Alice's Secret

by Lynne Francis

  ‘Ah, excuse my appearance,’ he said lightly. ‘I walked Lucy over the moor first thing, then made my way here at once when Father summoned me. There was no time to change, I’m afraid.’

  Lucy? Father? Alice was puzzled, and no doubt her face showed it, for Richard smiled and clicked his fingers. Hearing a scrabble and a muffled bark, Alice swung around towards the fireplace where a grey lurcher had been dozing peacefully by the hearth. She bounded up to Richard and butted his leg with her nose until he bent down and fondled her ears. Then she turned her attention to Alice, gazing up at her with beseeching eyes. Alice couldn’t help but smile, and stooped to repeat Richard’s actions.

  ‘There, best friends already,’ said Richard. ‘Lucy doesn’t take to everyone, you know. It’s quite an honour.’ He moved on swiftly, seeing Alice blush. ‘Do you think it would be all right to bring her into the schoolroom? She goes everywhere with me, you see.’

  Alice found her voice at last. ‘I’m not sure.’ She was doubtful. ‘She’s rather large. I think some of the smaller ones might be afeared.’ As the words came out, Alice wondered at herself for slipping into the local dialect. Was it an instinctive reaction to the ‘lord-and-master’ situation? She fingered the brooch that pinned her shawl together, a gesture she used to calm herself. Without a doubt, ‘Father’ must be James Weatherall, the mill owner, and Richard must be his eldest son, recently returned from Cambridge and not proving to be the enthusiastic businessman that his father had hoped for, or so it was rumoured. Rather, he loved to walk the hills, play the piano with his mother and sisters, and write poetry. At least so said Louisa, their neighbour in Northwaite, who was a maid at the big house.

  For his part, Richard saw a pale, slim girl with a mass of reddish-brown curls that her work cap failed to contain, dressed in the usual working uniform of the mill girls: a rough long wool skirt and a shirt of a nondescript colour, faded from numerous washes, topped with a knitted shawl pinned tightly at the front. The brooch that held the shawl wasn’t the usual cheap and shiny affair, though, but a rather fine enamelled sprig of lavender. Her eyes, first glimpsed when she raised them directly to him whilst fondling Lucy’s ears, were the most extraordinary green. Or were they blue? He was fascinated. They seemed to subtly change colour as he looked. Then she blushed again, and he realised that he was staring, as well as babbling some nonsense about the dog.

  ‘I should get back to my class,’ said Alice. ‘You’d better come and meet them. I set them some reading to get on with.’ They would probably have lost interest by now, she reflected, stumbling over difficult words, one or two of them taking the chance for a nap, Charlie Wilmott no doubt teasing Edith Parker and then sulking when she cut him off with a clever remark that earned her the laughter of her classmates at his expense.

  Richard signalled to Lucy to return to her fireside spot, then followed Alice down the narrow corridor, away from the peace of Ramsay’s office, past the noisy hubbub of the mill floor, revealed in a flash as a door opened, then hidden again just as quickly as the door snapped shut. Richard suppressed a shudder. The brooding presence of the mill in the valley filled his every day. No matter how far he walked over the moors and through the woods, the chimneys of the valley mills seemed to be always in his sight, even from his bedroom window. Each evening, Father would inform the dinner table of some mill problem or success, of the fluctuating price of cloth, of the need to update the machinery, glancing at Richard to see if he was listening, involved, interested. Richard knew that he was a disappointment. In effect, the mill had paid for his education and was keeping the family in comfort, and his father looked to him to carry on the tradition. But the education that was meant to have prepared him to step into his father’s shoes had simply driven him as far as possible in the opposite direction.

  ‘Esther would be far better suited to running the business,’ thought Richard ruefully. Trained in the art of home management by her mother, his sister Esther was immensely capable, practical and forward thinking. Richard possessed none of these qualities – his thoughts as he roamed the countryside with Lucy were of a more philosophical nature, and he was far more likely to return home and write poetry than to draw up a plan for the future expansion of the mill. Getting him to teach in the schoolroom was his father’s last despairing attempt at getting Richard involved. Mr Weatherall was only too aware that Richard shied away from contact with the workers and locals, nervous of their roughness and down-to-earth demeanour after the rarefied atmosphere of Cambridge. Perhaps meeting the children would help him to understand the mill life a little better?

  The chatter from the schoolroom, clearly audible outside, stilled the moment that Alice turned the doorknob. She pushed the door open and stood aside to let Richard enter. Stepping forward, he faced rows of inquisitive faces, feeling his heart sink as he did so. He felt no more connection with the schoolroom than he did with the rest of the mill, but Alice was already introducing him.

  ‘Children, I want you to meet Mr Weatherall. He will be your teacher for arithmetic, starting tomorrow. He will sit with us for the rest of the morning, so he can get to know you a little.’ Alice took the teacher’s chair from behind the desk and set it at the front of the room, indicating that Richard should sit down. She then stood behind the desk and Richard found himself watching her, rather than the children, as she instructed them on a handwriting exercise, then moved around the room, pointing out lazy loops and sloping verticals, crouching down to a child’s level to show how a different way of holding the chalk and the slate would make a difference to the final result. By the end of the hour, Richard had an inkling of the skill involved in teaching a class, and of the love and respect that the children had for Alice. He feared that he would be of very little use in the classroom – he had never taught and had no experience in dealing with children – but his father expected it of him and so it must be.

  Chapter Four

  Alice had been wary of Richard at first, worried that he had been sent by his father to spy on her, to make sure that she was fulfilling her duties in the classroom and teaching the children to a proper standard. She was painfully conscious of her deficiencies when she compared herself to Master Richard, and his fancy education, the likes of which she could barely comprehend. It hadn’t taken her long, however, to discover that, fancy education or not, he was totally at sea in the classroom and, it would seem, in life in general.

  ‘Could you help me hand out the slates?’ Alice said. Within two days, she had had enough of Richard helplessly watching her, or following her around the schoolroom, hanging on her every word. She no longer worried that he had been sent to report back: rather, she feared she was minding him until James Weatherall had decided what to do for the best with regard to his future in the mill. Alice’s time with the children was limited and precious, and she resented having to waste any of it on Master Richard. She was going to have to come up with a plan.

  ‘Today, Master Richard will work on arithmetic with half the class, while I work on handwriting with the rest of you.’

  The children started to mutter their discontent. They wanted nothing to do with either arithmetic or Master Richard.

  ‘Then, halfway through the morning, we will change over,’ Alice announced firmly. ‘I want you all to listen very carefully to Master Richard. We are very lucky to have him here to help.’

  She’d felt shy at first, suggesting that he might devise a lesson, thinking herself presumptuous and hoping he wouldn’t take her request amiss. It didn’t take her long to discover that he had as little experience of teaching as she had of life at Cambridge. The noise from his group swiftly reached such levels that she had to break off, leaving her group to practise the loops of their ‘g’s’ and ‘f’s’ and intercede before it got too far out of hand.

  ‘I wonder if you might start with something a little more basic?’ she suggested, once she realised that Richard had set himself the challenge of explaining long division to his group. Richard looked blank. />
  ‘Perhaps if you went back to simple addition or subtraction you could build on that to show how multiplication and division work?’

  Richard looked embarrassed and hopeful at the same time. Alice could see he was wondering whether she would step in and take over.

  Her cheeks flushed pink, partly at the frankness of his gaze, and partly with annoyance at the difficult position she had been put in. Should she speak to Ramsay? Explain to him that Richard was not well-suited to this role? That he was, in fact, a hindrance to her?

  She took a deep breath. ‘I think if you tried to make this relevant to their everyday lives it would help.’

  Richard still looked uncomprehending so she pressed on. ‘I mean, if Charlie earns five shillings a week, and gives his mother three shillings towards the running of the house, and has to pay a shilling in fines and stoppages at the mill’ – here all the children laughed, seeing that Alice knew Charlie only too well – ‘how much money has he got left? And if he wants to save sixpence, but wants to buy a penn’orth of sweets from Mrs Wrigglesworth’s shop’ – more laughter – ‘how much does he have left then?’

  Alice laid the sums out on her slate as she spoke and held it up for the children to see. Richard’s confusion seemed to have grown and she felt her impatience rising. With a sharp look, she quelled the giggles and unrest that had broken out in the writing group and thought rapidly.

  ‘We’ll change the lesson a bit. I’d like this group’ – she indicated the arithmetic group – ‘to introduce themselves to Master Richard and tell him about the numbers in their life. So, how old they are, the numbers of brothers and sisters that they have, and the number of people in their family that work in the mill. Then we will put all the numbers together and over the next few weeks we will talk about average numbers, and how to work them out.’

  Alice looked at Richard. She hoped he would seize the lifeline she was offering him. At least it would allow him to learn a little about his pupils’ lives, and perhaps to see how he could make arithmetic relevant and useful to them.

  ‘And tomorrow, I will ask Mr Ramsay if we can borrow the abacus from his office to help with our sums.’ She hoped the novelty would add an extra incentive to get on with things.

  As she turned back to her own group, Alice was relieved to see Richard gather his group to him and to hear him start to question them. Even if they got nowhere with the project she’d set them, at least he would start to gain a bit of an insight into their lives.

  So how had she moved from irritation to these complicated emotions? When had she stopped feeling annoyed by his uncertainty in the classroom, and started to see it for what it was: shyness and lack of experience? When had she started to respond to his vulnerability, finding herself protecting him from the children? Sharp and canny in spotting weak spots, they soon got over their awe of Master Richard and were quick to tease and fluster him. With no experience of quelling wildness, he was at a loss, until Alice stepped in and exerted discipline. She had no need to raise her voice or threaten – the children instantly understood that she meant what she said. And in any case, they had no desire to displease her.

  So why was it that she now approached each day in the schoolroom with a mixture of trepidation and joy, far removed from the calm happiness she had previously felt there? Trepidation that she was somehow stepping out of line in allowing herself to feel on an even footing with Richard? Trepidation that she enjoyed their discussions, conducted in a murmur as the children bent their heads over a work task, or snatched in the brief hiatus at the end of the school morning, once the children had left to devour their lunches and before she and Richard returned to their respective realities?

  And joy – joy in discovering that it was possible to talk to Richard without fearing his intent, without him treating her as a possession, something rightfully his to be used and discarded at will. Alice would not let the doubts – troubled thoughts about rightful places and false hopes – rise up and destroy this feeling. She had few enough moments that were hers alone. What harm could it do to keep any doubts to herself and simply enjoy this rare gift – of an educated man treating her like an equal – that had been given to her?

  When had he started to lend her books, or suggest a poem that she might enjoy? When did their meetings first stray outside the confines of the working day? When did Richard first talk of a walk he loved to take each Sunday, and when did Alice find herself with time to spare from household duties to surprise him there – careless, as if she had no notion that his path would lead him past where she usually gathered comfrey and woundwort to carry home for Sarah’s remedies?

  And when had it become apparent that their need to see each other would extend into the dark reaches of the night, into the secret countryside wrapped around the mill, hidden away from family and friends, stepping far outside what either of them knew to be right and proper, so that they might have been the only two people alive?

  How had this happened? How had this young man, seemingly so unsuited to the rigours of the mill and to understanding the lives of those who lived there, become so entwined in her life?

  Alice pondered the question as she lay in bed, absently turning her locket between her fingers. She hardly felt the weight of it, suspended on its fine gold chain around her neck, and she would have to remember to remove it in the morning when she awoke. For now, she was safe to wear it hidden beneath the high neck of her nightgown. When Richard had given the locket to her, he’d pressed a tiny catch to open it, explaining that it should hold two photos, one of each of them. His photograph, a tiny sepia portrait, still gave her a jolt whenever she looked at it, but she had no picture to put in the locket’s empty face, nothing to lock into an embrace with Richard when the two halves were closed together. Alice had never had her photograph taken, and couldn’t imagine that she ever would.

  Part Three

  Chapter One

  Despite all Alys’s research at the museum in Nortonstall, and a follow-up trip to the local museum in Northwaite, she was still no closer to discovering what had happened to cause her great-great-grandmother Alice to die so young. She had only been twenty! Alys could barely remember what her own life had been like when she was that age. She’d have been at college, thinking far too much about enjoying herself and not enough about her degree course. There was no way she would have been fit to bring up a baby. What would her life have been like if she had been born in the1870s, like Alice, instead of the 1980s?

  She was musing on this one evening a couple of days later, after they’d closed up early as more driving rain had emptied the streets of villagers and tourists alike, when she remembered something from her visit to the local museum, something that she had meant to quiz Moira about. ‘Wasn’t there once a lock-up here in Northwaite? An actual jail?’ she asked, as she swept crumbs from under the tables, and straightened the chairs in preparation for the next day.

  ‘Indeed, there was. It’s still here, in the basement of Crown Cottage.’ Moira laughed at Alys’s horrified expression. ‘They don’t use it any more. Jeff, the builder who lives at the cottage, stores his building materials in there. He’s got a few tales to tell about things going bump in the night – ghosts and the like. Especially after he’s had a few drinks in The Old Bell.’

  Life in the late nineteenth century must have been unimaginably tough, Alys thought, as they locked up the café and prepared to walk home through the deserted, rainy streets. Six-day working weeks and ten-hour days with no welfare state, workers’ rights or proper education. Pollution, poverty and, on top of that, prison for poaching a couple of rabbits. She shivered in the pouring rain. No central heating either.

  The rain showed no sign of letting up all evening, and darkness fell earlier than usual. Alys listened as the rain lashed against the window. ‘I think I’ll head for bed now. It’s so miserable out there – you’d never think it was June.’

  ‘Chilly too,’ said Moira, who had lit the fire earlier and now found herself relu
ctant to part from it. ‘There’s an extra blanket or two in the wardrobe if you need them – it definitely feels more like winter than summer.’

  Alys woke in near-darkness, heart pounding, feeling under threat. Her head ached and she felt thirsty. At first, she couldn’t take in where she was, then gradually the familiar bedroom swam into focus. The gloom was broken by a faint light that was coming through a curtained window, not through the bars of the cell window that she was half-expecting to see. She was in a comfortable bed, not huddled on a hard floor. She tried to reorient herself. She’d had a bad dream, about being imprisoned for something she hadn’t done. Alys told herself that her discussion with Moira the previous day about the old lock-up in the village must have permeated her dreams, but her sense of being under threat, of being wrongly accused, wasn’t easy to subdue. Uneasy in case she fell straight back into the same dream, she found it hard to return to sleep and when she did, it was fitful, leaving her hollow-eyed at breakfast the next morning.

  ‘Goodness,’ said Moira, looking up over the rim of her cup as Alys, yawning, poured herself some tea and settled down to pick at a piece of toast. ‘You look tired. Did you have a bad night?’