The Posthorn Inn

by The Posthorn Inn (retail) (epub)

  When he reached the porch where the watchman sat, he was aware of a lightness around him. The pain in his head was lessening, but the brightness was more frightening. What was happening to him? Was he dying? The need to reach his house before death claimed him was an urgency that made him run stumbling through the gate and along the path.

  The watchman heard him coming and saw at once that all was not normal. He took hold of the man’s arm and guided him into the house and to the chair near the fire.

  ‘Open the curtains!’ Markus demanded. When this was done, he sent the watchman away and stared at the oblong of light with fear making him tremble, but with hope gradually taking its place.

  * * *

  Emma delighted in the crowds that resulted from the relocation of the post. The usual poor, whom they were pledged to supply with food and comfort under the agreement of keeping an inn, were always there, news of a good place travelling like lightning across the skies. But there were others, usually too busy to stand and wait for the news from the town, who came to sit at Pitcher’s tables and eat Emma’s food. The room was like a waiting room for the long distance coaches, she thought, with tension rising as Barrass was due to arrive. And for the village, just as important.

  The only irritation to Emma was the fact that Daisy ignored her entreaties to avoid Walter Waterman. Neglecting his duties shamefully, the Postmaster took Daisy out more and more frequently.

  Although Daisy was not as attracted to him as he obviously was to her, she found his company both flattering and pleasant. With Pansy less and less inclined to accompany her to the various entertainments and parties to which they were invited, Walter was a useful partner.

  He was more and more often not to be found in his office, as tea was a popular time for Daisy to meet her friends. Even when he was reminded of his duties as Deputy Postmaster of Swansea, he shrugged off the objections and pointed to the open window through which letters could be dropped and assured the complainants that the service was well run and they could have no fear that their letters were not being given his best attention.

  At first he had been ably assisted by his mother, but she had soon grown tired of the responsibility she had expected to lose at the same time she had lost her husband, and shrugging off her widow’s drapes, she had gone to live in Bristol with her sister. Walter carried on alone, offended by her abandonment but too involved with his newly discovered love to care over much.

  It was not uncommon for either Ben Gammon or Barrass to attend to the sorting of the letters received, and Barrass had on occasions even entered the late arrivals in the ledger which Walter filled with his spidery writing. One morning the office remained firmly closed and Barrass first of all banged on the door, then, with Ben’s assistance, climbed up to the bedroom above the office and peered through the window.

  Walter was fast asleep. He stirred when Barrass threatened to break the glass with his fist, and looked startled as his bleary eyes focused on the face surrounded by long black hair, momentarily convinced he was seeing the ghost of his dead father.

  ‘Wake up, you dozy dreamer!’ Barrass shouted through the pane. ‘There’s an inspector below!’ His untruth had the desired effect and he laughed to see the man jump from his bed and grab a maroon dressing gown which he wrapped around him as he headed for the stairs. To Barrass’s further amusement he saw, when Walter opened the door, that the man had added a tall silk hat to his attire, believing no doubt that it added dignity to his dishevelled, unwashed appearance.

  Unfortunately, Barrass’s jibe about there being an inspector present was not far from the truth. Two gentlemen who stood outside the door of the inn watching the proceedings with disapproval were indeed representatives of the Royal Mail. The taller one nudged his partner, and asked him to write down the morning’s occurrences in detail.

  It was Barrass who helped Walter to share the letters between the outgoing and incoming bags, and it was Barrass who arranged for Walter to be supplied with breakfast and ale from the inn and a man to shave him. Passing the two curious watchers, he laughed and told them that Walter Waterman was ‘A joy to have around for the stories he provides’. Neither man looked remotely amused.

  Before setting off on his return to the village, Barrass went to make sure Walter was sufficiently recovered to manage the office.

  ‘I’m not ill,’ Walter assured him. ‘Just bemused to know why I slept so soundly after being awake for most of the night.’

  ‘A girl, is it?’ Barrass asked. ‘By the name of Palmer?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Walter grinned. ‘She fills my thoughts, and…’

  ‘And you’d like her to fill your bed?’ Barrass’s smile reflected Walter’s but his eyes were less cheerful. Pitcher would not be pleased at how far the man’s thoughts were taking him.

  * * *

  Daisy listened to her mother and sighed.

  ‘I understand how useful it has been for you to have a partner, my dear daughter,’ Emma complained, ‘but consider how easily it has become accepted that you and Walter are a couple. Only today you and he have been invited to attend a wedding! A wedding! My dear, think where this might end! Daisy, you are missing opportunities by keeping company with this man. Best you tell him goodbye before you find yourself with no friends but he.’

  Daisy dared not tell her mother that besides walking out with Walter with a proprietorial hand on his arm, she had actually sat with him in the sorting office and entered items in the ledger in her own hand. Her lettering was boldly formed and larger than Walter’s, whose writing was hesitant and spidery in style. She had made sure the visits had been at a time when there was no chance of being seen by Barrass, and so far, no one had reported the occurrences.

  It had been fun, pretending she was a woman with a business to attend. Daisy thought, not for the first time, that she had been born into the wrong family. Her instincts were those of a lady, reinforced by the training and schooling her parents had provided, but deep inside her was an excitement that only the dealings of commerce could satisfy.

  On her visits to Swansea and the once only time she had gone with Emma and her sister to stay with friends in Bath, she had looked with envy at the women who served in the smart shops, imagining the delight of accounting, and of deciding which among her wares were the most profitable and which the ones she could abandon.

  She even imagined running the alehouse with her father, although that was completely out of the question. She smiled at the thought of Emma’s face if one of her expensively schooled daughters should even mention such an idea! But wistfulness soon replaced the smile. Such a nuisance to have been born a girl!

  When Daisy told Walter, so sadly, so tearfully, that she would not meet with him again, he was devastated. He had begun to consider himself one of the family, even calling her father Pitcher, like everyone else. Perhaps, he wondered, that was my undoing? To refer to him as Mr Palmer would have perhaps been more respectful.

  He took to coming to the alehouse every evening, and he would sit where he could see out into the passageway in the hope of seeing Daisy pass through. Pitcher watched the man warily, afraid that the drink would soon change him from a reasonable man to a nuisance. But Walter seemed content to sit and sup, share a conversation with others and then leave to ride the six miles home without his presence being an embarrassment.

  The way Walter did show his unhappiness was in the way he ran his office. Abandoning all but the most irregular entries, the books became less and less an accurate picture of his transactions. When a man arrived to check that the procedures were being followed, he found chaos.

  The report sent by the men who were passing through Swansea on their way to Carmarthen had been serious enough for them to investigate. What they found was far worse than had been suggested. One evening there was a letter for him from the London office. It threatened that unless he organized himself swiftly and thoroughly, he would be replaced. I

  Chapter Thirteen

  The alehouse had bec
ome increasingly busy once people knew that the post was collected there. Those who had gathered outside in all weathers to hear Kenneth pontificate on the latest news and gossip, revelled in the comfortable, relaxed atmosphere of Pitcher’s bar-room. The doors were opened in time for Barrass returning with the letters from Swansea, and even at that early hour, the bar was rarely without someone sitting and drinking his ale.

  Markus surprised everyone by becoming a regular visitor. He was guided in by his watchman, who then sat far enough away to be unable to listen to his rare conversations, but close enough to help if his master needed something. Markus always chose the darkest corner, sitting facing into the room, his head still, the eyes staring at one place on the distant wall, whatever went on in the room. He made people nervous at first but so regular was his attendance that they grew accustomed to him and hardly noticed he was there.

  Pitcher was up early yet customers began arriving before he and Arthur were ready to receive them. They both ran about with Arthur’s dog trotting after them, to and from the cellar, trying to clean floors and wash tables while they were in use, Pitcher undecided whether he was pleased or irritated when some who spent the day in his bar-room told him how comfortable he made them feel.

  ‘I don’t mind them that drinks steady, they pay well for the comfort of a fire and a decent chair, but there are those, like Oak-tree Thomas, who sit without a drop in front of them and pass the hours in conversation and idleness that pays me nothing at all!’ he grumbled to Barrass. ‘Seems some don’t have a home to go to!’

  A man waved a hand irritably at Arthur and called for him to go and take an order. With a sigh, Arthur put down the wood with which he was replenishing the fire and whispered to Barrass, ‘Being polite all day long to people who think they’re your betters is killing me!’ He prepared a smile and went to see to the gentleman’s wants and Barrass reminded him that, ‘Being subservient is what Pitcher pays you for.’

  Two well-dressed gentlemen entered the room, one about fifty, the other one younger and carrying a large saddlebag. Arthur pushed Barrass forward to serve them.

  ‘Go on, see how well you do at being subservient,’ he whispered. ‘Good for your soul it is, so Mistress Emma always tells me.’

  Barrass looked at the newcomers curiously; they seemed rather familiar. ‘Gentlemen?’ he queried.

  ‘Some of your best ale if you please,’ the elder of them asked. ‘And some information.’

  At once Barrass was on the defensive.

  ‘I don’t work here, sirs,’ he assured them. ‘If it’s information you want, then I’ll call for the proprietor, Pitcher Palmer.’

  ‘No, it’s you we want to talk to,’ the younger man said. ‘You are the letter-carrier known as Barrass, aren’t you?’

  ‘That I am.’ Barrass frowned at them trying to remember where he had seen them before.

  ‘We are paid by the Postmaster of London,’ the younger one explained, dropping his bag. ‘There have been some discrepancies in the accounting of the Swansea office and some of the writing in the ledgers is believed to be yours.’

  ‘More than likely,’ Barrass said. ‘I have often helped Walter when he has been busy. The people who bring letters often wait until the very last moment and then there is a rush to get the bag ready.’

  ‘There is the writing of a third person.’ He opened the canvas and leather bag and showed a page to Barrass. ‘Know this writing, do you?’

  Arthur, who had crept closer, curiously gasped and said, ‘I do! That’s Mistress Daisy’s or I’m a parson’s cat!’

  ‘Fetch them their drink, Arthur, I’m going to find Pitcher,’ Barrass said. He hurried to the cellar where Pitcher was clearing out some abandoned barrels and empty boxes and quickly explained the situation. Pitcher ran up to the bar-room and introduced himself.

  ‘My daughter is from home,’ Pitcher explained, ‘but I can tell you what happened. My daughter was very concerned over Walter Waterman who was greatly grieved by the death of his father. Daisy helped him until he was recovered.’ He stood as if dismissing them. ‘That’s all. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to prepare for the small service I give and deal with the letters brought in to my own sorting office.’

  ‘We will wait if you please,’ the elder one said. ‘We wish to see for ourselves how well you attend to the task.’

  When the wagon drew up outside, Pitcher went to help Emma and his daughters down, managing to explain that there were inspectors on the premises, by words spurted out from the side of his mouth.

  Daisy went at once into the bar-room to greet them, her cheeks rosy, her eyes a bright summer blue, her hair a shower of gold. She spoke to them like an obnoxious queen dealing with peasants and they abandoned their superior attitude, stuttered, backed away and apologized for disturbing them. They were on their way before Barrass could tell Arthur to come and look.

  ‘I hates to say this, daughter,’ Pitcher whispered, ‘and your mother would have my heart for a pincushion if she heard me, but you are a great asset when it comes to business and no mistake.’

  ‘I know,’ Daisy smiled. ‘I know. And, Mamma would be even more horrified to know that I like it!’

  Daisy felt rather mean when she thought how she had used Walter. She had deliberately set out to attract him with the sole intention of winning the change of address for the sorting office. Now, knowing he was in trouble, she wanted to help. The following morning, she decided, she would go into town and talk to him, persuade him to make an effort to get his business back and running as it should.

  * * *

  Barrass was pleased that he no longer had to waste time at the end of his Thursday round. With Jethro he finished early most days and set about helping Pitcher and Arthur with the last minute finishes to the new rooms.

  One Thursday he was disappointed when, at his last call, he was given a letter to be delivered to Markus. For a moment he was tempted to take it back to the alehouse, where he could hand it to the man when he next visited, but the temptation was denied. Turning away from the village, he rode along the narrow cliff-top path to the dark house.

  The watchman wasn’t there. Damn me, he thought, I expect he will be at the alehouse and I could have saved myself a journey. But he knocked in case and expecting to see the door opened by a servant, was surprised when, after a stick-tapping approach, the door was opened by Markus himself.

  ‘Who is it?’ the man demanded.

  ‘Barrass, with a letter for you.’ Barrass pushed the flimsy pages into Markus’s hand. ‘Shall I wait for the money, or will I call tomorrow?’ he asked, presuming that, if Markus opened the door, the servants were out in the fields.

  ‘Wait,’ the man gruffly said and disappeared, tap-tapping his way along the dark corridor.

  After several minutes had passed, the tapping returned and Markus waved a hand in his direction, with a letter and some coins in it.

  ‘Take this reply, will you?’ Before Barrass could answer, the door was closed, and there was only the faint, fading tapping of the man’s stick.

  It was on the following day that Barrass was reminded of the unusual occurrence of Markus opening his own door.

  ‘Seems Markus had sent all his servants away,’ Arthur told him. ‘There was money missing and as no one would own up to taking it, he sent the lot of them on their way and has sent for Sally Ann in the town to find him new ones.’

  For a while Barrass thought nothing of the news, then he felt cold shivers threading down his back. With no one to read the letter and write the reply, there was only one explanation. Markus could see!

  Barrass made cautious enquiries convinced he must have been mistaken, that the watchman had in fact been there, but no, the man had been in Swansea with the message for Sally Arm to find replacements. The watchman was the only one not dismissed and he had been six miles away.

  When Markus next came to the alehouse, Barrass watched him carefully and there was only the slightest movement to follow a moving object t
o reveal it, but he was certain he was correct; Markus was deceiving them. Whether it was a recent or long-standing situation, Markus was no longer blind.

  * * *

  While Daisy was considering how she should approach him on the following day, Walter was sitting in his upstairs room, reading through the day’s transactions and trying to rouse some enthusiasm for what he was doing. While his father had lived, he had been able to do a little to help and go out to meet friends when the tedium was too much.

  He was naturally a lazy man, and after his father had left the post office in his mother’s hands, he had expected to continue the same as before after a few weeks of artificial concern for her and a pretence of helping. When she had seen what he expected, she had written her intention to the head post office in London and gone to find a new and more interesting life in Bristol. Walter had been devastated.

  Then Daisy had appeared in his life and he had believed that the life of the idle gentleman could after all be his. He spent the little money he had put by on new clothes and in courting her and it had all been for nothing. He gazed unseeing at the thick, leather-bound book in front of him and wondered what he should do next. Work, he did not consider.

  A knock at the door surprised him. Of late, having spent all his time with Daisy and her friends, his own companions had neglected him. He went down the stairs and opened the door. A young woman stood there smiling, a bag stuffed untidily with clothes beside her.