by Nancy Carson
Meanwhile, Job Smith tapped a firkin of old ale and presented everybody with a glassful. Elijah Tandy got to his feet and set about doing his duties as best man. He made a clever speech that made everybody laugh and asked them all to drink the health of the bride and groom. Then Jake Tandy thanked them all for their good wishes and said how lucky he was to be wed to somebody like Mary Ann. Mary Ann summoned a rare smile and Clover even thought she detected a blush in her mother.
While the tables were cleared and the trestles taken away, the guests drank more old ale, stretched their legs and stumbled about from one conversation to another, noisily putting the world to rights. The women complained about their men while the men cag-magged about work, feeling obligated to denigrate their gaffers. Job Smith, meanwhile, tapped a second firkin of old ale and began doling it out. Ramona Tandy, to Clover’s surprise, played an old accordion adeptly while many sang along raucously to the tunes.
‘They reckon as all the steam engines at the pits am gunna be replaced by ’lectric motors afore long,’ said one of Mary Ann’s brothers to another above the hubbub. It was Frederick, a miner, who had just been given a fresh glassful of old ale.
‘Like the trams,’ remarked the other.
Frederick took a swig from his glass. ‘And the sooner the better as far as I’m concerned. Bloody stinking, noisy articles, steam engines. Why, you cort hear yourself think when you’m a-standing by ’em. And somebody’s gorra be shovelling coal in night and day.’
It was at this point that Zillah Bache dropped a tray of glasses and the room went eerily quiet.
‘Zillah!’ Mary Ann shouted in her most intimidating voice.
Zillah froze. She faced Mary Ann and affected a toothless smile that was intended to project innocence.
‘Zillah, are you drunk again?’ Mary Ann asked admonishingly. ‘Have you been a-guzzling me best ale behind me back?’
‘I don’t know what you mean, Mary Ann,’ Zillah responded defiantly. ‘It was just an accident. I’m sorry.’
‘Right,’ said Mary Ann. ‘Get your hat and coat on. You’m sacked.’
‘Please missus…’ Zillah pleaded, suddenly remorseful. ‘I said I was sorry. I lost me balance. It wo’ happen again. Let me pay for what I’n had.’
‘You’ll be paying till kingdom come from what I can see of it,’ Mary Ann said. ‘No. Up the road. Get on with you, you drunken swopson.’
‘Mother, will you let me talk to Zillah?’ Clover interceded diplomatically. ‘I think I can sort this out a different way. You go and look after your guests…Please?’
‘All right, but don’t be soft with her, our Clover.’
Clover escorted Zillah into the scullery. She thought the world of Zillah, who had been like a mother to her. Zillah had soothed the cut and grazed knees of childhood, mopped her tears and held her in her fat, dimpled arms when Mary Ann was too busy. When Clover had started her monthly bleeding and believed she was terminally ill, Zillah had explained about womanhood, how babies were conceived and brought into the world. She could talk to Zillah. Just because Zillah had helped herself to a glass or two of beer was nothing afresh. It had never bothered Mary Ann before. So Clover felt justified in sparing Zillah the belittling glare of attention from her mother’s guests, which had doubtless made Mary Ann feel she should be seen to be doing something about the offence.
‘Take your coat off, Zillah,’ Clover said kindly. ‘You’re not going anywhere. Come on, there’s work to be done.’ Zillah took off her coat biddably and rolled her sleeves up, relieved that she’d been reprieved. ‘Now listen, Zillah. Can you understand why my mother is so upset about you?’
‘I reckon so.’
‘Right. Well, when you come to work in future there’ll be no drinking behind her back. We all know you do it. Mr Tandy’s here now and he won’t stand for it. But if you bring a clean bottle with you every day and give it to whoever’s serving, I’ll see as they fill it up with free beer for you ready for when you go home. I can’t be fairer than that. Agreed?’
‘Oh, God bless yer, Clover. God bless yer, my wench. I need the money from this job and I should be in dire straits if I lost it. And I’ve always loved workin’ here, yo’ know that. Not another drop’ll touch me lips again while I’m at work. May the Lord strike me down if ever it does.’
‘Good. I don’t want to see you go, Zillah. You’ve always been like a mother to me. I’ve always been able to come to you with my troubles. I’ll never forget how kind you’ve been.’
‘God bless you, Clover. But what about Mary Ann?’
‘Don’t worry about my mother, Zillah. She only wanted to put on a bit of a show in front of her guests. She’s probably a bit tipsy herself by now. I’ll straighten it all out with her and Mr Tandy tomorrow.’
On the morning of Easter Sunday, the day after the wedding, there was a gleam in Jake Tandy’s eyes as he sat at the table in the scullery and smiled fondly at Mary Ann. To Clover’s amazement, there was a corresponding gleam in Mary Ann’s eyes too, as she smiled fondly back. Mary Ann delivered a plate of bacon, eggs, fried bread, fried tomatoes and sausage to her new husband with something approaching a smile.
‘There you are, Jacob. Start the day with a good breffus, I always say.’
Jake nodded and smiled back gratefully. ‘Thank you, my flower. I could do with it. I’m clammed.’
‘Are we going to church this morning, Mother?’ Clover enquired, sitting facing Ramona who had arisen that morning as fresh as the dew.
‘We’re all going to church, our Clover,’ Mary Ann replied piously as she placed a full plate in front of Ramona. ‘It’s Eucharist today. I always go to Eucharist. Have you been confirmed, Ramona?’
‘Yes, when I was eleven, Mother,’ Ramona replied. She had already been coached by Jake to call Mary Ann ‘Mother’. ‘Me and Father always went to Top Church.’
Mary Ann placed a plate in front of Clover. ‘Our Clover, you could’ve got up yourself for this, save me stretching over the table.’
Clover thought it unfair that she’d not made the same comment to Ramona who was just as awkwardly placed. ‘Marmaduke’s on my lap. I didn’t want to disturb him.’
‘Oh, sod the cat, Clover.’ Mary Ann frowned and placed her own plate on the table, sitting down opposite Jake, with Clover on her right. ‘Well…now we’m a family we’ll have to decide who’s doing what in the pub afore we open. What do you say, Jacob?’
‘Quite right,’ Jake responded, nodding and chewing bacon rind. ‘It’s good if we all have a routine. Ramona, you can bottle up while Clover sawdusts the floor and polishes the tables. I’ll stoop any barrels and mek sure as there’s plenty oil in the lamps and coal in the scuttle. What’ll yo’ be doin’, Mary Ann?’
‘I reckon I’ll have me work cut out cooking we dinners when I get back from church, Jacob. But have no fear, I’ll come and serve while it’s a-cooking.’
‘Well at least Zillah will do the spittoons for me now,’ Clover informed them. ‘After yesterday she’ll be glad to do anything.’
‘And serve her right,’ Mary Ann remarked. ‘Still, I liked the way you handled it, our Clover. Good idea to give her a pint of beer every day. Save her pinching it and more.’
‘But I don’t think we should put on her, just because of what’s happened,’ Clover stressed. ‘She’s been a good friend to us in other ways. You know she has.’
‘And in a day or two it’ll all be forgotten, I daresay,’ Jake said.
Clover turned to Ramona. ‘I’ll show you all round the house after, Ramona, so you know where everything is. How did you find your bed, by the way?’
‘Lumpy, if you want the truth.’ She dipped a piece of fried bread into her egg yolk. ‘I didn’t sleep very well. I’m not used to a lumpy bed.’
Clover watched for her mother’s reaction.
‘Then we’ll go down the town to the Worcestershire Furnishing in Wolverhampton Street in the week and order you a new one,’ Mary Ann said with a finality that w
as unassailable.
Clover could hardly believe her ears. Such sudden and unbounded generosity. ‘Can I have a new bed as well?’ she asked, not wishing to be outdone.
‘What do you want a new bed for, our Clover?’ Mary Ann asked, evidently irked that her daughter might be trying to take advantage. ‘They cost money and the one you’ve got is best feather and down.’
‘But it’s all lumpy and hard, Mother. Same as Ramona’s is.’
‘Try giving it a good shake. How come you’ve never moaned about it afore?’
‘’Cause I knew you wouldn’t buy me a new one. But if Ramona can have a softer bed, I don’t see why I shouldn’t.’
Jake stuffed a forkful of best back bacon into his mouth and it amazed Clover how so much food could pass his huge moustache without leaving its mark upon it. ‘If the wench wants a new bed she can have one, Mary Ann, as I see it,’ Jake adjudicated fairly. He looked at Clover and smiled. ‘Nobody wants to kip on a hard bed, do they?’
‘Thank you…Pop.’ She was having difficulty getting used to calling him that.
‘Huh!’ Mary Ann tutted indignantly. ‘Tis to be hoped you’m as finicky when you get married, our Clover. Lord help whoever it is as gets you.’
Conversation paused while the family, all self-conscious of each other in their new situation, concentrated on their breakfasts. Despite Clover’s concern about just how radically the presence of a new stepfather and stepsister might affect her, it seemed that things might not be so bad after all. Maybe she was going to like her new stepfather. He seemed very fair.
‘Are you courting, Clover?’ Ramona asked, tackling her food with determination.
Clover shook her head and smiled self-consciously, glancing at her mother. ‘No, no, I’m not courting.’
‘Not courting at nineteen?’ Jake sounded incredulous. ‘Why they must be a-queuing up – a fine-looking madam like thee.’
Clover smiled demurely and continued eating.
‘Oh, there’s one or two that come in the taproom and ogle at her all soft-like,’ Mary Ann admitted. ‘But I wouldn’t give tuppence for e’er a one.’
‘I’m a-courting,’ Ramona stated proudly. ‘I’ve been courting more than six months now.’
Jake burst out laughing. ‘Courting at seventeen, eh? What d’you think about that, Mary Ann?’
‘I think seventeen’s a bit young to be a-courting, Jacob,’ Mary Ann declared disapprovingly. ‘I take it as you ain’t serious with this chap, Ramona? Whoever he is.’
‘No, I ain’t serious, Mother,’ Ramona felt inclined to confirm. ‘It’s just a chap I know.’
‘There’s no harm in the wench stepping out with a young chap a couple of nights a week if she wants to, Mary Ann,’ Jake said. ‘As long as she’s back home afore ten.’
‘What they can do after ten they can do afore it, Jacob,’ Mary Ann argued. ‘I don’t hold with young women being out nights on their own with men, as our Clover knows. Specially at seventeen. But if you’m content, Jacob, then I’ll be ruled by thee.’
‘She’ll come to no harm, Mary Ann.’
Clover smiled to herself. Things were really looking up, because whatever Ramona could do, she would be able to do also under this new regime.
The terraced buildings that lined both sides of George Street and Brown Street on Kates Hill were made up mostly of dwellings, but were interspersed with little shops. Brown Street, generally the busier of the two, boasted shops that sold lamp-oil and clothes pegs, sweets, haberdashery, greengrocery, as well as a barber’s shop, a fish-and-chip shop, a couple of butchers’ shops and several public houses. George Street hosted a newsagent, a pawnbroker, a coal yard, and a grain merchant. A mere three pubs vied for trade in George Street; the California Inn, the Jubilee Inn – which was the headquarters of the pigeon club – and the Jolly Collier. But then it was less than a hundred yards from one end to the other.
Clover proudly showed Ramona around Kates Hill that afternoon to help walk off their Sunday dinners. Groups of children tumbled through the narrow streets on their way to Sunday school, and courting couples strolled hand in hand. All were wearing their Sunday best.
‘It’ll be nice having a sister,’ Ramona said chirpily as they ventured up Cromwell Street, and Clover began to feel they were growing close already. ‘’Course, with my mother dying when she had me there was no chance of a brother or a sister after.’
‘Oh, I didn’t realise your mother had died in childbirth,’ Clover said sympathetically. ‘So your dad’s been on his own all these years.’
‘More’n seventeen years now. I worked it out – they had to get married, you know. They’d only been married five months when I was born.’
‘But that’s tragic,’ Clover remarked with the utmost sympathy. ‘Your poor father. He’s hardly known any married life. And he must have reared you by himself.’
‘With a bit of help from my two grandmothers. When I was little, I used to go to one of my gran’s when he went to the market.’
‘I like your father,’ Clover proclaimed. ‘He seems very fair.’
‘He’s all right. Your mother don’t smile much, though, does she?’
Clover chuckled good-naturedly. ‘She was smiling this morning at your father…’
‘I know…What if she gets pregnant, Clover?’
‘Pregnant? At her age?’
‘Well, I know she’s forty-two but women do have babies at that age.’
‘No, not my mother, Ramona. Not Mary Ann. She wouldn’t. That sort of thing wouldn’t interest her.’
‘It interests every other woman. Why should she be different?…Anyway, Clover, tell me about your father.’
‘I can hardly remember him. Just a few vague impressions, that’s all. He was called Toby. He and Mother became licensees of the Jolly Collier in 1890 when she was twenty-five and I was just two. He died of pneumonia when I was four.’
They passed the Sailor’s Return on their left, which fronted the Diamond Brewery.
‘So who’s this Ned Brisco you mentioned?’ Ramona asked.
‘Oh, Ned? He’s just a friend. But a good friend. I’ll show you where he lives in a minute.’
‘Isn’t he your sweetheart?’
‘My sweetheart?’ Clover burst out laughing. ‘No, I don’t fancy him that way.’
Ramona registered surprise. ‘Have you ever had a lover? Have you ever done what lovers do?’
Clover shook her head, half resolutely, half apologetically. ‘No. I’d wait till I was married before I did anything like that.’
‘I have.’ Ramona paused for Clover’s reaction.
‘You mean…?’
Ramona smiled smugly.
‘Ramona! You never.’
‘It’s nothin’ to make a fuss about, you know. Plenty of my friends do it.’
They were silent for a few seconds, hearing only the sound of their footsteps on the Ketley blue paving-blocks with the criss-crossed pattern, while Clover mulled over this surprising information.
‘Does it hurt? They say it hurts.’
‘A bit. The first time. Made me bleed a bit as well, but it didn’t stop me liking it. I really liked it, Clover.’
Clover was intrigued. ‘So who did you do it with? That boy you’re courting?’
‘’Course. Sammy.’
‘How long since the first time?’
‘Last Christmas. I was seventeen, Clover,’ she said reassuringly. ‘I mean, it’s not as if I was a child.’
‘But where did you do it? I mean, if it was Christmas?’
‘Me and my father were going to my gran’s for our Christmas dinners, but he wanted to go to the Jolly Collier first for a drink. So he left me in our house by myself getting ready, and I was supposed to meet him at my gran’s after. Anyway, Sammy called to bring me my Christmas box. I gave him a big kiss for it…you know…and one thing led to another…I locked the door and we ended up on the hearth in the front room, me with me nightdress up round me waist.’
‘God…But what if you’d got pregnant, Ramona? Think of all the trouble, the disgrace.’
‘Oh, I won’t get pregnant. Sammy pulls it out a bit sharp when he’s ready to…you know…’
Clover digested this thought-provoking information for a few seconds while they turned the corner by the Junction Inn. Watson’s Street, where Ned lived, stretched narrowly to their right, a steep hill that took you to the top of Cawney Hill and its tiny twisted streets, its back-to-back cottages and its disused quarry. But Clover decided not to point out Ned’s home; it would be too distracting and she wanted to explore this fascinating subject more. So they began the climb up Hill Street with its row of terraced houses on the right and its allotments on the left behind a small row of cottages.
‘Some of the girls I work with at the foundry do it with their sweethearts,’ Clover admitted at last. ‘They tell me all about it.’
‘And do they like it as well?’
‘They must do. They’re at it every chance they get.’
Ramona chuckled. ‘See. It ain’t just me then, is it? You’ll have to get yourself a chap, Clover.’
‘I think I’d be too scared to let him do anything, though. My mother’s never allowed me to have a chap. She’d have a fit if I ever got into trouble. Maybe now you’ve come she’ll allow it. Especially if your father allows you to see this Sammy.’
‘But he don’t know we do that, Clover. Lord above, he’d kill me if he knew, so keep it under your hat.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, Ramona.’ She smiled reassuringly. ‘Anything you tell me is just between the two of us.’
Ramona chuckled. ‘It’ll be nice sharing secrets, won’t it?’
Chapter 3
It had been some time since her mother’s wedding when Clover walked to the Coneygree Iron Foundry in Tividale early one sunny morning in May. It would be her twentieth birthday next week and she wondered what present her mother might afford her. A new summer dress for best would be nice if she were allowed to choose it herself. As she walked on, past St John’s church and over Brewery Fields to the Birmingham Road, she pondered how her life had surprisingly changed for the better since Jake and Ramona had become a part of it. Clover had always lived in the shadow of her mother’s dominance, had accepted it with resignation, but now she felt a new freedom. Jake was in charge and, if nothing else, he was even-handed where she and Ramona were concerned – so far, at least. Mary Ann could no longer impose her restraining and often unfair moral and social code on Clover any more than she could on Ramona. It allowed for a certain latitude she had never enjoyed before. She was even allowed to visit Ned Brisco’s workshop some nights, where she helped him construct his new flying machine. And she did not have to return till ten o’ clock.