The Posthorn Inn
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Copyright
The Posthorn Inn
Grace Thompson
To all those library assistants who have been so generous with their time and help
Chapter One
Pitcher Palmer stood outside the entrance of his alehouse watching the road leading to the town of Swansea. He was waiting for the letter-carrier. The wind was strong and, as the edge of the tide was close by, the wind was wet with spray. It blew through his Welsh flannel shirt and made him shiver. But he did not move, apart from glancing back towards the corner of the road leading up to Newton and, occasionally, up above his head to the window where his wife Emma often sat to watch the activities of the village.
He stepped towards the doorway, to be hidden from her view. The letter he was expecting was one he did not want her to see. Emma was his partner in almost everything, but his hopes of turning the alehouse they owned into an inn where people could eat and stay overnight, he wanted, for the moment, to keep to himself.
Pitcher was not a large man, but there was a look about him that suggested strength. His eyes, constantly moving – as if watching for the slightest hint of a way of making money, some said – were small and of that blue which sometimes shines green. He was dressed in a pair of brown wool-cloth trousers and the shirt which had been made by Emma from the Welsh flannel she bought annually in the Pontypridd market. A waistcoat of velvet, once his best but now relegated to morning wear, was faded and spotted with stains and he knew that Emma would be furious with him for wearing it outside to be seen by passers-by. She insisted that if he wore it at all, it was to be in the cellar. ‘It’s very important to keep up appearances, Pitcher.’ He smiled as he imagined her saying it.
The roar of the waves bustling in filled his ears. Even louder was the crash as they touched and exploded in white cascades over the walls of the small houses that had stood defying them for years. Each wave sent echoes, reverberating in harsh counterpoint to the next, making boats bob and sway along the shore, irritable at being disturbed. Pitcher shivered and leaned in the direction from which Barrass would come with the post, in the hope of hearing the clopping of the pony’s hooves above the noise.
With three daughters, each needing a husband, Emma had persuaded Pitcher to make her a parlour instead of the bedrooms to rent out that he so badly wanted. Now, with one daughter married, there were still the twins. He sighed, doubting if he could persuade Emma to listen to his plans. But there was no harm in starting enquiries. And perhaps, if he could show her what he had in mind, and what it would cost, her good business sense would come to the fore and she would let him have his way.
He was rewarded at last by the sound of the post horn being blown by the letter-carrier as he turned the corner, and moments later, by the sight of him appearing in the distance; leather bag across his shoulders, body bent against the gusting wind. Other riders had approached and passed him as he had waited, but Barrass the letter-carrier was easily recognized by the red waistcoat he wore, even if he had not sounded the horn to warn of his arrival. The dark-haired young man riding towards him saw him waiting and waved a greeting. His wave was so enthusiastic that Pitcher guessed that the letter he waited for had arrived.
‘Quick, boy, let me put it out of sight before Emma comes down.’
Barrass delved into the leather bag and handed the white, folded pages to him.
‘Not supposed to do this you know. I’m supposed to give them intact to Kenneth for sorting,’ Barrass said, accepting Pitcher’s payment for his letter and placing the money in the leather bag. But his smile gave a lack of seriousness to the words. Despite the many differences in their situations and their ages, they were friends.
‘Take the bag to Kenneth and Ceinwen then, and come back for some food before you set off around Gower. It’s a chill morning and you’ll need a good packing before you go,’ Pitcher said.
He shouted for Arthur, the potboy, to get from the cellar and start frying bread and some eggs ‘for Barrass and yourself’, while then he opened his letter.
Arthur, a thin individual, bony-jawed and with an Adam’s apple that did a jig at the slightest prospect of trouble, listened to the words with disbelief. He was constantly hungry and he quickly abandoned the bottles he was sorting and sprang up the cellar steps to do as Pitcher asked. A hot breakfast, and Barrass to keep him company while he ate, that was a rare treat. He passed a table on which a large platter stood. Under a vinegar-soaked cloth the remains of a cooked ham sat issuing a tempting aroma. Pitcher was still at the front door, Emma and the girls were safe upstairs. He quickly cut two generous slices which he intended to fry with the bread and the eggs, and hurried to where the large frying pan was hanging. Trotting along beside him was his dog, who seemed like an appendage, rarely more than a few yards from his master’s feet. The dog seemed to share Arthur’s grin as Barrass left them to hand the letters to Kenneth and Ceinwen to sort.
‘Arthur, come here at once.’ Emma called down the stairs from the door of the dining room. She tapped her foot impatiently while Arthur put down the pan and hid the ham he had stolen, and ran up the stairs. When he appeared, anxious-eyed, his Adam’s apple wobbling nervously in his throat, she waved fussily for him to close the door.
His shoulders drooped as he prepared for a telling off. Frowns crisscrossed his young face as he tried to think of the reason for any complaint. She couldn’t have known about the ham. Could she? Pitcher often said she could see through walls and hear a mouse sneezing above the sound of the quarrymen. To his relief, Mistress Palmer smiled at him.
‘What’s going on, Arthur?’ she said in a conspiratorial whisper.
‘Going on, Mistress Palmer? What d’you mean?’
‘Pitcher’s been like a drunk on a frozen pond since he left his bed. Unable to stand still. He’s waiting for something, a letter maybe?’
‘Potboy I am, not his assistant, Mistress, begging your pardon. How would I know what’s going on?’
‘Because there’s never a thing that goes on here without you knowing. What letter did he send?’
‘Bills, that’s all I ever see. Demands for people to pay their debts and demands for him to pay his. Nothing of interest ever comes from the post.’
The outer door closed and they both looked towards the door to the stairs as the sound of Pitcher’s approaching feet was heard.
‘Go you, I’ll talk to you later.’ Emma dismissed Arthur with a wave of her fat hand and began to stack the used plates that were still on the table from the family’s breakfast. Pitcher and Arthur met in the doorway and Emma pushed past them both and called for the servant to come and clear away.
‘Use the bell, Emma,’ Pitcher said as they all staggered in confusion. She did and he covered his ears with his hands.
‘Not to deafen me, Mrs Palmer!’ he said irritably.
‘I want a word, Mr Palmer!’
Pitcher glanced at Arthur as the boy ran thankfully down the staircase back to the breakfast he had been asked to
cook. But he was given no sign that suggested Emma had made him talk.
‘Mistress Palmer,’ Pitcher said firmly. ‘I wish you would not stop the boy working. I give him a task to do and you call him up on some excuse. I wish you would leave below the stairs to me, I really do.’ He always found it wise to begin an interview like the one he was expecting with an attack.
‘Pitcher, dear,’ Emma softened her tone. ‘I was concerned about you, standing out there waiting for your letter in the cold morning air and you with only an old waistcoat between your goose-pimpled skin and the wildness of the wind.’
Pitcher shuffled nervously, wondering how much she knew and how he could explain about not telling her about his enquiries before.
‘It’s come, has it?’ she asked. ‘The letter?’
‘What letter? What are you talking about?’
‘You know very well what letter, dear Pitcher. From London, was it?’
Pitcher knew when he was beaten.
‘All right. It isn’t as if I wasn’t going to tell you, I just wanted a few facts before I discussed it, that’s all.’
‘Of course you wouldn’t keep anything so important as – that letter – a secret from me. See it, can I?’ She held out her hand and Pitcher reached into his pocket and handed it to her.
‘How did you know about it?’ he asked. ‘Just out of interest, like.’
‘I didn’t, until now,’ she replied as her eyes scanned the page. ‘But why else would you be standing half-frozen staring along the road waiting for Barrass if it wasn’t a letter of some importance?’
Pitcher laughed. Polly, the small, thin, pale-faced servant, came apologetically in and stacked the dirty china on to a tray. When she had departed, Pitcher hugged his wife, burying his face in her curled hair.
‘Too smart for me you are, Emma.’
‘And don’t you forget it,’ she hugged him back, her breast heaving with laughter. ‘Now, what are we going to do about this dream of yours, Pitcher? Seems to me that you won’t settle until you are the keeper of a grand, important and profitable inn.’
‘I thought to call it The Posthorn Inn. That’s supposing we get permission for the change.’
Emma thought for a moment, staring up at the ceiling as if for inspiration.
‘Mistress Palmer of The Posthorn Inn, Mumbles – Yes, Pitcher, that sounds very well, even if the post horn is only sounded by Barrass riding on Kenneth’s pony!’
* * *
Later that day, while the table was being prepared for dinner guests by Polly, assisted by her sister Seranne, on loan from Ddole House, Emma was in the parlour listening to the complaints of her two daughters.
‘Mamma, you really expect us to manage without any new clothes for the summer?’ Daisy almost shouted. ‘But last year’s are so soiled and ragged, we couldn’t be seen in decent company wearing them. I swear, Mamma, you’d be shamed never to recover if we went to visit our friends in last year’s faded clothes!’
Pansy dropped the waistcoat she was embroidering and stood beside her twin. She had never been so thoroughly vain as Daisy, but even she found it hard to understand how her mother could ask such a thing of them.
‘We wore them in the house long after they had passed their usefulness as visiting clothes, Mamma,’ she added.
‘Anyway, I’ve promised the best of them to Seranne and Polly to cut down for themselves and the servants.’ Daisy said the words as if they would end the argument completely.
‘Then you’ll have to tell her you’ve changed your mind,’ Emma retorted.
With the income from the alehouse, supplemented by the activities of the boats bringing illegal wines and spirits and tobacco from the continent, Pitcher and Emma had been able to give their three girls a comfortable life. Violet, Daisy and Pansy had attended the very best school and had made friends with, if not the richest, at least some of the more respectable of the local families.
Twice each year, Mistress Gronow, the seamstress from the town, visited and brought with her samples of cloth from which the girls ordered new clothes. They needed morning dresses, day dresses, walking and riding clothes, hats and shawls, as well as the more ornate gowns for the many parties and dances they were invited to attend.
For Emma, it was all a wonderful, unimagined success. Her own beginnings had been small and rather poor, but with Pitcher goaded on to better and better objectives, they had succeeded to the stage where she had appointed herself the decider of good taste and opinion for the village. She irritated a number of her one-time friends, and was a fount of irrepressible mirth for many more, but most accepted her and tolerated her fine ways, considering her to be a harmless, and often kindly, oddity.
Now, her patiently learnt manners and careful speech were forgotten as she reminded her girls of how fortunate they were compared with most of the families in the village and around about.
‘You should be pleased to help your father after what he’s done for you,’ she shouted, her red face growing ever redder, her plump figure seeming to swell with the gases of pure rage.
‘Mamma,’ Pansy warned, ‘don’t distress yourself or you’ll have a fit!’
‘I think that having taught us to accept a certain standard, you have no right to ask us to abandon it on some silly whim of Father’s!’ snapped Daisy, always the least tolerant of the twosome.
Below them, attending to the feeding of himself and Barrass, between attending to the wants of two early customers, Arthur glanced nervously at Pitcher. The alehouse keeper was beginning to sigh with shortening patience. As Arthur watched, Pitcher’s control finally exploded. He hurried from the barroom, where he had been adding wood and attempting to draw the fire into an even brighter blaze, and ran two at a time up the stairs.
Leaving their almost empty plates, Arthur and Barrass followed to listen shamelessly at the foot of the stairs.
‘What is going on, Mistress Palmer!’ Pitcher demanded, bursting into the parlour. ‘Do you want to provide entertainment for the whole village with your rankling? No one is drinking down there for fear of missing a word!’
‘Dadda, is it true? Do you want us to go about wearing clothes ragabonds would be ashamed to own?’ Daisy said before her mother could gain the breath to reply.
‘We have to go carefully for a month or so until certain things are paid for, yes.’
‘But we can’t do without clothes! We can’t! Mamma, tell him!’
Confused as to whose side she was on, Emma murmured something unintelligible and looked at her husband.
‘I have some expenses which means that temporarily, my dear daughters, we will all have to cut back on outgoings. Outgoings is, temporarily, out!’ Pitcher explained.
‘We’ve been brought up used to the good things of life, and we have friends who are likewise blessed. Dadda, you must find a way for it to continue or,’ Daisy paused to give her words their full effect, ‘—or, you’ll have to send us away, so we don’t have to face the disgrace.’
‘You just come-along-a-me one day, miss, and see how most families live. Then tell me that doing without a few dresses and frills will disgrace you!’
Both girls lowered their heads, knowing that for the moment their father must have the last word. The soft, ladylike sobs coming from their mother assured them that their pleas would be argued favourably at a later and more advantageous time. Daisy sat and frowned and Pansy returned to her sewing.
Outside on the landing, two faces were pressed against the door of the dining room, looking out. Polly, kneeling below Harriet, her eyes wide in the thin, drawn face, covered her mouth with a slender hand to stifle her giggles. Harriet stuffed the corner of the gingham work apron that covered her black and white uniform between her large, strong teeth.
‘Mistress Lady-until-roused-Palmer has a voice fit for selling shellfish to sailors in a storm, hasn’t she?’ Harriet whispered.
In the parlour, Pitcher, his arms around the shoulders of his daughters, drew them to the window which look
ed out on to the street below. Percy the stableboy was helping as a carriage was turned, its horses being backed into the narrow entrance of his stables. The occupants, a young woman and a young man, and another couple, possibly the parents of one of them, had alighted and stood looking over the sea. The ladies were huddled in shawls, the gentlemen wore thick coats which had additional cloaks attached around the shoulders.
‘Come for the fresh sea breezes,’ Pitcher explained. ‘They’ll be wanting a meal and some warm, clean beds soon. But where will they go for them? Back into town! I want them to stay, daughters. Stay and spend their money here, in our alehouse.’
Emma and the twins were both watching the tall, handsome young man, and all three were thinking of the advantages of having others like him spending the night under their roof. Unconsciously, Emma patted the straying hairs around her shoulders, tidying them into the wig she wore. There was more to consider than money. She had two daughters still to find husbands.
‘Your father knows what’s right, my lovely girls,’ she said softly. ‘He’ll do his best for us all.’
For once, Daisy did not argue. Her eyes were following the progress of the foursome walking along the edge of the tide, her intelligent mind considering the prospects her father had outlined.
* * *
Pitcher did not know for certain that Arthur had told Emma of his plans, but he cuffed him anyway as he ran down the stairs to where the potboy and Barrass had hurriedly returned to their food.
‘What’s that for?’ Arthur protested.
‘You know very well!’ Pitcher replied. ‘Now hurry and clear away that mess and get back to your work in the cellar!’
Harriet, the sister of Carter Phillips the local carrier, came down the stairs. She had been hired to assist with the dinner party. She joined Arthur and Barrass as they collected the pewter plates and mugs to take to the kitchen. She took the plates from Barrass and looked up at him with a smile.
‘Let me do that, Barrass, there’s plenty for you to do today, walking all over Gower with important letters. Wish I could come with you,’ she sighed, and Barrass returned the smile, his dark eyes moist with yearning.
The Posthorn Inn Page 1