‘Inconvenient!’ Sarah was startled. ‘Why, we are much closer to the shops and Gran has found it beneficial for business to be so close to patients. And our neighbours have been invaluable; without Martha next door we could never have got this place set to rights.’
‘Aye,’ Joe was nodding in agreement but Sarah could see the lack of conviction in his eyes. Before she could question him further, though, Ada brought Alice in after her nap and Joe’s full attention was turned on his daughter.
Chapter 37
Sarah looked back on the time spent with Joe that summer as one of the happiest times they had together. Perhaps it was the fact that there seemed to be more space to accommodate Joe; although Lane End Cottage was no larger than their previous home, the summer weather meant the garden was as good as another room in the house and most days found either Joe or Sarah outside with Alice. Despite being a narrow-boat dweller Joe proved able around the garden, happy to help Ada tend the plants, fix fencing or tie in exuberant summer growth as required.
Sarah was relieved to see that Joe’s relationship had improved with Ada, who now seemed resigned to his presence. His devotion to Alice couldn’t be faulted – he caught her up and took her into the garden at every opportunity and the pair of them were tanned golden-brown by the end of his stay, despite Sarah’s repeated entreaties to keep their daughter out of the sun.
‘Look at her: I’ll wager she’s nowt to do with me,’ Joe teased, lifting a lock of Alice’s hair. The sun had bleached her baby curls blonde.
‘Don’t be daft,’ said Sarah. ‘Her hair will be the colour of yours or mine when she’s older. But keep her bonnet on her head, or she’ll be getting a touch of the sun.’
Joe turned a bowl into a little pool for Alice, who shrieked with delight when he dangled her toes in it, or when he sat her in the water and surrounded her with sailing boats that he’d fashioned from leaves. At other times he caught her under her arms, making her squeal with glee, then, bent double, he supported her as she took fairy footsteps on tiptoe across the lawn, crowing with delight at her progress.
‘You’re making a rod for my back, Joseph Bancroft,’ Sarah scolded as Alice, sitting on the grass and watching as her mother pegged out the washing, began to wail and hold out her arms beseechingly. ‘She wants to be walked the whole time and she’s barely six months old. My back will be broken before she can do it on her own.’
‘Ah, she’s a strong lass and she’ll be up on her feet before you know it,’ Joe said cheerfully, seizing his daughter and dancing with her around the lawn. Sarah shook her head but found it impossible to stay cross, especially as Joe caught her in to his side with his free arm and spun them all around until Sarah, quite dizzy and out of breath with laughing, had to beg for mercy. They collapsed in a heap on the grass and Sarah lay back and looked at the sky, complaining that her world was spinning.
‘Look at t’bairn,’ Joe said. Sarah propped herself on her elbow and saw that her daughter was resting against Joe’s knee with a tremulous smile on her face, while her bottom lip quivered.
‘Bless her, she’s dizzy and doesn’t know what to make of it,’ Sarah exclaimed. She hugged her daughter to her and showered her with kisses. Joe repeated the action from the other side, managing to land a good many kisses on Sarah until she called a halt, declaring she couldn’t breathe from all the laughing and the kissing.
Night after night, their happiness by day translated into passion. Joe’s ardour was as strong as it had been when he’d courted her. Sarah clung to him and in a whisper, to avoid waking Alice, declared herself the happiest she had ever been. If she noticed a lack of response, she put it down to his aversion to talking about those ‘soft things’ as he liked to call any conversation about love. Sarah was convinced that she would be with child again before the summer was out, a thought that wasn’t entirely welcome to her.
It wasn’t until much later that she looked back and realised that Joe barely left the house during his stay, except in the evening. Shortly after his arrival at Lane End Cottage she had persuaded him to accompany her to Nortonstall, to Sutcliffe & Sons, to put his mark on the lease. Sarah had been dreading this, worried that Mr Sutcliffe Senior or Junior might see fit to quiz Joe about his suitability as a tenant. To her relief, both were in court on the day of her visit and the clerk who attended to them seemed in a hurry to get the job done so he could return to his work.
Joe was also impatient, wanting to get back to Lane End Cottage he said, so they had taken the path back to Northwaite through the wooded valley, without meeting a soul. Sarah had taken his arm, enjoying the rarity of having him all to herself, but if she suggested that they walk out as a family, he would always find some reason to excuse himself. Happy that he wasn’t frequenting The Old Bell in the afternoons, she never thought to question his apparent transformation into a homebody and so three blissful weeks passed before Joe announced that he must go back to the canal.
‘So soon?’ Sarah fell silent.
‘Tha’ knows it must be,’ Joe said, reasonably. ‘Otherwise, how am I to support you and t’bairn?’
Sarah couldn’t find fault with this. He’d handed over his wages when he had arrived and for the first time she had known what it was like to have money. Money that wasn’t there to be frittered away, of course, but to budget with and to use to plan for the future. It had given Sarah a good feeling, and if the trade-off for this was that Joe could not be hers full-time, so be it.
‘I’ll be back afore tha’ knows it,’ Joe cajoled her. ‘And I reckon young Alice’ll be on her feet by then. Talking an’ all, no doubt.’
‘Don’t leave it that long!’ Sarah protested. It was with a heavy heart that she waved him off on his last morning, she and Alice standing at the gate to watch him out of sight. He turned to blow them kisses every few yards until he reached the corner and was gone from view.
‘I think a return to your studies would serve you well,’ Ada said briskly after Sarah had moped for a day or two.
Sarah demurred. ‘The wages Joe brings in will mean there’s no need any more,’ she said, the feel of what it was like to have money still fresh in her mind.
‘That’s as may be,’ Ada replied, ‘but times change and work dries up. You’ve an aptitude for this work and you should carry on learning while you have no need of it. It will always be there for you in the future, should things change.’
As the glorious early summer gave way to a wetter July and August, confining Sarah to the house with Alice, there seemed more point in getting to grips with learning once more. In addition, within a matter of weeks of Joe’s departure the onset of nausea in the mornings confirmed what Sarah had suspected. Joe’s visit had left her expecting, with a baby brother or sister for Alice due early in the coming year.
PART FIVE
September 1875 – October 1877
Chapter 38
As the summer of 1875 became autumn, life in Lane End Cottage settled into a rhythm similar to that in Hill Farm Cottage the year previously, only Sarah had a lively would-be toddler to contend with as well as her studies and her pregnancy. Her sickness this time around was much worse and Sarah veered between thinking it must be because she was expecting a boy and fearing that she was over-tired and that this was the root cause.
‘You’re young and you’re healthy,’ Ada said firmly but with some sympathy. ‘It will pass. My mother would have said that it was a sign that the baby is settling itself.’
Sarah fell to thinking about her own mother, lost to her, and whether she would have had any useful advice to offer her daughter. She feared not, for she had left the upbringing of her daughters very much to her own mother, Ada. She felt sure that her sisters, Jane and Ellen, would have longed to be involved, though. How they would have loved a niece to dote on!
‘If the new baby is a girl, she shall be Jane,’ Sarah decided. ‘Or perhaps Janet, or Janie.’ It struck her all at once that using her sister’s exact name felt somehow wrong. Surely, every ti
me she used it, it would remind her of her loss until that sense became dulled as the new baby took over the name as her own. It was far better to have a name that served as a reminder, rather than as an echo, Sarah decided.
‘Don’t worry,’ Ada said, misconstruing Sarah’s silence to signify she was dwelling on her sickness. ‘I’m reluctant to prescribe a draught for you until more time has passed and it is safe for the baby, but if the nausea becomes unbearable we will think of something.’
Sarah was about to reassure her grandmother that she hadn’t been thinking of this at all when a sharp knock at the kitchen door startled them both. Patients would arrive on Ada’s doorstep at all times of the day and sometimes even into the night, so they weren’t unduly concerned – although this knock had a sense of urgency about it.
‘I’ll go,’ Sarah said, rising from the table where they were labelling jars of leaves that they had dried from the last harvest from Mrs Sam’s garden. She was puzzled when she opened the door. There was something familiar about the man on the doorstep but she couldn’t place him at first. He was small, scrawny and unkempt, and there was an odour about him that suggested a lack of washing, no doubt because he had been sleeping rough if his appearance was any guide.
‘Can I help you?’ Sarah asked, holding the door ready to slam it shut if he should prove troublesome.
‘You be Sarah.’ It was a statement rather than a question, and when the man opened his mouth to speak Sarah knew at once who it was. The missing front teeth were the only clue she needed: it was Joe’s best man, last seen over a year ago.
‘Oh, it’s …’ Sarah couldn’t bring his name to mind as her thoughts flew to Joe. Had something happened?
‘Alf, missus,’ he helpfully supplied.
‘Alfred, of course. Do you want to come in? Do you have a message from Joe?’
Sarah overcame her reluctance and stood back, opening the door wider to make way for him, but he remained on the doorstep.
‘I’ll not stay, missus. I just came to tell thee …’ The man hesitated, looking at his feet and all the while twisting his cap in his hands.
‘Tell me what, Alfred?’ Sarah asked, adding, ‘Can I get you a glass of water?’ for he seemed tongue-tied and at a loss all of a sudden. She felt a stab of anxiety and wished he would hurry up and speak. Had something happened to Joe?
‘Joe’s in prison, missus. He asked me to tell thee.’
‘Prison!’ Sarah’s exclamation brought Ada to the door.
‘For pity’s sake, come inside, man. The doorstep is no place to be discussing such matters.’ Ada’s voice was harsh with shock.
‘No, missus, I can’t stay.’ Alfred was already preparing to make his getaway down the path.
‘Please, just a moment longer,’ Sarah begged him. ‘Why? Where? What … what did he do?’
‘He were caught tekking cabbages from market garden at canal side. When they searched him he had taters, too, and in t’boat they found a pheasant all plucked and ready for pot.’
‘But is that so bad?’ Sarah asked, relieved that it was no worse and that no violence was involved. She thought guiltily of the poaching that Joe had done for them back in the spring.
‘Aye, well, see, he’d bin caught afore.’ Alfred was shifting from foot to foot, clearly worried by the tale he had to tell. ‘So wi’ his record he’s gone and got six years.’
‘Six!’ Sarah could hardly believe her ears.
‘Aye, missus.’ Alfred remembered the rest of his message. ‘He’s in Leeds prison. But tha’ won’t be able to visit.’ He was almost at the gate by now. ‘Sorry, missus.’ He doffed his cap and all but sprinted away from the gate.
Sarah felt her legs begin to give way beneath her and she would have fallen to the floor if Ada hadn’t caught her round the waist and supported her to a chair.
‘Six years …’ Sarah repeated, in a kind of wonder. How could this be so? There were so many questions she wanted to ask, but no one to ask them of. Alfred, the only person with any answers, had left the scene.
Sarah became aware that Ada, who was looking more than a little shaken herself, was regarding her with concern.
‘Do you think it’s true?’ Sarah asked, her mind fogged with the implications of it all.
Ada shook her head, as if to clear her thoughts. ‘I think it must be. Why else would Alfred have chosen to pay us a visit?’
Both women subsided into silence then Sarah burst out, ‘It seems like a harsh punishment, doesn’t it? Six years for a few vegetables.’
‘And a pheasant,’ Ada answered mechanically.
Sarah started to pace the floor. ‘I must visit him. Leeds, Alfred said.’ She halted. ‘Can I just turn up? How do I find out? Why did Alfred run off like that?’
Ada’s thoughts were turning in a different direction. ‘Six years, and not a penny earned in that time. And you with another baby on the way. ’Tis a mess, without a doubt.’
‘I should start for Leeds at once,’ Sarah said, as though she were about to leave the house as she was, without bonnet, shawl or money.
‘No, no, we must discover more before you undertake such a journey. I will go and visit Mr Heaton, the magistrate, if he is at home. I hesitate to share our ill fortune with him but I can think of no other way. He will know about such things.’ Ada was tying on her bonnet as she spoke. ‘Stay here and look after Alice. I won’t be long.’ Flinging a shawl around her shoulders she was on her way before Sarah could argue with her.
Chapter 39
Sarah tried hard to keep busy during her grandmother’s absence, getting Alice up from her nap and tidying away the work that had been occupying her and Ada when Alfred came calling. Her thoughts, though, returned over and over again to Alfred’s news. Try as she might, she couldn’t imagine how things would be with Joe. Prison wasn’t something she had had any reason to concern herself with during her life so far, and she realised that she had no knowledge of what his sentence might involve.
Ada returned to find Sarah very distracted and barely paying attention to Alice, who was grizzling to be put down and didn’t want her mother pacing the floor with her and patting her back.
‘Was he there?’ Sarah demanded, as soon as Ada had stepped through the door.
‘He was. And it’s a sorry business indeed.’ Ada was grim-faced. ‘It turns out Mr Heaton was the presiding magistrate on Joe’s case, so he was able to tell me a good deal. Alfred spoke the truth: Joe is in Leeds jail and the sentence is indeed six years. It is only a matter of the greatest good fortune that it isn’t longer.’
Sarah, bewildered by this latest news, was rendered speechless.
‘It seems Joe has previous convictions for petty thieving. He’s served more than one six-month term already. If the items thieved were deemed to be worth over a shilling then the jail term handed out is longer. In addition, he has stolen from the same market gardener on more than one occasion, and this time the man was determined to exact a higher penalty.’ Ada shook her head. ‘It seems that Mr Heaton was only too well aware of Joe’s link to this family and felt a duty to save him from an even harsher punishment for my sake as well as yours. Mrs Heaton has been a patient of mine for many years,’ she added, almost as an afterthought.
‘When can I visit him?’ Sarah demanded.
Ada had turned away and was carefully folding and smoothing her shawl. Sarah had a feeling she was hiding her face from her.
‘It’s not likely that you will be able to,’ Ada said. ‘Mr Heaton told me that contact with home and family is seen as unhelpful in the eyes of the law. You have to apply for permission to visit and it may be granted once or even twice a year, but you can write four times a year.’
‘Unhelpful …’ Sarah echoed, trying to take in what she had heard. ‘How can it be seen as unhelpful to have contact with your wife and family? And it’s all very well to say that I may write – but Joe can neither read nor write so what use is that to us?’
Ada, who had endured a humiliating in
terview with Mr Heaton in which he had not seen fit to spare her his opinion of her granddaughter’s feckless husband, was torn between anger at what Joe’s actions had brought upon the family and a wish to ease the situation for Sarah.
When she turned around, Sarah could see how drained and tired she looked.
‘I’m sure that there will be those in jail who will make it their business to read and write on behalf of those who can’t. I suggest the best thing would be to make haste and write so that Joe knows you have received Alfred’s message, and perhaps he can tell you more of his situation when he replies.’
Sarah put pen to paper that very evening, but it took more than one attempt to produce a letter that she was happy with. On reading back her first effort, she felt that there was too much anger set down there and not enough sympathy for Joe’s predicament. Her second attempt petered out in tears, which stained the paper.
‘Self-pity,’ she said to herself, angrily. She didn’t want Joe to fret about her being upset so she started again. She tried hard to deliver the news that they were to have another baby without imparting any of the anger she felt, not least at having to share such news in a letter to prison. She expressed a wish that his sentence would not be too hard and would pass before they both knew it. Even as she wrote, she felt this to be madness. If she looked back on her life six years previously, why, she could barely remember it. So much had happened since then. She had been but a child six years ago, living with her sisters and her mother in Hill Farm Cottage. Even two years previously seemed like a lifetime ago. She had met Joe, got married, lost her mother and sisters, had a baby, moved home. How might things change in the six years still to come?
Sarah's Story Page 17