The Posthorn Inn

by The Posthorn Inn (retail) (epub)

  ‘Run after Barrass will you, Olwen, so this can go into tomorrow’s bag?’

  Olwen did so, dropping the bale of cloth to the ground. She handed the letter to Barrass and when she returned, William was directing David to carry the heavy parcel into the house for her. She wondered briefly about the interest he was showing in the servants’ wellbeing. She had carried heavier loads than the curtain material without a thought of expecting help. He’s almost treating us like a replacement for his lost family, poor man, she thought.

  For the rest of the day Olwen worked hard, carrying in water and coal, doing jobs without waiting for Seranne or Annie to point them out. At the end of the day she ran home full of the prospect of reliving her morning with Barrass, every wonderful moment remembered, revived time and again, and then stored.

  * * *

  On the following evening when Barrass went with the local letters into Swansea to receive the newly arrived ones from Walter Waterman, Pitcher went with him. When Ben Gammon had arrived and handed over his leather, baize-lined bag, Pitcher sat at a table outside the inn and watched the scene. It was raining and most of the people who waited to ply Ben with drink and hear his news were inside the inn. In the partial shelter of a large chestnut tree, Pitcher huddled under his cloak and waited for the crowd to disperse.

  Barrass put his letters into his bag after examining them and planning his route to deliver them, before rejoining him.

  ‘I’ve told Walter you want to have a word, Pitcher,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to wait with you?’

  ‘Best if you do,’ Pitcher replied. ‘I think we need to use all our persuasions to get him to give us what we want.’

  When Ben had passed them on his way into the inn, with a cheerful greeting, Pitcher stood and tilted his head for the rain to run out of the brim of his hat and walked towards the sorting office. Walter limped towards him when he entered and smiled a wary welcome.

  ‘Come to state your case yet again, Pitcher Palmer?’ the man asked. He looked exaggeratedly behind Pitcher and seeing Barrass, reacted in mock surprise. ‘What, no daughter today? Perhaps a trifle early for her to be about I suppose.’

  ‘Daisy is at a music lesson this morning,’ Pitcher explained.

  ‘Pity, she has a far prettier face to plead than either of you!’

  Pitcher ground his teeth in silent rage. The man was rude and unpleasant.

  ‘It is not my daughter’s place to plead with anyone, sir.’

  ‘Of course not, but her presence gives me the mood to listen with deeper regard for your opinion,’ Walter replied.

  ‘Have you considered my case?’ Pitcher asked. ‘Barrass here will tell you honestly of the way Kenneth has treated the honourable and favoured task. Giving the work to others casually and carelessly while he dallies with unsavoury people, ignoring the comfort of those he employs and giving the Royal Mail a determined lack of dignity.’

  ‘Yet Kenneth has been the letter-carrier for many years. Why should I take it from him when I have had no complaints about the service he gives?’

  ‘Because it’s Barrass you have to thank for the fine manner in which the service is carried out.’

  ‘And Barrass has helped Kenneth for – how many years?’ Walter asked sarcastically.

  ‘A matter of months only,’ Pitcher admitted.

  ‘Perhaps you can come and see me again, when I have made my final decision. And—’ Walter added, limping towards the half-open door to see them out, ‘perhaps you will come on a day when your daughter is free to accompany you. We could eat together at the inn, on Friday perhaps?’

  ‘Haughty young beggar!’ Pitcher grumbled as they went to where they had left their horses. ‘Thinking I’d use my Daisy to advance my chances.’

  ‘And of course you wouldn’t…’ Barrass smiled.

  ‘Tell me, Barrass,’ Pitcher grinned, ‘what should we tell Emma?’

  They watched as Ben set off on his return, waved off by the familiar faces who greeted his every arrival and departure like a pack of affection-starved puppies. Barrass noticed that his bag was lacking its strap. When Barrass mentioned it to him, Ben said, ‘I says to my wife, I says, ho, wife, you will have me accused of carelessness with the Royal Mail if I should let one of these letters slip to the ground. “Ben,” she says to me, “I will fix it for sure this very morrow.” But the morrow comes and at once it’s today! So I fear I will have to find myself a pretty little sewing maid afore I get it all made safe. And soon!’ he went on, unable to resist making a story out of a simple remark. ‘I shall have to talk urgent and soon to some sweet maid. Can’t have Ben Gammon accused of being careless with his letters,’ he laughed. ‘Daren’t risk no complaints, dare I?” He rolled his eyes and added, ‘I thinks to myself, I thinks, plenty of folk willing to step in and do it for me, eh, Pitcher?’ he teased.

  Crumbling at the impudence of the man, Pitcher turned away and he and Barrass rode back to the village.

  * * *

  When Daisy heard what was expected of her she agreed at once. Pitcher was pleased but rather surprised that all the arguments he had prepared to persuade her were not necessary.

  ‘I want us to have that letter receiving office,’ she said. ‘Kenneth doesn’t deserve it and Ceinwen is the sort to make money from something or the other, and neither will starve.’

  ‘Daisy!’ Emma remonstrated. ‘This is no way for a young lady with your schooling and position to talk!’ She turned to Pitcher. ‘Really, Mr Palmer! What are you thinking of that you allow your daughter to become mixed up in business!’ She spat out the last word as if it were something with a sour taste.

  ‘Business is what keeps us warm and with full bellies and never forget it,’ he retaliated, although he knew that Emma appreciated the importance of the alehouse and his plans for enlarging its success. Her protest at involving their daughter in appealing to Walter Waterman was for appearances and not a strongly felt dismay.

  ‘Why shouldn’t we all go in,’ Pansy surprised them by suggesting. ‘If we went as a family, he couldn’t fail to see how important we are in the community.’ She put down the sewing with which she spent much of her time and smiled at them. ‘I would enjoy a visit to the town. I need some new cotton and silks for the cushion I am making for Violet’s baby.’

  ‘Cushion?’ Pitcher said. ‘I thought you were working on a shirt for me?’

  ‘The shirt is finished, Dadda, and it was for Arthur, not you,’ Pansy smiled.

  ‘Hand sewing shirts for the potboy!’ Emma gasped. ‘Whatever next!’

  Pansy did not tell them that, unnoticed, she had made three shirts and several stocks and two embroidered waistcoats for Arthur, which he had hidden away in a box beside his bed in the cellar.

  One waistcoat was specially fine. Made of a snuff-coloured velvet, Pansy had neatly covered it with small stitches in soft greens and lemon and cream. The back and the pocket linings were taffeta and generously pleated. She had carefully wrapped it and hidden it at the bottom of her deepest drawer.

  She and Arthur rarely met for more than a few minutes, yet their affection for each other grew by the week. There was nothing to show to any but the keenest observer that they were any more than daughter of the house and servant, yet when they did manage to find a few moments to be together, the nature of their relationship was clearly as relaxed and comfortable as an old and well tried friendship.

  When Pitcher and Barrass were occupied in the rebuilding of the rooms above the newly enlarged stables, and Daisy and Emma were busily writing letters to friends, when Edwin and Violet Prince came to tea with their daughter, Gabriella, with Emma fully and happily occupied, Pansy took the opportunity to run down to the bar-room, which was mercifully empty of customers.

  ‘Arthur, come up, I want to talk to you.’ she whispered from the top of the cellar steps. Arthur appeared behind her, attracted her attention with a cough and she gasped with shock. ‘Oh! I thought you were Mamma!’ She unfolded the paper-wrapped parcel she carri
ed and showed him the new cushion she was making. ‘I told Mamma this is for Violet,’ she said, ‘but it’s for me, to keep for when I have a home of my own.’

  ‘It’s perfect,’ Arthur said in his oddly pitched voice. ‘I don’t know how you can do something as perfect.’ He frowned as he sat beside her on the top step. ‘I don’t understand, how d’you know where the needle will come up when you push it from beneath the cloth? It looks so impossible to me. I manage to miss the shank of the button every time when I try to repair my coat!’

  As he examined the delicately stitched material, he gradually slid closer to her until his thin, bony jaw was close to her smooth, rounded face. Turning slowly, he kissed her cheek.

  ‘So clever, so full of beauty and yet with time to spare for the likes of me,’ he said in wonder.

  ‘You make me feel clever and full of beauty, Arthur,’ she replied.

  She told him in a whisper of the material she had bought to make trousers for Pitcher.

  ‘But I know already they will be too small and will fit you to perfection,’ she laughed.

  * * *

  Ben Gammon sang loudly and with a distinct lack of talent as he approached the end of his day’s ride. He was in no hurry and allowed the horse to walk at its own pace. The day was damp and humid after the rain and a mist was rising from the warming earth. He had only a few miles to travel when he crossed a field where hares were often seen. Today he was not looking for them, although it gave him pleasure to see the powerful animals making a run for freedom when hunters disturbed them.

  The regular path leading diagonally across the field was wet, and when his horse slipped and staggered in a deeply muddied patch, he steered it to one side to walk on the grass where the ground was firmer. A few traces of mud showed that he was not the first that day to decide on a slight deviation from the marked path.

  Unseen, some distance in front of him, a hare lay in its form, ears back, listening to the horse approaching. It wasn’t worried. It knew that the path lay well to one side of it and that the animal would pass as others did, without making it run. It crouched lower, eyes wide, brain assessing the situation, preferring to stay put rather than risk showing itself in flight.

  The hare realized that the sounds of the horse’s feet were closer than was usual and tensed its muscles ready for flight. When the hoof dropped within inches of it, it darted from cover almost under the horse’s belly. The horse, startled out of a daydream, saw the sudden movement and shied. Ben, also startled out of semi-sleep, slid down and landed in an undignified position, shoulders on the hard but muddy ground, foot still entangled in one of the stirrups.

  The horse ran, dragging him for several yards until his foot came out of the boot and freed him. He thought his head must have been pulped as it had been bounced along the ground and he warily touched it with his gnarled hands. There was no blood to frighten him, and stretching his muscles to test them he realized that he was unharmed.

  ‘Damn all horses to hell!’ he shouted. ‘There never was a one that you can safely say – now that’s a fine and trustworthy animal!’

  He picked himself up, groaning as he bent to retrieve the boot that had fallen from the stirrup a few yards further on. He rubbed his head and neck and looked about him for the bag he had carried, moaning and repeating his favourite swears. When a voice began to repeat them with him, he stopped and banged his ear, convinced that the fall had caused him to hear double.

  ‘A damage that will confound the doctors and have me locked away!’ he shouted in rage. He wandered around, thumping his head and muttering to himself, convinced he was seriously damaged. It was with relief that he heard someone call his name.

  ‘Ain’t that Ben Gammon I can hear swearing and carrying on like a wronged husband?’

  Ben turned and groaning with renewed agony, held his neck and demanded, ‘Who’s that tormenting me, a poor injured man, then?’

  A young man came towards him hesitantly.

  ‘Is it safe to approach you, Ben Gammon? I’m not looking for a fight, for sure.’

  Ben groaned theatrically and said, ‘I couldn’t punch a hole in a cobweb. I haven’t the breath to blow the seeds off a dandelion. Thrown I’ve been and I can’t find my bag. Help me will you, Madoc Morgan? I have the feeling that my head will leave my body and land at my feet if I bend down to find it myself.’

  Madoc agreed to help and while Ben sat on the ground trying to put his boot back on, the young man kicked around in the long clumps of purple moor grass and sheep’s fescue, tripping occasionally over the uneven ground and the high clumps of the swaying grass.

  After a moment he called and showed Ben that the bag was found.

  ‘It’s empty, mind,’ Madoc informed him. ‘I think your letters have fallen out.’

  The letter written by William Ddole was apart from the others, falling to where it was hidden by a rotting branch of a birch. The rest were gathered and as he handed them one by one to Ben, Madoc felt them, assessing the likelihood of there being some coins inside. Three he slipped into his pocket. The letter from William remained unobserved, and Madoc’s boot slipped on the branch and pressed it, unseen, into the mud.

  For several weeks, William waited impatiently for a reply from his daughter, then he sadly decided that Annie had been correct and he had been wrong. Penelope was settling into life in the city and no longer had the desire to return.

  He was proved correct in another matter: after a week of coughing had exhausted her, Seranne died in her sleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  Before Pitcher and Daisy could make their Friday visit to call on Walter Waterman, he called on them. One rainy afternoon, when Pitcher and Barrass, their shoulders protected by sacks, were putting the finishing touches to the extended stable yard, Polly ran out to tell Pitcher he had a visitor. The girl hurried back to the shelter of the house before telling him who his caller was and, grumbling at the interruption, he threw down the hammer with which he had been fixing up a sign, abandoned the sack and followed her.

  ‘Well, I didn’t expect to have you calling to see me, not yet anyway,’ Pitcher said as he recognized the Deputy Postmaster from Swansea. ‘Can I take this as encouraging, you coming to look over my fine premises?’

  ‘I had an idea to call on you and see for myself, yes,‘ Walter said. ‘I had a mind too, to see Miss Daisy, if she is at home.’

  Pitcher called Polly, and the girl told him that Miss Daisy was with her mother and sister, and they were preparing to join them. When the three women appeared, they had dressed themselves in their best dresses, and over their arms they each carried a light cloak.

  ‘We thought to go for a walk in the rain. We feel the need to freshen ourselves before we take tea,’ Emma announced. ‘Perhaps you would like to walk with us?’ She smiled then turned to glare at Pitcher, daring him to argue.

  ‘I think Walter has come to see for himself the suitability of the house…’ Pitcher dared to say, but Emma’s eyes, almost popping from their sockets, stilled his tongue.

  ‘You can talk later, Dadda,’ Daisy said, taking Walter’s arm. ‘First we must steal him from you.‘ As she went through the door she slyly gave her father a wink that shocked him. He hadn’t seen a better one from the sauciest of the women who strolled the dockside! What was his family coming to?

  Walter was entertained and persuaded to stay for food and then taken to the bar-room where Pitcher plied him with some of his best drinks. Fortunately it was a busy night and with Dan singing, and Oak-tree Thomas not singing, the evening was a very pleasant one. Prising Emma out of her precious parlour was difficult, but Pitcher persuaded her to bring the girls down to sit in the room behind the bar where they had once lived and which would soon serve as a kitchen to cook the food they planned to sell.

  It was there that the last hour of his visit was spent, and from there that Daisy left him to go to her bed, a wistful and demure expression on her face as if parting from him was a bravery she could hardly susta
in. Walter went home a slightly drunk, but very happy man.

  A few days later, a notice displayed on the big tree outside the sorting office announced that application had been made for Pitcher to handle the letters for Gower, and for the alehouse soon to be The Posthorn Inn – to be the receiving office. Kenneth saw the notice and rode home to tell Ceinwen and decide what was to be done.

  ‘Without I ride with the letters and put my own case forward in person, there’s nothing I can do,’ he wailed.

  ‘I’m going to talk to Emma,’ Ceinwen decided. ‘Friends we are, or so I thought!’

  Their daughter, Enyd, stood up from the table where she had been entering the payments into her father’s ledger.

  ‘I am going to talk to Olwen!’ she said. ‘She’s my husband’s sister and should be loyal to us, her extra family, above her friends! If anyone can persuade Barrass against this move, she can.’

  Neither Ceinwen nor Enyd were successful in their attempts to persuade Pitcher and Barrass to change their minds.

  ‘Pitcher is the best man for the work. His premises are in by far the best position,’ Emma insisted when Ceinwen told of her disappointment.

  ‘But,’ she whispered surreptitiously behind a fat hand, ‘if we should be granted the change, and so far it’s only an application backed by Walter Waterman, then I will pay you a few shillings each week to compensate you for the loss of it.’

  Ceinwen was strongly tempted to complain that she had no daughter to use in the fight for her living, but decided against it. Best she kept Emma on her side, if only to receive the few shillings she had offered, which Kenneth would not hear of.