by Nancy Carson
‘Enjoy yourselves,’ Will Stokes said heartily, somewhat jealous because his wife would never be forced out at night, even if he exploded a keg of gunpowder under her. He was relieved that his daughter was different, and proud that she had won herself a respectable man, after all the rumour and uncertainties about her going off with boatmen. ‘Mek the most of it, my flower.’
‘I’ll try, Father,’ she replied, with an enigmatic smile.
Chapter 10
September had been mild, but that particular evening, as the sun went down, Algie and Marigold began to realise that it was too cold and damp to lie in the grass near Dadford’s Bridge. The summer, though mostly hot, had yielded some similarly damp evenings after rain and when the grass was too wet they walked, stopping frequently for tender kisses, but nothing more. It was at such times that the lack of a soft, warm featherbed and somewhere to house it seemed to highlight the need for one, a need which could feasibly only be remedied through the mystical union of marriage and setting up home somewhere, with such fundamental comfort readily to hand. Algie was, at these times, vulnerable to being swayed.
‘Why can’t we ever go to your house?’ Marigold asked as they set off on a draughty walk along the cut.
‘’Cause my mother never goes out nights.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because once, when she was carrying our Kate, she was walking back to our house from her mother’s one night, and a horse took fright in Moor Lane. It was hauling a cart, and heading straight towards her. She managed to throw herself to the ground and roll out of its way just in time. It frightened her to death. Ever since then she won’t go out at night for fear of it happening again.’
‘I’d have been afeared as well, Algie,’ Marigold proclaimed sincerely. ‘But horses don’t take fright that often, do they? I’ve never seen one take fright meself. It shouldn’t stop her going out, though. What about in the day? Doesn’t she go out in the day?’
‘She doesn’t mind going out in the day so much. If a horse took fright in daylight she reckons she’d see it and hear it and have plenty of time to get out the way.’
‘But she could go with your dad to a public house,’ Marigold reasoned. ‘There’s two close by. She very likely wouldn’t even see a horse, the time it’d take to walk to either of them.’
‘She wouldn’t be seen dead in a public house, she thinks they’re common and not a good place for a woman to be seen. She thinks everywhere’s common.’
‘Shame.’
‘I know,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘We could go to our house now if you’re cold, but we’d only end up pulling faces at each other and making each other laugh. Maybe when the weather gets a lot colder we might have to go and sit there just to keep warm.’
‘We could go to a public house,’ she suggested. ‘At least we could have a drink while we pulled faces at each other.’
He laughed at that, and they walked on, arms entwined, each tormented by the other’s body warm against them. Beyond the basin and the lock east of the Bottle and Glass the canal split, the left hand arm reaching to an ironworks, the right hand meandering around Brierley Hill towards Dudley. A footbridge switched the towpath of the Stourbridge Canal away from the left hand arm, across to the other bank, and they took it. A gust of wind stirred through the hawthorn trees and trailing brambles that lined it, carrying dank air, laden with the smell of damp leaves that had fallen early. The musty aroma of tired and rotting vegetation mingled with the smell of tawny canal water. Through a gap in the brambles a dog emerged, and stopped to sniff them.
Algie stooped down and stroked the dog, speaking softly to it. The animal wagged its tail enthusiastically and lingered. It licked his hand as though it had discovered an eternal friend, then padded on its way without further ado when he stood up again.
‘He soon realised I’d got no food for him,’ Algie remarked.
‘Poor thing. I wish you had. He was a nice, friendly soul. I wish we’d got a dog, but that’d be another mouth to feed, and I don’t suppose me dad could afford it.’
‘We had a dog once. When I was a little lad.’
‘What was its name?’
‘Harry.’
‘Harry?’ Marigold chuckled. ‘It reminds me of Harriet. Have you seen anything of Harriet lately?’
Marigold dropped this same question into their conversation every time they met, as if she still hadn’t got it through her head that he was no more interested in Harriet than in jumping voluntarily into the murky waters of the cut.
‘Why should I have seen her?’ he responded, his impatience at once evident in his tone, for he was tiring of the question and the doubting trust it implied. ‘I never see her. I hear about her from time to time from our Kate, when she decides I’m worthy enough to be granted some snippet or other. It’s her twenty-first birthday party tonight.’
‘Whose? Kate’s?’
‘No, Harriet’s.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘We’d be at Kate’s if it was hers. Anyway, our Kate ain’t even twenty yet.’
‘Fancy you not being invited,’ Marigold remarked. ‘To Harriet’s party, I mean.’
‘It’s hardly likely they’d invite me.’
‘She might’ve.’
‘Her father wouldn’t allow me within a mile of her.’
‘Well, if she’s twenty-one she’ll be able to do as she pleases, never mind her father. I bet she wanted to invite you. I bet she did.’
‘She invited our Kate and Clarence Froggatt. Kate was all dressed up to the nines. I reckon it’s a do just for the local mashers.’
‘Never mind … You’re my masher, Algie …’ She gave him a hug and he bent his head and kissed her briefly for her unerring sweetness, which made up for her irritating habit of mentioning Harriet in connection with himself. ‘Has Harriet got a new beau in her life yet?’
‘I haven’t a clue,’ he said. ‘I don’t ask. Why? Would you feel better if she had?’ He looked at her sideways to gauge her reaction.
‘Oh, Algie …’ She turned to him with a sigh, thrusting her arms around his waist.
She reminded him of a vulnerable kitten which was impossible to resist and which had to be protected. He put his arms around her and huddled her to him.
‘What?’ he whispered gently. ‘Tell me.’
‘It’s just that … that while she’s still got nobody else, she’s ever likely to come after you again and pinch you from me. I would feel safer if she’d got another chap.’
‘You nit,’ he answered tenderly, looking into her tearful blue eyes that dazzled him even in the gloaming. ‘You don’t think I’d give you up for her, do you?’
‘I don’t know, do I? I’d feel more sure if you told me you loved me a bit more often. You hardly ever say it these days,’ she pouted.
‘Course I love you, else we wouldn’t be seeing each other still, would we?’
‘I dunno. Sometimes I think you only want me for … for it … ’
‘No, I don’t,’ he protested.
‘So why don’t you tell me you love me?’
‘All right … I love you, Marigold,’ he said. Then, more tenderly, ‘I love you. I really do … Honest … Never doubt me.’
She squeezed him ardently around his waist, thankful that she had been able to elicit this profoundly important declaration from him. ‘And I love you as well, Algie Stokes,’ she whispered. ‘With every bit of my heart.’
‘Oh, Marigold, I do wish there was somewhere warm we could go. Let’s walk on a bit.’ Then he had a bright idea. ‘We’ll sneak behind a brick kiln at the firebrick works further on … It’ll be warm leaning against the kiln wall.’
Harriet’s party was being held in the assembly rooms at the Bell Hotel. All day the Meese family had been anxious about its impending success or failure. They tried vainly to maintain the normal rhythm of daily routine, but it was regularly interrupted by visitors bringing gifts and best wishes. And these visitors had to be rewarded with cups of tea or snifters of whisky or gin, as
the preference took them. Jane, the maid, cleared the breakfast table, only for the dining room to take on the appearance of a dressmaker’s workshop when Mrs Palethorpe, the seamstress who had been entrusted with the making of the girls’ dresses, arrived along with the various creations to be worn that evening. Mrs Palethorpe officiated over the mayhem with unruffled dignity, while the besieged Jane scurried in and out, trotting upstairs and down, then to the shop below fetching pins, bits of lace, needles, cotton and, not least, more cups of tea.
Old man Meese put in a brief appearance to check what all the fuss was about, but the sight of all that satin and chiffon, which he had dutifully supplied free of charge, as well as being told by Priss that he was in the way, made him realise it was hardly a place for a man. As he wandered disconsolately down their dimly-lit stairwell back to his solitary stool behind the counter of his drapery shop, he speculated how different his life – and his bank balance – might be if he had fathered sons instead of seven daughters, all taken with expensive fripperies.
Harriet’s ensemble for her special day was a dark green satin dress. It was sleeveless and tight-bodiced with a low, scalloped neck which, by her standards, revealed a spectacular amount of enchantingly heaving cleavage – sufficient enough to incline Priss to describe it as ‘utterly reckless’. Harriet’s dress was readied first and in good time, but Priss’s, the last of the family’s to be dealt with, was subject to some last minute, panic-stricken improvisations.
On the evening, Kate Stokes and Clarence Froggatt entered the Bell Hotel by the main door and climbed the stairs that led to the assembly rooms. Lit by gas lamps, the room was already dense with wafting cigar and cigarette smoke, and the dark, sickly smell of beer and spirits, all of which had permeated the curtains and even the wallpaper over long years, to become eternally entrapped. A four-piece band had been hustled into the corner where the piano stood. The players were providing music that was turning out, unintentionally perhaps, to be mere background noise to the chinking glasses, and the buzz and yelping laughter of various conversations.
Kate and Clarence made their way over to Harriet. She was standing with a group, some of whom were her younger sisters. The couple wished her a happy birthday and handed her the small gift which Kate had purchased during her dinnertime a couple of days earlier.
‘I love your dress, Harriet,’ Kate said admiringly. ‘Green don’t half suit your colouring.’
‘Thank you,’ Harriet replied sweetly, realising that Kate was actually being sincere and intended no slight by her reference to the colour. ‘But yours, too … You look lovely. Doesn’t she, Mr Froggatt?’
‘I’ve never seen her look otherwise,’ Clarence responded with truth and tact. However, he could not help but cast a covert glance at Harriet’s pushed-up breasts, squeezed together quite deliciously, her cleavage rising and falling tantalisingly with every innocent breath she took. He glimpsed Kate’s for comparison. It was a job to know which girl was sporting the most revealing tract of contoured bosom, which was the most appealing … But Kate was so much the prettier girl; vastly prettier. ‘Oh, and do call me Clarence,’ he said amiably. ‘Enough of this Mr Froggatt malarkey.’ He smiled, a warm, friendly smile, and Harriet felt her knees buckle beneath her pretty petticoats.
‘Thank you,’ she replied coyly, and Kate smiled to herself as she discerned a blush from her friend.
Kate looked about her to see who else had arrived so far. Many faces from the Amateur Dramatics Society were already present, some half hidden as they dipped their noses into drinking glasses, particularly the men. Murdoch Osborne, looking and acting much younger than his forty-five years, was holding court, entertaining a couple of the younger females, including the company’s ex-leading lady, Katie Richards. Kate Stokes caught his eye, and he flashed a private smile across the room at her.
One or two couples, showing regard for a suggestion by the musicians, encroached onto the space allocated in the room for dancing. Priss, however, joined the gossiping group.
‘I’ve just been talking to the curate.’
Harriet looked at her expectantly. ‘Has he asked you out yet?’
‘Unfortunately not,’ Priss replied. ‘He’s been waffling on about his ancestors.’
‘Ancestors? Well, he does come from an aristocratic family, Priss. Descendants of William the Conqueror, I bet you tuppence. And he’s the sort of person that drags his ancestors about with him all the time.’
‘I know the sort,’ Clarence commented.
‘He was harping on to me about his precious forebears last Sunday,’ Harriet said, ‘when I thought a little mockery might not come amiss. So I told him we’d mislaid our great-great-grandmother. I said we’d searched up hill and down dale, in the dirty washing bag, the privy, everywhere, but we couldn’t lay our hands on her. He didn’t think it funny in the least. You should have seen his face.’
The others laughed, but Priss looked aghast. ‘Oh, Harriet, you never!’
‘I did.’
‘I bet he thought you were off your rocker,’ Priss remarked. ‘Still, I’m surprised he couldn’t see the joke.’
‘Ancestor-blindness,’ Harriet suggested. ‘Too sacred to be trifled with. I’m glad I belong to a new family.’
‘Fancy you fancying the curate, Priss,’ Kate exclaimed.
‘Oh, I doubt if he has the sense to realise it,’ Priss admitted. ‘But it would do him the world of good if he did. I’m exactly the sort of girl he needs, if only he knew it.’
‘Such humility!’ Harriet said. ‘What is there about you that would induce any man to look at you twice?’
‘The same that would induce him to look at you twice – or not, as the case may be.’
‘I’ve always believed,’ Harriet bantered, ‘that of two sisters, the second is always the better-looking, from the days of Leah and Rachel downwards. If there are any brains going about, then I concede that the older one generally gets them. But since there are no brains in our family, that doesn’t apply to us.’
‘I don’t see why the curate shouldn’t fancy you, Priss,’ Clarence interjected kindly. ‘And he should have no scruples about indulging it if he does.’
‘I daresay he can’t afford to marry, being only a curate,’ Priss responded. ‘Unless he married a girl much richer than me. After all, as a man of the cloth, it’s likely he’ll only be a second or third son. Not in the line of inheritance.’
‘Oh, I don’t think it’s that,’ Harriet suggested.
‘Then is Priss not poor enough?’ Clarence queried.
‘Oh, I don’t think money enters into it either way, Clarence,’ she replied. ‘Having a string of aristocratic ancestors himself, I suppose he thinks she’s common.’
‘And no wonder, if he thinks we keep our great-great-grandmother in the privy. Really, Harriet, you are the limit.’
‘It’s time we went over to say hello to Mr Osborne, Harriet, if you’ll excuse us …’ Kate interjected with a charming smile of feigned regret, looking at Clarence for his approval. She got it and they moved away from the group. ‘They can be a bit daft sometimes, those two. Priss especially. Man-mad she is. Only because she can’t get one.’
Clarence smiled his acknowledgement of the truth of her words. ‘Harriet’s not half so bad though, is she? She does try to shut her up. Look, I’ll get us a drink while you talk to Mr Osborne. What would you like?’
‘Gin,’ she said brightly. ‘With lemonade.’
‘You’re looking lovely enough to eat, young Kate,’ Murdoch Osborne declared with a superb grin as his eyes delved into her cleavage. ‘The belle of the ball tonight, and no mistake.’ That comment ensured that Katie Richards was less than impressed, however, since it reflected badly on her own notions of qualifying for that particular honour. She duly excused herself, along with her female companions, to find more appreciative company.
Kate thanked Murdoch for his compliment with a bright smile. ‘It does me good to hear you say it. But I was thinking, Mr
Osborne … you’re looking sprightly yourself.’
He chuckled at what he regarded as her directness, which he liked. ‘I try to. How’s your mother keeping?’
‘She’s all right, thanks,’ she replied, then added, ‘And my father.’
‘Glad to hear it. You and our Mr Froggatt seem to be courting strong now.’
‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that, Mr Osborne.’
‘Oh? You surprise me, Kate. A fine lad like that from a well-respected family, and with a bright future ahead of him as an architect. I’d have thought he’d be a good catch for any young madam, ha?’
‘Oh, he’d be a good catch for somebody, I daresay,’ Kate said. ‘But I might still chuck him back into the pond.’
‘Oh? How’s that then?’
Kate shrugged. ‘He’s a bit young for me … in the head, I mean. He’s a bit of a pushover. We’ll see how he shapes up.’
Murdoch guffawed into his drink and took a swig. ‘Pushover?’ he queried. ‘I ain’t heard that word afore but I can guess what it means. You’d be a proper handful, I warrant, young Kate, ha? By the living Christ, I wish I was twenty years younger. You’d not find me such a pushover.’
‘Quite a blade with the young women in your day, I bet, Mr Osborne, eh? I can just imagine.’
‘Oh, me and Eli Meese used to have some fun together, I can tell ye.’
‘Eli Meese? Lord! Don’t let Priss or Harriet hear you say that. He’s a churchwarden, they tell me, whatever that means.’
‘And a Justice. A Justice and a churchwarden. There’s no flies on Eli Meese, ha?’
Clarence returned, carrying their drinks. ‘How do, Mr Osborne. Sorry. I could’ve got you a drink as well …’
‘No matter, lad. I can easy afford me own.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of the cost, Mr Osborne. I simply never thought. What are you drinking? I’ll go and get you another.’
‘No, leave it, lad. It’s of no consequence. I ain’t in no rush to get legless anyroad. I can think of nothing more degrading, ha? Moderation’s the thing where drink’s concerned.’