Mrs Ashcroft put the last firm touches to the basket-lining. She had scarcely finished when her sixteen-year-old grandson, a maiden of the moment in attendance, hurried up the garden-path shouting to know if the thing were ready, snatched it, and made off without acknowledgment. Mrs Fettley peered at him closely.
‘They’re goin’ picnickin’ somewheres,’ Mrs Ashcroft explained.
‘Ah,’ said the other, with narrowed eyes. ‘I lay he won’t show much mercy to any he comes across, either. Now ’oo the dooce do he remind me of, all of a sudden? ‘
‘They must look arter theirselves – same as we did.’ Mrs Ashcroft began to set out the tea.
‘No denyin’ you could, Gracie,’ said Mrs Fettley.
‘What’s in your head now?’
‘Dunno . . . But it come over me, sudden-like – about dat woman from Rye – I’ve slipped the name – Barnsley, wadn’t it? ‘
‘Batten – Polly Batten, you’re thinkin’ of.’
‘That’s it – Polly Batten. That day she had it in for you with a hay-fork – ’time we was all hayin’ at Smalldene – for stealin’ her man.’
‘But you heered me tell her she had my leave to keep him?’ Mrs Ashcroft’s voice and smile were smoother than ever.
‘I did – an’ we was all looking that she’d prod the fork spang through your breastes when you said it.’
‘No-oo. She’d never go beyond bounds – Polly. She shruck too much for reel doin’s.’
‘Allus seems to me,’ Mrs Fettley said after a pause, ‘that a man ’twixt two fightin’ women is the foolishest thing on earth. ’Like a dog bein’ called two ways.’
‘Mebbe. But what set ye off on those times, Liz? ‘
‘That boy’s fashion o’ carryin’ his head an’ arms. I haven’t rightly looked at him since he’s growed. Your Jane never showed it, but – him! Why, ’tis Jim Batten and his tricks come to life again! . . . Eh?’
‘Mebbe. There’s some that would ha’ made it out so – bein’ barren-like, themselves.’
‘Oho! Ah well! Dearie, dearie me, now! . . . An’ Jim Batten’s been dead this – ’
‘Seven and twenty year,’ Mrs Ashcroft answered briefly. ‘Won’t ye draw up, Liz?’
Mrs Fettley drew up to buttered toast, currant bread, stewed tea, bitter as leather, some home-preserved pears, and a cold boiled pig’s tail to help down the muffins. She paid all the proper compliments.
‘Yes. I dunno as I’ve ever owed me belly much,’ said Mrs Ashcroft thoughtfully. ‘We only go through this world once.’
‘But don’t it lay heavy on ye, sometimes?’ her guest suggested.
‘Nurse says I’m a sight liker to die o’ me indigestion than me leg.’ For Mrs Ashcroft had a long-standing ulcer on her shin, which needed regular care from the Village Nurse, who boasted (or others did, for her) that she had dressed it one hundred and three times already during her term of office.
‘An’ you that was so able, too! It’s all come on ye before your full time, like. I’ve watched ye goin’.’ Mrs Fettley spoke with real affection.
‘Somethin’s bound to find ye sometime. I’ve me ’eart left me still,’ Mrs Ashcroft returned.
‘You was always big-hearted enough for three. That’s somethin’ to look back on at the day’s eend.’
‘I reckon you’ve your back-lookin’s, too,’ was Mrs Ashcroft’s answer.
‘You know it. But I don’t think much regardin’ such matters excep’ when I’m along with you, Gra’. ’Takes two sticks to make a fire.’
Mrs Fettley stared, with jaw half-dropped, at the grocer’s bright calendar on the wall. The cottage shook again to the roar of the motor traffic, and the crowded football-ground below the garden roared almost as loudly; for the village was well set to its Saturday leisure.
* * *
Mrs Fettley had spoken very precisely for some time without interruption, before she wiped her eyes. ‘And,’ she concluded, ‘they read ’is death-notice to me, out o’ the paper last month. O’ course it wadn’t any o’ my becomin’ concerns – let be I ’adn’t set eyes on him for so long. O’ course I couldn’t say nor show nothin’. Nor I’ve no rightful call to go to Eastbourne to see ’is grave, either. I’ve been schemin’ to slip over there by the ’bus some day; but they’d ask questions at ’ome past endurance. So I ’aven’t even that to stay me.’
‘But you’ve ’ad your satisfactions?’
‘Godd! Yess! Those four years ’e was workin’ on the rail near us. An’ the other drivers they gave him a brave funeral, too.’
‘Then you’ve naught to cast-up about. ’Nother cup o’ tea?’
* * *
The light and air had changed a little with the sun’s descent, and the two elderly ladies closed the kitchen-door against chill. A couple of jays squealed and skirmished through the undraped apple trees in the garden. This time, the word was with Mrs Ashcroft, her elbows on the tea-table, and her sick leg propped on a stool . . .
‘Well I never! But what did your ’usband say to that?’ Mrs Fettley asked, when the deep-toned recital halted.
‘’E said I might go where I pleased for all of ’im. But seein’ ’e was bed-rid, I said I’d ’tend ’im out. ’E knowed I wouldn’t take no advantage of ’im in that state. ’E lasted eight or nine week. Then he was took with a seizure-like; an’ laid stone-still for days. Then ’e propped ’imself up abed an’ says: “You pray no man’ll ever deal with you like you’ve dealed with some.” “An’ you?” I says, for you know, Liz, what a rover ’e was. “It cuts both ways,” says ’e, “but I’m death-wise, an’ I can see what’s comin’ to you.” He died a-Sunday an’ was buried a-Thursday . . . An’ yet I’d set a heap by him – one time or – did I ever? ‘
‘You never told me that before,’ Mrs Fettley ventured.
‘I’m payin’ ye for what ye told me just now. Him bein’ dead, I wrote up, sayin’ I was free for good, to that Mrs Marshall in Lunnon – which gave me my first place as kitchen-maid – Lord, how long ago! She was well pleased, for they two was both gettin’ on, an’ I knowed their ways. You remember, Liz, I used to go to ’em in service between whiles, for years – when we wanted money, or – or my ’usband was away – on occasion.’
‘ ’E did get that six months at Chichester, didn’t ’e?’ Mrs Fettley whispered. ‘We never rightly won to the bottom of it.’
‘ ’E’d ha’ got more, but the man didn’t die.’
‘None o’ your doin’s, was it, Gra’?’
‘No! ’Twas the woman’s husband this time. An’ so, my man bein’ dead, I went back to them Marshall’s, as cook, to get me legs under a gentleman’s table again, and be called with a handle to me name. That was the year you shifted to Portsmouth.’
‘Cosham,’ Mrs Fettley corrected. ‘There was a middlin’ lot o’ new buildin’ bein’ done there. My man went first, an’ got the room, an’ I follered.’
‘Well, then, I was a year-abouts in Lunnon, all at a breath, like, four meals a day an’ livin’ easy. Then, ’long towards autumn, they two went travellin’, like, to France; keepin’ me on, for they couldn’t do without me. I put the house to rights for the caretaker, an’ then I slipped down ’ere to me sister Bessie – me wages in me pockets, an’ all ’ands glad to be’old of me.’
‘That would be when I was at Cosham,’ said Mrs Fettley.
‘You know, Liz, there wasn’t no cheap-dog pride to folk, those days, no more than there was cinemas nor whisk-drives. Man or woman ’ud lay hold o’ any job that promised a shillin’ to the backside of it, didn’t they? I was all peaked up after Lunnon, an’ I thought the fresh airs ’ud serve me. So I took on at Smalldene, obligin’ with a hand at the early potato-liftin’, stubbin’ hens, an’ such-like. They’d ha’ mocked me sore in my kitchen in Lunnon, to see me in men’s boots, an me petticoats all shorted.’
‘Did it bring ye any good?’ Mrs Fettley asked.
‘ ’Twadn’t for that I went. You know, ’s well’s me, that na’un happens to y
e till it ’as ’appened. Your mind don’t warn ye before’and of the road ye’ve took, till you’re at the far eend of it. We’ve only a backwent view of our proceedin’s.’
‘ ’Oo was it?’
‘ ’Arry Mockler.’ Mrs Ashcroft’s face puckered to the pain of her sick leg.
Mrs Fettley gasped. ‘ ’Arry? Bert Mockler’s son! An’ I never guessed!’
Mrs Ashcroft nodded. ‘An’ I told myself – an’ I beleft it – that I wanted field-work.’
‘What did ye get out of it?’
‘The usuals. Everythin’ at first – worse than naught after. I had signs an’ warnings a-plenty, but I took no heed of ’em. For we was burnin’ rubbish one day, just when we’d come to know how ’twas with – with both of us. ’Twas early in the year for burnin’, an’ I said so. “No!” says he. “ The sooner dat old stuff’s off an’ done with,” ’e says, “the better.” ’Is face was harder’n rocks when he spoke. Then it come over me that I’d found me master, which I ’adn’t ever before. I’d allus owned ’em, like.’
‘Yes ! Yes ! They’re yourn or you’re theirn,’ the other sighed. ‘I like the right way best.’
‘I didn’t. But ’Arry did . . . ’Long then, it come time for me to go back to Lunnon. I couldn’t. I clean couldn’t! So, I took an’ tipped a dollop o’ scaldin’ water out o’ the copper one Monday mornin’ over me left ’and and arm. Dat stayed me where I was for another fortnight.’
‘Was it worth it?’ said Mrs Fettley, looking at the silvery scar on the wrinkled fore-arm.
Mrs Ashcroft nodded. ‘An’ after that, we two made it up ’twixt us so’s ’e could come to Lunnon for a job in a liv’ry stable not far from me. ’E got it. I ’tended to that. There wadn’t no talk nowhere. His own mother never suspicioned how ’twas. He just slipped up to Lunnon, an’ there we abode that winter, not ’alf a mile ’tother from each.’
‘Ye paid ’is fare an’ all, though’; Mrs Fettley spoke convincedly.
Again Mrs Ashcroft nodded. ‘Dere wadn’t much I didn’t do for him. ’E was me master, an’ – O God, help us! – we’d laugh over it walkin’ together after dark in them paved streets, an’ me corns fair wrenchin’ in me boots! I’d never been like that before. Ner he! Ner he!’
Mrs Fettley clucked sympathetically.
‘An’ when did ye come to the eend?’ she asked.
‘When ’e paid it all back again, every penny. Then I knowed, but I wouldn’t suffer meself to know. “You’ve been mortal kind to me,” he says. “Kind!” I said. “’Twixt us?” But ’e kep’ all on tellin’ me ’ow kind I’d been an’ ’e’d never forget it all his days. I held it from off o’ me for three evenin’s, because I would not believe. Then ’e talked about not bein’ satisfied with ’is job in the stables, an’ the men there puttin’ tricks on ’im, an’ all they lies which a man tells when ’e’s leavin’ ye. I heard ’im out, neither ’elpin’ nor ’inderin’. At the last, I took off a fiddle brooch which he’d give me an’ I says: “Dat’ll do. I ain’t askin’ na’un’.” An’ I turned me round an’ walked off to me own sufferin’s. ’E didn’t make ’em worse. ’E didn’t come nor write after that. ’E slipped off ’ere back ’ome to ’is mother again.’
‘An’ ’ow often did ye look for ’en to come back?’ Mrs Fettley demanded mercilessly.
‘More’n once – more’n once! Goin’ over the streets we’d used, I thought de very pave-stones ’ud shruck out under me feet.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Fettley. ‘I dunno but dat don’t ’urt as much as aught else. An’ dat was all ye got? ‘
‘No. ’Twadn’t. That’s the curious part, if you’ll believe it, Liz.’
‘I do. I lay you’re further off lyin’ now than in all your life, Gra’.’
‘I am . . . An’ I suffered, like I’d not wish my most arrantest enemies to. God’s Own Name! I went through the hoop that spring! One part of it was ’eddicks which I’d never known all me days before. Think o’ me with an ’eddick! But I come to be grateful for ’em. They kep’ me from thinkin’ . . .’
‘ ’Tis like a tooth,’ Mrs Fettley commented. ‘It must rage an’ rugg till it tortures itself quiet on ye; an’ then – then there’s na’un left.’
‘I got enough lef’ to last me all my days on earth. It come about through our charwoman’s fiddle girl – Sophy Ellis was ’er name – all eyes an’ elbers an’ hunger. I used to give ’er vittles. Otherwhiles, I took no special notice of ’er, an’ a sight less, o’ course, when me trouble about ’Arry was on me. But – you know how fiddle maids first feel it sometimes – she come to be crazy-fond o’ me, pawin’ an’ cuddlin’ all whiles; an’ I ’adn’t the ’eart to beat ’er off . . . One afternoon, early in spring ’twas, ’er mother ’ad sent ’er round to scutchel up what vittles she could off of us. I was settin’ by the fire, me apern over me head, half-mad with the ’eddick, when she slips in. I reckon I was middlin’ short with ’er. “Lor’!” she says. “Is that all? I’ll take it off you in two-twos! “ I told her not to lay a finger on me, for I thought she’d want to stroke my forehead; an’ – I ain’t that make. “I won’t tech ye,” she says, an’ slips out again. She ’adn’t been gone ten minutes ’fore me old ’eddick took off quick as bein’ kicked. So I went about my work. Prasin’ly, Sophy comes back, an’ creeps into my chair quiet as a mouse. ’Er eyes was deep in ’er ’ead an’ ’er face all drawed. I asked ’er what ’ad ’appened. “Nothin’,” she says. “On’y I’ve got it now.” “Got what?” I says. “ Your ’eddick,” she says, all hoarse an’ sticky-tipped. “I’ve took it on me.” “Nonsense,” I says, “it went of itself when you was out. Lay still an’ I’ll make ye a cup o’ tea.” “ ’Twon’t do no good,” she says, “till your time’s up. ’Ow long do your ’eddicks last?” “Don’t talk silly,” I says, “or I’ll send for the Doctor.” It looked to me like she might be hatchin’ de measles. “Oh, Mrs Ashcroft,” she says, stretchin’ out ’er fiddle thin arms. “I do love ye.” There wasn’t any holdin’ agin that. I took ’er into me lap an’ made much of ’er. “Is it truly gone?” she says. “Yes,” I says, “an’ if ’twas you took it away, I’m truly grateful.” “’Twas me,” she says, layin’ ’er cheek to mine. “No one but me knows how.” An’ then she said she’d changed me ’eddick for me at a Wish ’Ouse.’
‘Whatt?’ Mrs Fettley spoke sharply.
‘A Wish House. No! I ’adn’t ’eard o’ such things, either. I couldn’t get it straight at first, but, puttin’ all together, I made out that a Wish ’Ouse ’ad to be a house which ’ad stood unlet an’ empty long enough for Some One, like, to come an’ in’abit there. She said a fiddle girl that she’d played with in the livery-stables where ‘Arty worked ’ad told ’er so. She said the girl ’ad belonged in a caravan that laid up, o’ winters, in Lunnon. Gipsy, I judge.’
‘Ooh! There’s no sayin’ what Gippos know, but I’ve never ’eard of a Wish ’Ouse, an’ I know – some things,’ said Mrs Fettley.
‘Sophy said there was a Wish ’Ouse in Wadloes Road just a few streets off, on the way to our green-grocer’s. All you ’ad to do, she said, was to ring the bell an’ wish your wish through the slit o’ the letter-box. I asked ’er if the fairies give it ’er? “Don’t ye know,” she says, “there’s no fairies in a Wish ’Ouse? There’s on’y a Token.” ’
‘Goo’ Lord A’mighty! Where did she come by that word?’ cried Mrs Fettley; for a Token is a wraith of the dead or, worse still, of the living.
‘The caravan-girl ’ad told ’er, she said. Well, Liz, it troubled me to ’ear ’er, an’ lyin’ in me arms she must ha’ felt it. “That’s very kind o’ you,” I says, holdin’ ’er tight, “to wish me ’eddick away. But why didn’t ye ask somethin’ nice for yourself?” “You can’t do that,” she says. “All you’ll get at a Wish ’Ouse is leave to take someone else’s trouble. I’ve took Ma’s ’eddicks, when she’s been kind to me; but this is the first time I’ve been able to do aught for you. Oh, Mrs Ashcroft, I
do just – about love you.” An’ she goes on all like that. Liz, I tell you my ’air e’en a’most stood on end to ’ear ’er. I asked ’er what like a Token was. “I dunno,” she says, “but after you’ve ringed the bell, you’ll ’ear it run up from the basement, to the front door. Then say your wish,” she says, “an’ go away.” “The Token don’t open de door to ye, then?” I says. “Oh no,” she says. “You on’y ’ear gigglin’, like, be’ind the front door. Then you say you’ll take the trouble off of ’oo ever ’tis you’ve chose for your love; an’ yell get it,” she says. I didn’t ask no more – she was too ’ot an’ fevered. I made much of ’er till it come time to light de gas, an’ a fiddle after that, ’er ’eddick – mine, I suppose – took off, an’ she got down an’ played with the cat.’
‘Well, I never!’ said Mrs Fettley. ‘Did – did ye foller it up, anyways?‘
‘She askt me to, but I wouldn’t ’ave no such dealin’s with a child.’
‘What did ye do, then?’
‘Sat in me own room ’stid o’ the kitchen when me ’eddicks come on. But it lay at de back o’ me mind.’
‘ ’Twould. Did she tell ye more, ever?’
‘No. Besides what the Gippo girl ’ad told ’er, she knew naught, ’cept that the charm worked. An’, next after that – in May ’twas – I suffered the summer out in Lunnon. ’Twas hot an’ windy for weeks, an’ the streets stinkin’ o’ dried ’orsedung blowin’ from side to side an’ lyin’ level with the kerb. We don’t get that nowadays. I ’ad my ’ol’day just before hoppin’, an’ come down ’ere to stay with Bessie again. She noticed I’d lost flesh, an’ was all poochy under the eyes.’
‘Did ye see ‘Arry?”
Mrs Ashcroft nodded. ‘The fourth – no, the fifth day. Wednesday ’twas. I knowed ’e was workin’ at Smalldene again. I asked ’is mother in the street, bold as brass. She ’adn’t room to say much, for Bessie – you know ’er tongue – was talkin’ full-clack. But that Wednesday, I was walkin’ with one o’ Bessie’s chillern hangin’ on me skirts, at de back o’ Chanter’s Tot. Prasin’ly, I felt ’e was be’ind me on the footpath, an’ I knowed by ’is tread ’e’d changed ’is nature. I slowed, an’ I heard ’im slow. Then I fussed a piece with the child, to force him past me, like. So ’e ’ad to come past. ’E just says “Good-evenin’,” and goes on, tryin’ to pull ’isself together.’
Strange Tales (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) Page 20