Josefina was due to leave Liverpool on Thursday, the nineteenth of June, but because of boiler repairs not being completed on the particular ship the passengers had been transferred to a sister ship sailing on the high tide last thing on Sunday night, June the fifteenth.
Willy, who, of course, would be accompanying Tilly to Liverpool to see Josefina off, felt he must get word about the changed arrangements to Noreen. But how? He put it to Ned Spoke who had over the years become his friend and confidant, and it was Ned who said, ‘Well, Master Willy, there’s nothing like a letter for explaining things. I’ll get one there for you without the old boy seeing it. I mightn’t do it first go off but I’m bound to get the attention of one or other of the ladies sooner or later.’
But when Ned scouted the farm on his first visit he saw no-one at all. Later the same day the only person he saw and the last one he wanted to encounter was Simon Bentwood himself. He was hobbling across the yard with the aid of a stick.
The following morning he rode past the gate and there met Randy Simmons. To him Randy was an old man, a good farm worker. He had heard nothing against him except that he chatted a lot in the village inn. But then all the old codgers chatted a lot when they had a pint of ale in them. In an off-hand manner he enquired of his master and mistress, and to this Randy replied, ‘Oh, all be gone into Shields. Me here, I’m king of the castle with only young Larry Fenwick to do me biddin’, and he’s as thick in the top thatch as a crumpled cow’s horn.’
‘Would you do something for me?’ Ned asked.
‘Aye, aye, lad,’ Randy replied, ‘if it doesn’t cost money.’
‘Would you give a letter to the young lass? It’s private like, very private, you understand?’
Randy gazed up at the young fellow before grinning at him and saying, ‘Oh aye, I understand, I understand a lot I do; nothing much escapes me. One eye over the fence and one ear under it, you learn a lot that way.’ He jerked his head towards Ned, who replied with the same gesture that they understood each other; at least that’s what he thought when he handed the letter over.
Two hours later Randy Simmons, on entering the kitchen, happened to drop the letter from his apparently flustered hand as he encountered his master.
‘What’s that?’ Simon demanded and Randy Simmons grabbed the letter up from the stone flags, muttering as he did so. ‘Nowt, master, just a letter.’
‘Well, if it’s a letter, let me have it.’
Randy placed the letter behind his back, saying, ‘’Tain’t for you, master.’
‘’Tain’t for me!’ Simon repeated Randy’s words, then held out his hands, adding, ‘What letters come into this house are for me. Let me have it!’ With the appearance of genuine reluctance Simmons handed the letter over, and then the world had seemed to explode in that farmhouse kitchen.
Reading part of the letter aloud to his amazed and now really frightened wife, Simon Bentwood ground out, ‘My dear of dears, Ned will get this to you to tell you that, unfortunately, Josefina has to sail earlier than expected, so I shall be leaving on Saturday morning for Liverpool. But I shall be back on Tuesday.’
He held the single sheet of paper in both hands and, in his rage, shook it as he glared at his wife. Then with heightening passion he ended, ‘My dearest dear, nothing or no-one can separate us. Just cling on to that. You are mine and I am yours for as long as we may live, and after. I shall be there on Tuesday night as usual. Until then, my love, your own Willy.’
At this he crushed the letter in his hand as he screamed, ‘As long as you may live. And begod! Your time is short, Master William Sopwith. If I have anything to do with it your time is short,’ then he had made to rush out of the kitchen, but the cramp in his back caught him and he leant face forward against the wall and beat on it with his bare fists.
After some minutes during which he had continued to gasp with pain, he turned and, looking at Lucy, cried, ‘Where is she? Get her!’
It said a lot for Lucy’s courage when, standing stiffly, she said, ‘Not until you calm down.’
‘You! You, woman!’ He brought himself with a great effort from the wall; then stumbling his way towards the dairy where Randy Simmons had already warned Noreen of impending disaster, having explained that it wasn’t his fault, that he had been looking for her when he had come up with her father and became flustered.
Simmons had got no further with his mumbling apologies before the door burst open and without uttering a word Simon Bentwood grabbed his daughter by the collar of her dress and dragged her struggling and crying out into the yard and back into the kitchen; and there, throwing her into the old rocking chair with such force that but for Lucy’s hand it would have tipped over backwards, he bent above her bawling now into her face, ‘You dirty little strumpet, you! To think I’m seeing you day in and day out and never guessed. I’m a bloody fool. Blind, like him. Well, listen to me, miss.’ He had grabbed the front of her dress and brought her upwards to him. ‘And listen hard. I’ll see you dead first afore he comes within miles of you again, let alone touch you. Do you hear me? I’ll kill him. Do you hear me? And happily swing for it afore I see you mixed up with that lot.’
‘Then . . . then you will . . . you will swing, because he’s for me, and me for him, no matter what you say.’
The blow from the flat of his hand knocked her backwards. And now Lucy was clawing at him, crying, ‘Leave her alone or I’ll take the poker to you!’
‘Out of me way, woman!’ With one backward thrust of his arm he knocked his wife flying and almost overbalanced himself; then hauling Noreen bodily out of the chair, he dragged her through the kitchen, across the hall and up the stairs. When she clung on to the bannisters he brought his free hand with such force across her wrist that she cried out. Kicking open the door of her room, he flung her inside and, looking at her where she fell, he cried at her, ‘And here you stay until I have your word, whether it be days, weeks or months. I’ll feed and water you like an animal but you won’t move from this room until you come to your senses.’
On this he had gone out and turned the key in the lock. It was the first time in his memory that key had been turned and he had to use all his strength to wrench it around. And when it was done, he thrust it into his pocket and went outside, where he ordered Randy Simmons to saddle up the trap again. Then he made his way to the Manor.
Six
Willy, after all, did not accompany Josefina to Liverpool. The doctor, having diagnosed slight concussion, ordered him to rest for some days, and it was when the doctor was examining him that Willy asked him a question. ‘Could a blow on my head improve my sight, I mean in the right eye?’
‘Improve your sight?’ The doctor pursed his lips, then said, ‘I doubt it.’
‘The last time you came, about three weeks ago, I think it was when Lizzie Gamble broke her ankle, you were wearing this same suit were you not, doctor?’
The doctor looked down at his attire. ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose so,’ he said.
‘I thought I detected a stripe in the material then. Rather unusual material, I thought, not . . . well, not a sober cloth, as it were.’
‘No, you could say that, not a sober cloth.’ The doctor smiled broadly.
‘Well—’ Willy put out his hand and drew a fingernail down one of the narrow stripes of the doctor’s coat, saying, ‘At that time I couldn’t really distinguish the colour of the stripe, but now I can see it’s blue on a grey background. Am I right?’
‘Yes, you’re right.’
‘Then that gives me the answer to the question I asked you. Could a blow on the head restore one’s sight?’
‘Ah! Yes, yes . . . But it may be only a temporary thing. As Doctor Blackman has already told you, in your right eye it’s the nerves that are affected and bodily and mental strain can act on these. Then again, with the blow the retina could have been dislodged. And now moved again. I don’t know.’
‘But I have received a bodily strain, so to speak, and either the eye nerves ha
ve been affected, in reverse to what he suggested, or the retina has moved again.’
‘Ah; yes, yes, could be, perhaps.’ Again the doctor was nodding his head. ‘But I wouldn’t rely too much upon the change.’
‘If it’s only the nerves that are affected, couldn’t I have an operation?’
‘On the nerves at the back of the eye? Huh!’ The doctor laughed now. ‘I doubt it. Nerves are funny things to play about with in any part of the body, but the eye is the most delicate. Still, let’s see how long the improvement lasts, eh? And we might try spectacles again, although I know they were of little benefit to you before.’
‘Just as you say, doctor. By the way, shall I be able to travel, I mean will this dizziness go within the next day or so?’
‘Oh no, no, there must be no talk of you travelling for at least a fortnight. What you must do now is rest.’
So Willy said his goodbyes to Josefina from his bedroom in the old nursery quarters where they had grown up together, and he was saddened to a depth that he hadn’t imagined by the coming loss of her. The eruption on that particular Sunday some weeks ago was forgotten, at least by him, and he held her hands tightly as he looked at her, and with his improved vision he saw that she was very beautiful, exquisitely so. His throat was full as he said, and with a truth he was facing for the first time, ‘I’m going to miss you, Josefina, so, so very much.’
She stared at him in silence. Her dark eyes were bright, seeming to give off a deep purple light. Her small mouth was pressed tight. But she didn’t speak, and so he went on, ‘Why must you go? We have been so close all these years. If we had been brother and sister the tie between us couldn’t have been stronger.’
Now she opened her lips and her voice did not match her small, delicate frame but sounded deep and full of meaning as she said, ‘But we are not brother and sister. Mama, as she said, has had her doubts all these years, in fact she is convinced that her husband had nothing to do with the makings of me. But this I think has only come to her of late, whereas for me I have known since I passed out of childhood that I in no way belong to this race . . . your race.’
‘Oh, Josefina, don’t say that. You’ll always belong to us. You . . . you have a special place in my heart.’
‘Have I?’
‘Yes, yes.’ He drew her hands towards his chest and pressed them there until she said with slow separated words, ‘But not special enough.’
Both his eyes widened and the light that was without a hazy rim in his right eye saw the look in hers and slowly his hands released their hold on her and his head dropped forward while his mind cried, ‘No, no!’ and his senses cried back at it, ‘Yes. Oh yes!’ Josefina thinking of him in that way, and for how long? This was why she couldn’t stand the thought of Noreen. Oh God! The complications and the hurts and the weight of guilt, for he knew now that he was responsible for her going.
She had risen from the side of the bed and helplessly he looked up at her and his next words sounded inane to his own ears as he said, ‘It . . . it needn’t be goodbye, you could come back for a holiday or we—’ His voice trailed off for he could not add, ‘Noreen and I could visit America.’
She stood looking down at him for a moment, her expression holding a look of slight scorn mingled with sadness. ‘If I were contemplating coming back for a holiday,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t then be leaving now. As to you coming across there, that would be a waste of time, that’s if you wanted to see me, for I don’t intend to stay long on the ranch, I mean to find my own people. I won’t be happy until I do, be they what they may . . . Goodbye, Willy.’ She leaned forward and as he reached up to kiss her cheek she placed her lips fully on his. It was the first time it had happened and their touch was like a spark from a fire alighting on his mouth, and instinctively his arms went up and held her tightly, and she to him; then, her hands on his chest, she thrust him back onto the pillow and, head bent, she ran from the room.
Slowly he lay back and stared before him. Josefina feeling like that . . . And how did he feel? He moved his head slowly. He couldn’t explain how he felt. He only knew that he was sorry to the heart of him that she was going and that he would never see her again.
When his gaze moved round the room, the images were dimmed again with the moisture in his eyes. ‘I love Noreen,’ he said to himself. ‘Oh yes, I love Noreen.’ And there was no doubt in his mind but that he did love Noreen. Yet why was he feeling like this about Josefina, for his instinct was urging him to get up and to dash down the stairs and beg of her, ‘Don’t go. Don’t go, Josefina.’
You couldn’t love two people, not really, not at the same time, and in the same way. It was impossible.
He could not take into consideration that he was his mother’s son and had inherited her problem.
Seven
‘Mam. Mam. Do something, will you?’
‘I will, lass, as soon as I can.’
They were each kneeling on the floor speaking through the keyhole.
‘I’ll go mad if I have to stay here much longer.’
‘If you give him your word he’d let you out.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, girl; pretend, say you will, swear you will, and then once outside I’ll get you away. I’ve got it all ready, I mean some things packed, and money for you.’
‘Oh, Mam!’ There was silence for a moment. Then Noreen’s voice came tear-laden and trembling through the keyhole of the stout oak door, saying, ‘Go to the police, Mam; they could make him let me out.’
‘No, lass, no! I’ve gone into that. It’s a private matter. A father is allowed to chastise his daughter, that’s what the constable said.’
‘Mam, I’m smelling, I haven’t had a decent wash. It’s . . . it’s thirteen days since I’ve been in here and my slop bucket’s full again.’
Lucy turned her eyes towards the stairs and put her head to one side as if she were listening; but it was not for her husband coming home because he had just gone off to the market after having opened this door and thrust a meal inside.
This morning he had not brought any washing water because he was in a hurry. Whenever he did bring her a ewer he would shout through the door for Noreen to stand back, and do the same whenever he brought her an empty pail and took the full one out.
It was the full bucket of slops that Lucy was seeing in her mind’s eye as she looked towards the staircase. Turning her head sharply back to the keyhole, she said, ‘Listen, Noreen, listen. Now pay attention. He’ll have had a drink when he comes in but he won’t be full; he’s wise enough not to overdo it because then I might get the chance to search him for the key. He’s slept in the other back room since he put you in there. Now pay attention. I’ll tell him you must have your slop bucket emptied. Now have it in your hand when he opens the door and make to put it on the floor within reaching distance of him, then swing it up and let him have it over him . . . Do you hear?’
‘The slops?’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Right, Mam. Right.’
‘Then make for the door. I’ll do my best to keep it wide. When you get downstairs go through the front room, I’ll leave the right-hand window open; make for the cow field and the bottom gate . . . You listening?’
‘Yes, yes, Mam. Go on, go on.’
‘Well, go to the old barn at the bottom, I’ll leave the bass hamper of your clothes there and enough money to keep you going for some weeks. Make for the Jarrow turnpike. It’s not far from there to the terminus where you’ll get the horse bus. Do you follow me?’
‘Yes, Mam, yes.’
‘He’ll never think about you going that way, he’ll think you’ll go straight to the Manor. But for God’s sake, girl, if you value that young lad’s life, don’t go near that place. Do you hear me?’
There was a pause before Noreen’s voice came to her, saying, flatly, ‘I hear you, Mam.’
‘And you promise you won’t go there?’
‘I can promise you that,
Mam.’
‘Because you know he’ll kill him this time, don’t you?’ Again there was a pause before her daughter said, ‘Yes, I know that. But I’ll tell you something, Mam. If I had a knife in here the night instead of a bucket of slops I’d drive it into him. I would, I would.’
‘Oh, Noreen, Noreen, don’t say that. He’s acting like this because of his feelings for you.’
‘Huh! Feelings. It’s not feelings for me, Mam, that’s caused him to be mad, and you know it. He must have had some outsize opinion of himself when young and couldn’t imagine anyone passing him over. He still can’t . . . You know what’s the trouble with him?’
‘Enough. Enough. Listen. Listen.’
‘I’m listenin’, Mam.’
‘When you get to Newcastle take a cab to Garden Crescent. Have you got that?’
‘Yes, Mam.’
‘There’s a boarding house. It’s respectable, it’s run by a Mrs Snaith. Remember that, the name’s Snaith. 2 Garden Crescent. Oh, if only I could get something under this door.’ Lucy now actually clawed at the carpet that was tight against the bottom of the door. Although worn with constant rubbing it was still impossible to slip a piece of paper over it and beneath the door.
‘It’s all right, Mam. Mrs Snaith, 2 Garden Crescent, Newcastle. I’ll remember.’
‘And don’t write me, lass, not here. Write to him and tell him he must never try to see you ’cos you’re going to start a new life . . . And you’ll have to. You understand that?’
Lucy waited for confirmation of this, and when none came she said, ‘Noreen! Noreen! You’ve got to forget him. If you want him to remain alive you’ve got to forget him. Get it into your head, lass.’
Tilly Trotter Widowed (The Tilly Trotter Trilogy) Page 22