Netherwood01 - Netherwood

by Jane Sanderson

  The little girl’s imperative tone of voice seemed to stem the torrent and Eve looked down at where her daughter stood, squeezed into the space she’d created between the women’s skirts. Ellen smiled at her artlessly and raised her arms for a cuddle. Eve picked her up and kissed her.

  ‘Now, that’s better,’ said Reverend Farrimond.

  ‘It’s a start,’ said Eve.

  Reverend Farrimond stayed for quite some time; long enough to fully observe the extraordinary and instant ease with which the two women accepted each other. He sat by Eve at her kitchen table with a mug of tea, his comfort levels returned to normal. Ellen and the baby were sitting under the table scrutinising each other amiably. Anna was busy at the sink. Earlier, she had put the kettle on and brewed the tea and Eve had watched her with detached interest; she couldn’t remember the last time anyone had performed this simple task for her. Her great bout of weeping had had a cathartic effect, leaving her drained but also peaceful. She felt she could sleep at last, and would in fact have dearly liked to lie down and close her eyes, but the minister demanded her attention, asking her questions for which she had no answers.

  ‘Eve,’ he said. ‘Eve?’

  She looked at him. ‘Mmm?’ she said.

  ‘I said, you must give some consideration to your future.’ His voice was kind but firm. ‘What will you do to earn a living?’

  She shrugged but didn’t reply, preferring to stare hard into her mug of tea as though it might provide a vision of the future. Anna began to wash the dishes that were piled in the sink.

  ‘You must apply yourself to this matter, dear,’ said Reverend Farrimond. ‘The Sheffield workhouse is full of women who found themselves in your position’ – Eve looked up at him now, shocked out of apathy – ‘and too often they were propelled into penury not so much by circumstance as by their own lack of will.’

  ‘This is Netherwood, not Grangely,’ said Eve. She sounded defiant, and the minister was glad to hear it. If Eve was to thrive without Arthur, she needed spirit.

  ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘But the fabled generosity of your benevolent earl is likely to be sorely tested if you can’t pay the rent.’

  Eve was silenced by the irrefutable truth of his argument.

  Anna said, ‘What do you do well?’ She said vot and vell, and it sounded strange and exotic in Eve’s little kitchen.

  Eve looked at her. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I was t’wife of a miner, mother of his children.’

  Anna left the sink and walked to the table. She made a dismissive gesture with her hand, sweeping away Eve’s remark. ‘But just think for a moment. What do you do well?’

  ‘I was a good wife,’ said Eve, bridling a little. ‘I’m a good mother. But no one will pay me for that.’

  ‘So. A good wife and mother has many jobs – which of these do you do best?’ said Anna. Her tone was that of a patient teacher, coaxing an answer from a reluctant pupil. It seemed curious to Eve, in this most curious of situations, that this woman, this displaced foreigner, had such command. The vague notion flitted across her mind that she’d need to keep an eye on that.

  Reverend Farrimond beamed. ‘Ha!’ he said. ‘Of course!’

  Both women looked at him.

  ‘She cooks!’ he said to Anna, then to Eve: ‘You cook!’

  ‘Everybody cooks,’ said Eve. She was utterly perplexed.

  ‘Everybody cooks, but nobody cooks like you,’ he said.

  Anna sat down opposite Eve at the table and smiled at her.

  ‘Then you should sell you food,’ she said.

  ‘Your food,’ said Eve.

  ‘Maybe mine, but also yours,’ said Anna.

  Eve and the minister laughed, and Anna laughed too, though she had entirely missed the joke.

  Eve said, ‘Oh aye, I expect there’s a fortune to be made in raised pork pies and drop scones.’

  ‘If not a fortune, maybe a living,’ said Anna. Eve looked doubtful. She’d exchanged food often enough for other goods and services, but to ask people to hand over their hard-earned money for food they could just as well make at home – it made no sense to her.

  Reverend Farrimond said: ‘Anna’s right, Eve. All you need to do is open your front door at the same time every day and sell your marvellous pies and pastries. There’d be a queue from here to Turnpike Lane by the end of the second day.’

  Eve shook her head. ‘It’s barmy,’ she said. ‘I’d be a laughing stock.’

  ‘First, we must try,’ said Anna. Eve, noting the ‘we’, felt a wave of comfort.

  ‘And if it doesn’t work, we try something else,’ Anna went on. Under the table Ellen said ‘sam-zing’, quietly to herself.

  ‘So, it’s settled,’ said Reverend Farrimond, which Eve thought was hardly the case, but she let it pass because she had no better suggestion to make and, anyway, she was already thinking that she’d better pop out to the Co-op for more flour and lard.

  Chapter 17

  Down by the railway lines there was a long, straight cinder path which ran parallel to the tracks, so close to them that one small step sideways put you right on the ironwork. Seth and Eliza were forbidden from coming here; once, years before, a boy of eleven had been killed when he caught his foot underneath one of the rails. The train had sliced the foot clean off at the ankle like a knife through butter and the boy had blacked out then bled to death. That’s how the story went, at any rate. Seth was sceptical; he spent hours down at the railway line – in spite of the ban – and he couldn’t see how it was possible to trap a foot so thoroughly that you weren’t able to pull it free. In any case, there was nowhere for a foot to fit – there just wasn’t a gap big enough. Seth thought it was a tale invented to scare children, and it had certainly worked on Eliza, who had added it to the list of places she feared to tread, along with the cemetery and the kiln yard at the brickworks – all of them, in her view, arenas of certain death.

  But Seth loved it, especially if he was alone, like today. There were two sets of lines on this side of town and if you walked away from Netherwood, towards Long Martley Colliery, there was a place where they converged, criss-crossing each other as if they’d had a change of mind about their destination. Seth would sit right on the sleepers, tracing with his fingers the geometric shapes made by the tracks at the intersection. If a train came, there was plenty of warning; even before the engine appeared, the tracks would vibrate under his hands and the birds would always fly up in alarm from the trees. It was another reason for his scepticism about the dangers lurking at the railway lines; the trains advertised their impending arrival in so many ways that even if you were deaf and blind you could still step out of danger. Seth thought you could only die here if you wanted to. That, he could understand. Time it right and bang, you’d feel nothing.

  He wandered aimlessly back towards Netherwood, dragging a stick in his left hand so that it bounced rhythmically off the wooden sleepers. It was a fine stick, straight and long, and someone had whittled the end of it into a point, like a caveman might have done to hunt wild boar. He raised it above his shoulder like a spear and looked for something to aim at, but nothing seemed to present itself and he lowered it, letting it scrape on the track again. If it was early summer the path would be bordered on the right hand side by hundreds of foxgloves and Seth would have whipped the flowerheads to see the bees rise in alarm from the purple thimbles. But now, with no such sport to distract him, his thoughts strayed back to the unwelcome realm of home; it was so hectic this morning that his mother hadn’t even noticed him leave, let alone ask where he was going. The house smelled constantly of baking and there were pies and puddings piled up on the table but he wasn’t allowed to eat any of them because they were going to be for sale on Monday morning. Eliza and Ellen were playing a stupid game with that woman’s baby, and that woman herself was bustling about the kitchen as though it was her own. She and her baby had moved into his bed, in the room he had always shared with his sisters, and now he had a makeshift mattress on his
mother’s bedroom floor and Ellen was in the big bed with her. Eliza had begged to sleep with the baby, so she slept where she always had. Seth hated the new arrangement and was three days into a silent protest, but no one had noticed yet. He longed for his father.

  The big church clock struck three. At exactly this time, two weeks ago, he was on the common with his dad. To chase this thought from his head, Seth took the stick in two hands, raised it above his head and smashed it down on the iron track. It splintered but didn’t break, so he brought it up again, and again thrashed at the track with it, and this time it split into two pieces which he tossed on to the sleepers. Since Arthur’s death, grief kept arriving unannounced in great, engulfing waves. It happened again now and he let himself be swept along, abandoning himself to the pain, wailing and shouting like a boy overboard. Then, like a miracle, he heard his father’s voice: ‘Seth!’

  It wasn’t close, but it wasn’t too distant either. Certainly it sounded real, not ghostly. Seth looked wildly about him. He thought the voice wasn’t behind him, and he stepped off the path and on to the railway line. Then he heard it again.

  ‘Seth! Over ’ere, son.’

  From where he stood Seth felt the rattle and boom of an oncoming train. He was on the sleepers now, between the tracks. Perhaps if the train hit him, he would see his dad. Perhaps that’s what he had to do.

  ‘Seth, lad, move!’

  A man suddenly loomed into Seth’s vision, smaller and stockier than his father. He was heading towards him, running frantically down the other side of the track, pumping his arms like pistons and hurtling forwards but looking backwards at the oncoming train. Then, just as it bore down on Seth, the man turned his head.

  ‘Move, Seth, move!’ he screamed, but his voice was drowned out by the fearsome rush and roar of the train, and Amos Sykes had to wait until fourteen empty coal wagons had rattled by before he saw Seth standing safe on the other side of the tracks, staring at him with hostile eyes.

  Amos had been at the allotments with Clem when he’d heard, from the direction of the tracks, an animal sound, a violent keening, like the scream of a vixen calling for a mate. Clem, cloth-eared, hadn’t heard a thing and was mid-sentence when Amos, having turned to identify the cry, suddenly sprang over the back wall and ran down the embankment on to the railway. The old man was still scratching his head in puzzlement when Amos reappeared, now accompanied by young Seth Williams. Amos, puffing with effort – the embankment was steep behind the allotments – had to catch his breath before he could speak, leaning with his hands on his knees and his face dripping beads of sweat. The lad, though, just looked cold. He shook, and his face was grey, like putty.

  Clem had a fire going in an old metal dustbin and he led Seth over to it, dragging an upturned crate to the edge of the heat so that the boy could sit. Amos, who was upright now and breathing more comfortably, said, ‘Tha shouldn’t be laikin’ on t’railway.’ His relief had turned bad, and his voice trembled with anger.

  ‘I weren’t laikin’,’ said Seth, flatly. ‘I were thinkin’.’ He glared at Amos as he spoke, but his voice was hopeless, not defiant. By ’eck, thought Clem, this lad’s in a bad way.

  ‘Well, think somewhere else in future,’ said Amos, glaring back. He’d recovered from the exertion of the run and the climb, but he was still feeling the effects of the shock. He had thought, for a few awful seconds, that he’d be visiting Eve today with news of a second tragedy.

  Seth looked away and for a moment sat silently, watching the red glow through the holes that Clem had made around the bottom of the bin. Then he said, ‘I thought you were my dad. You said, “Over ’ere, son,” and it sounded like my dad.’

  Amos softened at once. He went to Seth and placed a hand on his shoulder. It all made sense of course – Seth had been stricken with grief, but until Amos had shouted, the boy had been safe on the path. It was only after he called that Seth had put himself in harm’s way.

  ‘Ah. Right,’ Amos said. ‘Sorry, lad.’ He felt awkward, because he hadn’t had a lot of practice at giving comfort; his old dog Mac was his only companion at home, and even he was a self-reliant kind of animal who rarely sought physical contact. But a deep and barely acknowledged part of Amos felt he owed it to Arthur to watch over his boy.

  ‘S’all right,’ said Seth. He was sorry too. He didn’t want to hate Amos; he liked him. He smelled a bit like his dad, and his hands, like Arthur’s, were calloused and coal-marked, the black ingrained in the cracks and whorls of his skin like gradient lines on a map. Seth looked around at the hard brown soil of the vegetable beds, divided by rough paths of muddy brick. A low fence of woven twigs and branches divided this plot on either side from the next, and there was a small shed at one end with a selection of wooden-handled tools leaning up against it: a hoe, a spade, a shovel and a pick. Nothing grew, and the beds looked impenetrable as rock.

  ‘What’s tha think?’ said Clem.

  ‘It’s a bit bare,’ said Seth. ‘Whose is it?’

  ‘Well …’ said Clem, looking at Amos for guidance.

  Amos said, ‘It was your dad’s, not that ’e ever knew ’e ’ad it. It came free just before t’accident. That’s what me an’ Clem are doin’ ’ere, like. It needs sortin’ out.’

  Seth processed this information for a moment, then said, ‘Can I ’ave it?’

  Amos’s craggy face broke into a rare smile. ‘There you go!’ he said to Clem. ‘It’s just as I told thee.’

  The issue of the allotment secured so recently for Arthur Williams had lain heavy on Clem Waterdine’s mind for a day or two after the funeral. He was loath to bother Eve, yet felt it was a matter of some urgency. There were, after all, too many living men on the waiting list to let the plot remain in the name of one who was dead. On the other hand Clem knew that it was Eve, not Arthur, who had wanted the allotment in the first place, and it might seem unfeeling to hand it on to the next bloke in line without so much as consulting her. For her part, and to Clem’s astonishment, Eve seemed to have forgotten about it entirely. He had seen her two or three times since Arthur died and she’d said very little indeed, and nothing at all relating to the allotment. Clem wondered if she had quite understood the honour conferred by ownership.

  It was a vexed question, but nevertheless he had made up his mind to bite the bullet earlier in the week and had been walking down Allott’s Way towards Beaumont Lane when he saw Amos Sykes coming towards him in his pit filth, on his way home at the end of the day’s shift. Amos nodded at him and would have walked on, but something about Clem’s manner made him stop.

  ‘Ey up, Clem,’ he said.

  Clem, never in a hurry to get anywhere, looked uncharacteristically keen to move on.

  ‘What’s up?’ said Amos.

  The old man pursed his lips and pondered a reply, but thought better of it.

  ‘Top secret is it?’

  Clem cleared his throat. ‘Allotment business,’ he replied, and his voice was loaded with such preening self-importance that Amos felt it was his civic duty to poke fun. He staggered backwards in feigned alarm and pressed his palms against his ears. ‘Spare me!’ he said. ‘T’less I know, t’safer I’ll be.’

  Clem knew he was being mocked but decided nevertheless to unburden himself. Amos listened, and when the old man had related his tale he said, ‘You’re a daft old sod, Clem Waterdine.’

  Clem bridled.

  ‘Arthur’s barely cold in ’is grave. Eve Williams ’as more to think about than a veg patch,’ Amos said.

  ‘Aye, well,’ said Clem. ‘She mun give it up then.’ He felt belittled and, as a result, less certain about his mission. Even so, he made as if to move off. He had no desire to engage in verbal sparring with Amos, who could be merciless with his sharp tongue.

  ‘Tell thi what,’ said Amos, entirely oblivious to Clem’s wounded pride and the complicated politics of the allotment system. ‘I’ll meet thi there on Sat’day, ’ave a look at it missen.’

  Clem snorted derisively. I
f Amos Sykes thought he had any say in the matter, he had another think coming. He could get to the back of the queue, like it or lump it.

  And yet there they were, come Saturday, agreeing that young Seth Williams, under Amos’s guidance – and, for the sake of the paperwork, under Amos’s name – would take the allotment intended for his father. More than that, the old autocrat Clem Waterdine had about him the rosy glow of the benefactor; if he felt outwitted by Amos, it was more than compensated for by the smile on Seth’s face and the gratitude later that day from Eve that there would be fresh vegetables in abundance come next autumn, God and the weather permitting.

  Chapter 18

  Amean February wind blew the smile off everyone’s face and thin, persistent rain fell from the pewter sky, as if to put the dampers on any enthusiasm for the new venture. Eve felt like a fool; a grown woman, playing shop. Earlier that Monday morning she had taken a slate board and placed it, doubtfully, outside her front door, leaning it against the wall. She hoped her writing would withstand the weather, because the slate bore the chalked-up products she was hoping to sell and their prices. Against her better judgement, but encouraged by Anna and Eliza, she had given her business a name, and this was carefully spelled out in fancy capital letters at the head of the list.

  EVE’S PUDDINGS & PIES

  open 9am – 2pm Monday to Friday

  it said, and below it:

  Meat and potato pie – 2d a slice; 6d whole

  Raised pork pie – 2d a slice; 4d whole

  Faggots – 1d each

  Drop scones – 4 for 1d

  Tea cakes – 4 for 2d

  Eve’s Pudding – 6d

  All freshly made on the premises.