‘Best you stay here, where Mistress Palmer pays you, that’s something I can’t do,’ he said.
‘Paying is not always in money,’ she whispered with a secretive wink.
It had been Barrass’s intention not to see Harriet again, but he remembered well how she abandoned all inhibitions and pretence of primness once they were alone. To Arthur, he had declared her the most exciting woman he had known.
‘At eight of the clock tomorrow, shall we meet and you can tell me all the day’s adventures?’ she whispered. ‘And perhaps have a few more?’
He nodded, ashamed of his weakness but unwilling to deny himself the pleasures she offered.
Barrass left the alehouse and walked to the grassy bank on which the house of Kenneth and Ceinwen stood. It was white-washed and roofed with thatch. Windows gleamed in the morning sunshine, the curtains, a bright and cheerful yellow, were opened and tied back to let the light into the small dark rooms within.
The door stood open, defying the wind that still gusted, but which was weakening as if the receding tide were persuading it back towards the distant horizon, to torment other places. A sack of potatoes that were sprouting into growth, and a box of sad-looking green leaves, stood near the door and Ceinwen was serving a couple of women who had come to buy. There were eggs too, both duck and hens’ eggs, soiled and with straw sticking to them, plus a dish of curd cheese to which pieces of chopped, dried garlic had been added. The last of the day’s oysters were displayed, having been brought by Olwen, the fisherman’s daughter, on her way to her work.
Barrass pushed his way past the shoppers and went into the room which Kenneth used as his office for the deliveries of the Gower mail. A fire burned in the hearth and from a pan hanging over it came the smell of boiling fish.
‘Your dinner, Kenneth?’ Barrass asked, nodding towards the simmering pan.
‘Preserve me from that! No, it’s fish that Spider couldn’t sell. Ceinwen is boiling it for the fowls.’ He stood up and reached to take a thick, leather-covered ledger from the shelf near the window. ‘It’s very late you are, boy! And don’t blame the postboy from Monmouth. I saw you going into the alehouse early enough. What d’you find to keep you so long there, boy? That Harriet again I’ll be bound.’
‘Pitcher offered me food and I find that harder to resist than women,’ Barrass smiled.
Barrass was a tall, strongly-built young man. Barely seventeen, so far as anyone could tell, yet with shaving already a daily necessity. His body was broad and he stood several inches taller than Kenneth. His shock of wiry dark hair, which he allowed to grow unrestrained, gave the impression of several more inches. Dark eyes shone with enthusiasm and confidence in the young face and stood in contrast to the worried and anxious expression of Kenneth.
They both pored over the ledger for a while, checking that all the letters for delivery had been correctly entered, and the monies due noted correctly on both Barrass’s notebook and the page of the ledger.
‘Seventeen letters, quite a large number for a Wednesday,’ Kenneth commented.
‘Yes, and as widespread as they possibly could be!’ Barrass groaned. ‘Why is it that the Rector of Rhossili always has a letter on the same day that there are some for Oxwich on the south coast?’
‘It’s the way of the world for poor folk like you and me,‘ Kenneth said lugubriously.
The Royal Mail arrived into Swansea three times a week brought by Ben Gammon, the sixty-year-old postboy, who brought it from the last leg of the London to Carmarthen relay from Monmouth. The mail continued via Brecon to Carmarthen, being met at each point by other postboys who carried it to some, of the larger towns. With the postboys travelling some ten miles in each direction, the network of deliveries and collections usually resulted in a letter reaching London in five days.
Ben Gammon arrived in the Swansea sorting office, which was situated in a building at the side of The Voyager Inn, at six o’clock in the evenings of Sunday, Tuesday and Friday, and on the morning following his arrival, Barrass rode in from Mumbles and collected the ones for Mumbles and Gower. He then waited for the letters to be sorted by Kenneth and Ceinwen and, as soon as they were ready, set off on foot to walk around the peninsular.
On this particular Wednesday, Barrass was fortunate enough to be offered a lift by a carter. Seeing the cart approaching him, heading the same way, he had waved hopefully and run as the cart with the two large horses pulling it had rumbled to a stop.
As the cart drew near he had been dismayed to see that the driver was Carter Phillips, someone he would have preferred to avoid. If he had recognized him before waving to him, Barrass would have hidden until he had passed.
‘Ho there, Barrass,’ Phillips called and he reached a hand to help pull the young man aboard. ‘I’m going as far as the Rhossili Rectory if you’ve a mind to ride with me.’
Barrass was torn between being grateful for the ride and dreading the way that conversations with Carter Phillips always turned to the need for a man to take a wife, Carter Phillips’s sister Harriet being the main contender for that privilege.
They stopped at a small village to gather the firewood they were to collect for delivery at the Rectory close to the sea. Carter Phillips accepted Barrass’s help to load the cart as a matter of course and again Barrass wished he had recognized the carter in time to avoid him. He climbed back on to the heavily loaded, flat cart with the apprehensive certainty that he would also be expected to assist with the unloading, and he wondered if the acceptance of the ride would in fact lose him time rather than gain it. It was definitely more energetic than walking the full distance! As the cart once more stopped and Carter Phillips looked from him to the load of wood, his eyes filled with expectancy, Barrass was convinced he had made a mistake!
‘Spare a while to help me unload and I’ll be sure to put a good word in for you with my sister,’ the man coaxed, seeing the unwillingness in Barrass’s face. He did not know that a good word for Barrass to Harriet was hardly necessary. If he knew how well I already know Harriet, he’d bury me under these logs! Barrass thought, staring at the huge, muscular arms of the carrier.
‘I’ll be late,’ Barrass said reluctantly, and with a lack of truth. Carter Phillips, whistling cheerfully, seemed not to hear. Barrass groaned as a log of roughly sawn timber was thrust into his unwilling arms. ‘I have to be at Port-Eynon before nightfall.’
‘And so you will be. I’ll take you there once we’ve finished here, and, what’s more, you’re invited to a fine supper tomorrow night that Harriet will cook for you. Now, how does that sound?’
Barrass was comforted by the sight of two burly men on their way up the hill from the Rectory, obviously sent to help them.
‘Very well,’ he sighed, ‘but remind me to refuse if you offer me a lift again!’
The carter laughed good-naturedly, and felt Barrass’s strong arms.
‘Good training this’ll be, my friend. For one day, perhaps, you and I will be partners in this carting business.’
Barrass did not reply. The suggestion was clear, the man was offering a partnership – and his sister for a wife! But the thought of spending his life alongside Carter Phillips, struggling with heavy loads for people who considered themselves his betters, did not appeal.
He left the carter at the top of the hill leading to Oxwich, and checking on the letters still to deliver before the place where his overnight accommodation was arranged, found himself with an hour or two to spare. April was too early in the year to bathe with any degree of enjoyment, yet he went into the tide. He found the surge of the foaming water invigorating and after a while, surprisingly warming, as he splashed and swam. The bubbling foam seemed to have gained heat in its pounding of the rocks below the church.
He knew that the poor lodgings Kenneth paid for, for him to spend the night, would not have hot water for the wooden tub which always hung, green with disuse, on the outside wall.
The food would be mean too, a dish of potatoes and stringy
vegetables left from the previous harvest, and a small amount of stewed meat. Bread to mop up the juices, if he were fortunate enough to have any, and perhaps a piece of hard cheese. He wondered how much Kenneth paid the old couple but did not ask. The food was not important, and the bed, in a lean-to behind the earthen walled cottage, was no worse than the room in which he slept at Kenneth and Ceinwen’s.
He was frequently invited to stay for food at houses he passed, although he had been too long poor himself readily to take advantage of the people who spared the little they could in exchange for the news he could pass on. But by accepting a little from a few cottagers, he usually managed to keep hunger at bay. In this way he became a welcome sight, one who brought a little of the outside world to the small villages as he passed through, without beggaring them with demands for food and drink.
The sound of his horn, blown as he reached the village green, or the crossroads close to a small group of houses too small to be given that appellation, brought riotous movement. Excited children came first, then women and the old. Then men, and dogs, and even the occasional pig ran out to greet him. He would pass on messages received during his long walk, and hear news of the happenings, both happy and sad, in the small community, before departing on his way.
* * *
On the following day he returned to Mumbles, stopping when requested, to collect letters to be sent on their way to London, or to others in the locality for a small fee. Rain had begun with the break of day. He was used to the changes in the weather, and carried a waterproof, leather cloak, but he still hated the rain. If there was one thing likely to reduce his spirits, it was a soaking. It wasn’t walking with the water dripping from his hair and darkening the colour of his clothes and the leather bag that he disliked, it was the aftereffects, when he arrived at the end of his journey with practically everything he owned completely soaked.
Living without a real home, having only the use of the cold and damp room behind Kenneth’s house, he had the daunting prospect of trying to dry his coat and trousers. Having few items of clothing, he could not manage if they took days to dry. He frequently put on clothes that were still wet from the previous day’s rain. Barefoot throughout his childhood, his boots were some he had found abandoned on a village midden and were distorted from their original shape, stiff and uncomfortable. They felt far worse when they were cold and wet too.
It was a Thursday, the day when Kenneth made his excuses to his wife, explaining to her that Thursdays were always long, and Barrass needed his help to finish in reasonable time. Barrass hated Thursdays. Kenneth went to visit Betson-the-flowers in her cottage along the green lane, for an hour of love and attention. Barrass was his alibi and therefore could not go home until Kenneth did. A rainy Thursday was as much as he could bear!
They met at the end of the green lane; Barrass was early and Kenneth was late. Barrass had attempted to make a tent of his cloak, and he sat in it, a picture of abject misery.
‘I don’t care what you say, Kenneth,’ he shivered as the ex-letter-carrier greeted him. ‘I am not sitting here for a further two hours while you warm yourself in front of Betson-the-flowers’s roaring fire!’
‘But, boy, you promised me if I let you take my job and carry the letters for Gower you’d keep quiet about Thursdays!’
‘Keep quiet I will, but sit here I will not!’ Before Kenneth could argue further, Barrass stood up, water pouring from the cloak in a torrent on to the grass around him, and added, ‘Going to the alehouse I am. I’ll come home in good time, but not until I’m dry, warm and fed!’
‘The letters, boy! You mustn’t go astray with the letters!’ Kenneth called, but Barrass did not hear.
Squelching along the muddy lane, sliding and grasping at trees to save himself falling, he went to the village and, avoiding passing Kenneth’s house, went into the alehouse and called for Pitcher.
Pitcher came and after a look at his bedraggled figure standing tall and large near the fire, already steaming in the heat, he called for Arthur to fetch spare clothes.
‘There won’t be much here to fit you, boy,’ he laughed, comparing their different height and build; he being several inches shorter than Barrass, his shoulders far narrower, ‘but at least they’ll be clean and dry.’
Barrass followed him up the stairs to the room where Pitcher’s family ate. No company was expected so the table was simply laid for four; Pitcher, Emma and the twins. While Pitcher barred the door, Barrass dragged the unwilling clothes from his wet body and rubbed himself dry on the towels Emma had sent with the spare clothes.
‘Thanks Pitcher,’ Barrass sighed as he pulled on the ill-fitting, but warm, dry clothes. ‘I’d have been going out in wet clothes for days after a soaking like I’ve had today.’
‘Ceinwen dries them for you surely?’
‘No, I have to hang them in the room where I sleep at the back of the house, and hope for a warm night.’
‘You don’t sleep in that old lean-to at the back, where they used to keep wood?’ Pitcher half smiled, expecting Barrass to jeer and share his laugh. Instead, the young man nodded.
‘I don’t mind, but drying clothes is a problem. When has it not been!’ he added bitterly, thinking back over the homeless years of his childhood.
‘But in the evening when you eat, surely you could put your things around the fire?’
‘I spend the evening when I leave here, in the lean-to. It’s there that I eat. Now Pitcher, don’t sound off like the blowhole up on the cliffs,’ Barrass warned, ‘like a grampus with a headache! It’s grateful I am. At least I don’t have to live out in the fields or on the cliffs, like I did before I started helping Kenneth with the letters. Grateful I am,’ he insisted.
‘How much do you earn, boy?’ Pitcher asked when they were down in the bar again, seated in the inglenook close to the roaring fire. ‘When the week ends, what do you have in your pocket?’
‘I don’t want to complain, Pitcher.’
‘How much, boy?’
‘Well, Ceinwen has to take for my keep, and for the daily meal, so it’s about one shilling.’
‘The man deserves to be hanged! There’s you doing all the tramping and traipsing around, and with a shed to sleep in that’s far worse than places where people house their pigs! Disgraceful, that’s what it is.’
‘I’m glad of the chance to work for the post, Pitcher. It’s only for a while, just to show the postmaster in Swansea that I’m good and reliable and honest. One day I’ll be a postboy and carry the letters on a horse from Swansea to Monmouth and back. That is my dream, Pitcher, and I don’t want you to do anything to spoil my chance of living it.’
‘If you should live long enough,’ Pitcher muttered. ‘Hanged he should be. Hanged!’ Pitcher wondered if the postmaster would allow the situation to continue if someone were to tell him what was happening.
‘You won’t complain to Kenneth, will you?’ Barrass said.
‘No, boy, I won’t complain – to Kenneth.’
Pitcher was thoughtful during the rest of the evening. When Barrass set off for supper with Kenneth and Ceinwen, his eyes followed him, frowning slightly with the idea he had been considering. He was thinking of the advantages to his trade if the post were to be collected here, at the alehouse, instead of the small cottage on the bank.
Chapter Two
After delivering the basket of oysters to Ceinwen, Olwen, the daughter of Spider, the fisherman, walked up the steep hill away from the beach towards the woodland above. She was a small figure, thin legs revealed below the lifted skirt of her woollen dress. Her freckled face was already tanned with the sun, her untidy hair blowing around it was spangled by the glow of the morning into an aureole. Her hair had once been long, and having burnt it trying to make it curl, she had cut it in the hope that a more mature style would give her the appearance of a woman instead of a child.
From the wood, her way led along the green lane on which Betson-the-flowers lived. Olwen saw that the curtain, a signal whic
h told her visitors whether or not she was occupied, was open. Olwen saw the door open and paused to spend a few moments talking to the young woman.
The differences in the two people were many. Olwen was small, looking years younger than her fourteen years. She had blue eyes that sparkled with innocence and the joy of life, and full lips that seemed always looking for an excuse for laughter.
Betson-the-flowers was so named for her love of the blooms that always filled her room in the old cottage of which only one room was habitable. She used flowers that were given to her by her many visitors to hide the shabbiness and precarious condition of her cottage. With the roaring fire she kept lit even through the months of summer, the flowers and the polished and shining windows, she gave the old place a magical air.
Betson was taller than Olwen, her hair was long and a rich red. She always wore black, with just a few touches of colour. She dressed habitually in long flowing skirts of varying lengths, one over another to give layers. The layers continued to the shirts and shawls and head covers she wore. Most of the clothing had been discarded by others, who railed at the sight of Betson, wearing clothes they had no further use for and turning them into items of great attraction with her innate skill.
‘Are you off to work, Olwen-the-fish?’ she asked as the girl hesitated.
‘Yes, I work for William Ddole at Ddole house.’
‘I know. I know most of what goes on hereabouts,’ Betson smiled. ‘I know you don’t walk past my cottage very often. Want to talk to me, do you?’
‘I – er – of course not!’ Olwen longed to ask her how she made herself so attractive that so many men from the village and further afield risked their wives’ wrath and found an excuse to call on her, give her money as well as flowers, pay for coal and wood to be delivered, supplying between them the means for her to survive in comfort without any apparent way of earning money. Perhaps Betson-the-flowers could teach her how to make herself look older. But now, looking into the dark, quizzical eyes of the woman, she lost her nerve.
The Posthorn Inn Page 2