup and slowly stirred the spoon round it as he said, ‘I want to say I cannot believe it of her, yet as a child I detected a slyness in her, a vanity; but because she was so small, so petite, one said to oneself, she is but a child. Yet in later years as she grew I watched her during her visits to the house, and she could not bear the fact that her father could care for any other female but the one he had created. Tell me, how did he leave you, the master?’
‘As far as I can gather, provided for. He had bequeathed me two lots of shares, five hundred in each.’
‘Oh, good, good, my dear. I’m so glad. What are they?’
‘One lot is in Palmer’s shipyard in Jarrow and the other is some kind of East Indian stock. I don’t know really what that entails.’
‘Oh, but that’s fine, fine.’ He nodded at her. ‘I’m so glad. They will keep you in good stead. Was there any other stock mentioned?’
‘Only some consols to John.’
‘Really!’ He nodded his head. ‘Did you know he was in very bad straits? Did he ever mention that he was selling his bonds and such in order to keep the house going?’
Her eyes widened slightly as she answered, ‘No; he . . . he never discussed money with me, nor I with him.’
‘Well, I’m afraid he would soon have had to, my dear. I think he intended to write to Matthew for help.’
‘Really!’
‘Yes. I gathered so much when we talked about finance, as we often did you know, among other things, and very often about your dear self, because he so admired the way you ran the house, and on a mere pittance too, and the comfort you brought him just with your presence. No, no; please, don’t cry, my dear.’
‘No, no, I’m not.’ And she mustn’t cry, not yet, not until she was in the room above the rafters upstairs when she could smother her moans in the feather tick. She prayed that tonight the wind would rise to such an extent that Mr Burgess wouldn’t hear her crying for, once alone, she would be unable to contain her agony.
She stretched her eyes, opened her mouth wide, and then said, ‘And he didn’t forget you.’
‘Me? What . . . what could he leave me?’
‘Fifty books. Your own choice from the library.’
His two hands were raised in the air and his head went back on his shoulders as if he were witnessing manna dropping from heaven, for nothing could have pleased him more on this earth. Looking at her again, he repeated softly, ‘Fifty?’
‘Yes; and of your own choice.’
‘Dear, dear. The thoughtful man. Oh, he was kind. In so many ways he was kind.’
He became silent for a moment while savouring the joy of adding to his enormous collection of what he thought of as gems because every book he possessed was dear to him. Then leaning forward, the white silken quiff of his hair falling between his brows, he put his hand out towards her and, his fingers touching hers, he said, ‘I’m so happy to have you with me, so happy to have you with me, Tilly.’
She made no answer for a moment; then said, ‘What when the baby comes?’
‘Oh that!’ He moved his head from side to side and, his face crinkling into a wide smile, he answered her, as he was wont to do at times, in poetical language, ‘I shall be born again. Its first cry will stimulate my mind, and the touch of its hand will rejuvenate this old body, and I will see in it a new receptacle into which I’ll pour a minute grain of wisdom from the crucible of my life pounded by the pestle of my seventy-odd years.’
‘Oh! Mr Burgess.’ She now gripped his hand between both hers as she said, ‘What would I have done without you all these years?’
‘Being you, you would have managed very well, my dear.’
‘Oh no, no. Years ago I was thrust into a different world, into a different class, and I viewed it as a servant because I was a servant; but when Mark took me into his life it was you who took my mind in hand, as it were. From our first meeting in the nursery when you realised I could read and write and you loaned me Voltaire’s Candide – you remember? – and I told you I couldn’t understand a word of it, and I didn’t until years later, you took me under your wing. And now I can almost say with Candide’s old woman, “So you see, I’m a woman of experience.”’
Mr Burgess smiled appreciatively. ‘Yes, Trotter, my dear, you have grown into a woman of experience. But I hope I don’t end up like Candide’s old tutor, Doctor Pangloss.’ Then leaning forward again, he said, ‘The word tutor reminds me I am very greedy for my inheritance. When may I collect the books?’
‘At any time I should think, but I wouldn’t venture out, not until we have a fine day. I’ll arrange for Arthur to come and take you and bring back your treasures.’
‘Thank you, my dear . . . Well now’ – he leaned back – ‘shall I start preparing some supper?’
‘No, no.’ She made play of keeping him in his seat by flapping her hand gently at him. ‘Leave that to me.’ And to this he answered, ‘Just as you wish, my dear. Just as you wish.’ Then bending to his side, he picked up a book from the floor, put his hand down the side of the couch to recover his spectacles, placed them on the end of his nose, and lost himself in the main love of his life.
And Tilly, after unpacking the bass bag into which Biddy had put enough food to see them over the next two days, set out a meal. When it was over and she had cleared away, she humped the two hampers and the boxes upstairs to the room under the eaves, and there she unpacked her things.
An hour later she saw the old man to his room, then cleared the books from the floor, banked down the fire, and once again mounted the stairs.
The attic was freezing cold but she did not scramble out of her clothes, and when finally she crept between the sheets and sank into the feather bed it smelt musty and damp, even though Katie had been over twice during the last few days and aired the sheets, and placed the hot cinder pan on the tick, just in case the bed should be needed for the present emergency.
Her knees drawn up, and lying on her side, her hands pinned tight under her oxters, she waited for the avalanche to overtake her. But strangely it didn’t. It was as if all her tears had solidified to form a mountain that was now resting on top of her stomach pressing down on the child.
‘Mark.’ She said his name aloud; then again, ‘Mark,’ louder now. And she saw it winging away across the countryside over the frozen earth and dropping down through the loose black mould until it reached the wood of the coffin; then, forcing its way through, touched his lips and he became alive again. And there he was, his head on the pillow beside her, his eyes looking into hers through the lamplight, and his voice murmuring, ‘You’re beautiful, Tilly Trotter. You know that? You’re beautiful.’
Five
January slipped out on ice-laden roads, the frost so heavy that even at midday it settled on the brows and the eyelashes of humans and brought the cattle to a premature stillness of death.
Tilly spent most of her time sawing wood to keep the fire going. It was as if she were back in her childhood and early girlhood, only now she found no joy in the exercise.
When February brought the snow up to the window sills she was cut off from all contact with those at the Manor for over a week, and she knew that if Mr Burgess had been left on his own he would never
have survived this period. Living, as he had, the scholastic life, he paid little attention to the needs of the body, and the blankets he would have heaped on himself instead of braving the elements to fetch in wood would not have been sufficient to keep out the piercing merciless cold; added to which he would not have bothered about meals, except to make porridge and drink tea. So she told herself that at least one good thing had come out of her present situation.
Her stomach seemed to be rising daily; her body was noticing her weight. Physically she was feeling well enough, that is if she didn’t take into account the misery in her heart and the perpetual cold, because the little house, its surroundings being bare of trees, was open to the weather on its four sides, and although the walls were fifteen inches thick they and the stone floor did not tend to engender warmth.
After the sun had shone for two days the thaw set in and there was movement on the roads once more; but not by horse or carriage, merely by those on foot. But they had to walk through drifts still halfway up their thighs.
When Arthur eventually managed to make his way to the cottage it was with the added burden of a bulky sack across his shoulders, and after he had thumped on the door and Tilly had opened it to him, he slid his burden from his back and pushed it into her arms before kicking the snow from his high boots and shaking it from the tails of his coat.
‘Why! Arthur, what made you come out in weather like this?’
‘Mam thought you would be starving. I’d better take me boots off, they’re sodden.’
‘No, no; come inside, you’ll freeze.’ She reached out her hand and gripped his arm and pulled him over the threshold, where he stood stamping his feet on the matting as he looked across the room to where Mr Burgess was sitting, his chair pulled close up to the hearth; and he called to him, saying simply, ‘Snifter.’
‘Yes, yes, indeed, Arthur, ’tis a snifter as you say; and a long, long snifter it’s been. Do you think we’ve seen the end of it?’
Tilly Trotter Wed (The Tilly Trotter Trilogy) Page 5