by Rona Randall
“She is one of your best.”
“But low in morals.”
“She is the finest turner in the place, but not only for that reason would I have expected you to take an interest. You have a personal interest in her, haven’t you?”
As soon as he had spoken Martin knew he had gone too far, but he felt no regret. Never in his life had he stood up to his brother so fearlessly. It was a heady experience. When Joseph’s normally pale skin turned a dusky red, he was pleased, for it confirmed all his suspicions. Only guilt or embarrassment made a man flush like that.
Within seconds, Joseph was himself again. “I take an interest in all my workers,” he said indifferently, “as does every responsible Master Potter. If the Gibson wench and her mother have had a stroke of good fortune, as a Christian I am glad, though from where they can find the money for an increased rent I cannot imagine. If the creature dares to ask for more wages, I will have to refuse. She earns extra money occasionally as it is.”
For a man who normally weighed his words with care, Joseph had slipped up badly, though Martin’s immediate answer gave no hint of this.
“The cottage they have moved into used to be Si Kendall’s, who had a tenancy from Neville Armstrong, who has now agreed to let the Gibsons occupy it rent free. He asked Simon to find needy tenants, and Simon immediately thought of the Gibsons, who have been appallingly housed ever since they came here.” Martin continued innocently, “But in what way does Meg earn extra money? Workers at Drayton’s rarely have such opportunities because thirteen hours a day for six days a week are enough to fulfil all orders, so in what other way does Meg earn money?” His eyes were guileless. “Do you mean at Carrion House? I have seen her coming out of your side lane from time to time…and speaking of extra work, brother, reminds me that I have a request to make. If I put in an extra hour every night, may I spend it in the glazing shed? I want to learn all I can about glazing. I would like to produce something to equal the celadon green you used on the plate and beaker I made. And if the penalty for not qualifying fully before the end of my apprenticeship means an extension of it, I can at least make up some leeway by working that extra hour daily. That would add up to another six hours weekly. I should have thought diligence like that would please a Master Potter. As for Meg slipping away from your house by the side lane, I expect that is because she goes there to help Hannah Walker occasionally — is it not?”
Joseph couldn’t believe this was happening. He couldn’t believe this was his shy young brother. He couldn’t believe the innuendo beneath the boy’s words. He couldn’t believe that the tables were being turned, very quietly, very subtly, or that the lad was facing him without a tremor.
He was accustomed to implicit obedience from this youngest member of the family, whom he had always considered naive to the point of stupidity. “Martin’s brains are in his hands,” he had remarked to Emily many a time. “He will have to rely on them for his living because he lacks any other ability.”
But now he viewed the boy uncertainly, and to gain control again he said curtly, “I will not agree to your working an extra hour in the evenings, nor to your visiting the glazing shed. Only when you have perfected all you have already learned will you advance to further skills. And you are right about Meg Gibson. Out of the kindness of Mrs Walker’s heart the girl is allowed to help in the kitchens occasionally. That, of course, will cease when domestic staff is increased, as I intend it shall be.”
“Poor Meg,” said Martin guilelessly. “She will miss the extra money, will she not? I hope she was well paid for her services — whatever they were.”
Chapter Thirteen
The identity of her new neighbours down the lane was of more than passing interest to Martha Tinsley. She relished the thought that the brazen Meg Gibson was within close reach and would have to pass her door to and from work. It amused her to stand at her window as the girl walked by with stubbornly averted head. “She knows I be watchin’ ’er, that she do,” Martha crowed inwardly. “An’ t’ain’t no use lockin’ ’er door agin me — we’ll come face t’ face any time I wants, so she can go on sweatin’ an’ pretendin’ not t’see me. I knows wot goes on in that young ’ead…”
It amused the old woman to keep Meg in suspense, to lull her into a false sense of security by staying away from her door. Since finding it firmly locked following her first visit, Martha’s feeling of power had increased. The girl wanted to avoid another meeting because she was afraid, which meant that she had taken Martha’s threats seriously despite showing defiance. And withholding her mother’s physics had driven those threats home.
The arrival of the Kendall gig bearing Meg Gibson’s mother and a heap of bundles, followed by Mistress Kendall and Master Drayton and Meg Gibson all walking together, had been one of the most startling sights Martha had ever seen. The sound of wheels had drawn her to her window.
She had scarcely addressed more than a word or two to the former Jessica Drayton in her life. Once she had found her playing on Cobblers Green as a toddler and guessed she had escaped from her home unnoticed — it was amazing how far even the smallest children could roam, given the opportunity — so she had taken the child by the hand and led her back and no one had ever known that she had done so. She had put the child gently through the gates of Medlar Croft and closed them on her, wagging a finger in reproof and shaking her head in warning. It had put her in mind of her sister’s boy Frankie, the little varmint, running away to the nearby docks from their home in Liverpool. It had taken all day to find the young brat.
Martha hadn’t seen or heard from her sister Lottie since emerging from Liverpool’s notorious jail. Not that she had expected to, so she had wasted no time in searching for Lottie’s new abode, knowing the door would be slammed in her face. Her sister had moved there after Martha had been sentenced for what the city elders condemned as immoral — brewing illicit potions which they claimed sent people mad. Young women had been known to run naked through the streets, declaring they were flying, after drinking one of Martha’s brews, and a lovesick youth, after seeking her help in winning the heart of a girl he pined for, had thrown himself into the Mersey instead. He had been found floating, face down in the way of drowned men, off the shores of the small river place called Birkenhead on the opposite side of the river.
These and other accidents, to Martha’s indignation, had led to her arrest. But no one charged Lottie with immorality for trading as a whore, though similar activities in Martha’s past had been used to blacken her name even further at her trial. Lottie had all the luck, even to receiving three crowns a year from the man who had fathered Frankie. And he sent them without even being asked! Perhaps that was why Lottie felt herself to be above her sister.
“Ye’ve shamed me, that ye’ave!” she had declared when visiting Martha in jail for the first and last time five years later. “Don’t think thee can come back an’ live with me when they let thee out! I’ve left that place we shared in Seaman’s Alley, but I ain’t tellin’ where I be now, so don’t try t’find me. I’m warnin’ thee — don’t even try.”
Martha didn’t, though she heard from a prisoner who arrived just a week before her own fifteen-year sentence was up that Lottie Tinsley kept a brothel close to the docks, and such a place would have been easy enough to find. A systematic tour of the endless line of Liverpool’s dockside brothels would have led to Lottie’s in the end. Instead, Martha started trudging to the Midlands, sleeping rough by night and working in the fields in return for scraps by day, then wandering on before anyone started asking who she was or where she came from, until she ended up in Burslem and, exhausted and hungry, crawled into an empty cottage tucked away down a lane.
The cottage was rat-ridden and tumbledown, a forgotten place reeking of disuse. She had dealt with the rats — she had learned how to catch and kill them with her bare hands when in jail — and because no one ever arrived to turn her out, here she had stayed, her life in Liverpool’s slums now so remote that it was
no more than an ugly dream. Fifteen years in prison had aged her by thirty. No man would look at the lined old woman she had become. So there was nothing to do but revive her old skills, and in this she was helped by the wild flowers and herbs which grew profusely around the cottage.
And gradually her other skill proved equally useful, and as much needed in and around Burslem as it had been in Liverpool, where she had been called upon to assist an old woman who came more than once to perform the service for Lottie. “Ye’ll always be able to earn a livin’ doin’ this, wench, so keep thy eyes skinned whilst I be at it, an’ don’t be squeamish.”
In time she had been going the rounds with the old witch, who called herself a midwife, and since coming to Burslem she’d had cause to be grateful for all the woman had taught her.
The only person she missed from that distant life was young Frankie, and the way he had sprung to mind on the day she had taken the infant Jessica back home had been almost painful. No doubt such a young varmint had come to a bad end, but she had loved the lad. Her sister was the only person she had ever envied, and she envied her solely for having Frank.
Not until Jessica Drayton married Si Kendall had Martha ever had another opportunity to speak with her, and then only briefly. She knew that Jessica Kendall would have no recollection of that long ago encounter, but she had wasted no time in calling at the Kendalls’ cottage after their surprising marriage, first watching for his early morning departure so she could catch his wife alone.
“Mebbe there’s somethin’ I kin do fer thee, Mistress? Some brew ye’d like me t’mix? Young wives for miles around come t’me, an’ ye can guess why, I dessay. Either ways, for or agin, me potions work, ma’am. Ye knows wot I mean, o’course.”
And plainly she did, though that seemed no reason for putting an end to the meeting so quickly. Young Mistress Kendall had been polite, but offered no encouragement for a second visit, and Martha had departed well aware that she would be doing no more chores at the Kendall cottage and that the nice cosy gossips she had hoped for were not to be.
For the short time they remained in Larch Lane, Jessica Kendall cleaned the place herself and worked in the garden too, and even though folk considered she had married beneath her she still had that ladylike air, that aloofness which kept her apart.
But not from Meg Gibson, apparently. That had been an almighty shock and did nothing to improve Martha’s attitude to Meg. The girl was a strumpet. Everybody knew it, except her poor mother no doubt. There’d be no keeping the wench in her place now the Kendalls had befriended her. She would even think herself too good for the likes of poor old Martha, so poor old Martha had taken the first opportunity to make it plain that she’d have none of that, thank ye very much. She had banged on the cottage door and thrust a foot inside it.
“An’ wot’ave we’ere, me proud beauty? A reel roof an’ a reel place t’sleep in for the first time in y’life, eh? An’ I wonder ’ow ye come by such good fortune? Not by way o’ Kendall’s bed, I’ll be bound. I’ve bin ’is neighbour for nigh all ’is life an’ I knows ’is ways. ’E nivver brought a woman to this cottage, nivver a once. Mebbe’ he went some place else for it, but not t’the likes o’ ye, I’ll warrant.”
“Take that foot out of this doorway an’ don’t you dare come back!”
“I’ll come whenivver I think its neighbourly, as a good neighbour should — ”
“Keep your voice down, Ma Tinsley. My mother’s resting and if you wake her, you’ll be sorry.”
Putting her shoulder to the door, Meg pressed hard, hurting Martha’s thrusting foot. Incensed, Martha had cried, “Ow did thee git round Mistress Kendall, ye schemin’ little trollop? Found out somethin’, an’ traded on’t?” It was a wild guess, but it silenced Meg, whereupon Martha became suspicious. With a heave she thrust the door wider. “I don’t trust thee, Meg Gibson. I nivver ’ave an’ I nivver will. Cheated me outa two golden guineas, ye did, an’ if you reelly loved thy ailin’ mother, ye’d nivver’ve done a thing like that. Kept the money for yersel’, didn’t thee?”
“I did no such thing! I told you at the time an’ I’m telling you again — ”
“Then ye know who should’ve turned up that night, an’ ye blackmailed ’em — or else ye blackmailed the person wot sent the message. I’d put nothin’ past thee, that I wouldn’t, but two can play at that game or any other. Jest ye remember that. An’ remember wot I said — no more med’eines ’til I’m paid wot’s owed.”
A final push with her strong young body, and Meg dislodged Martha from the step. The door slammed, the key grated in the lock, and so it had remained ever since.
A couple of days later Martha had called when Meg was away at work and, getting no reply, had found the latch unyielding. That told its own story. Angered, she had shuffled down the side path to the back and seen Mrs Gibson sitting in the sun, propped against cushions — good cushions, too, and in a better armchair than Martha could ever afford. The woman’s eyes had been closed, but not in sleep. They had jerked open at the sound of Martha’s tread, and for the first time in her life Martha had been unable to find words. The two women had stared at each other, the stricken woman as speechless as the other, and then Martha had gone hurrying back to her own cottage, resolving never to go near the place again when the woman was alone. That white, weary face was not easy to look at, nor the thin arm cradling the swollen breast.
Even so, Martha did go back before the daughter returned that day. Treading softly this time she took the side path again and saw Mrs Gibson still sitting there, eyes closed once more. This time they remained shut, so Martha tip-toed forward and placed at her feet a trug woven of rushes, containing her special beef jelly and some mint confit. Then she tip-toed away again. The trug was a worn out thing she wouldn’t miss, and the daughter would never suspect that the nourishment came from Ma Tinsley — not with the way things now were between them.
So let her think it came from Mistress Kendall, who might have been visiting her mother at Medlar Croft. The gift would be in keeping with her recent generosity, none of which Martha had missed. Nor had she missed the carter’s delivery the day after the move. It was more than the black-haired little trollop deserved, but it couldn’t be begrudged her sick mother.
Nor, thought Martha smugly, could such things provide the nourishment of good beef jelly, but she shut her mind to the guilty thought that medicines could do more than that. She was not yet prepared to take that particular step. Not until two golden guineas were put in her hand. They were her due, and the little madam would have to find them somehow. There would be no letting up on that.
Two weeks before Phoebe’s wedding, Simon put some money on the table and said, “That is to buy yourself something special to wear.”
Jessica looked up from her sewing, surprised.
“But I’ve no need — “ Her eyes flickered downward, embarrassed. Was he suggesting that she should hide herself more skilfully?
“Do I shame you, embarrass you?” she whispered.
He was at her side instantly, taking from her hands the tiny garment she was making and then placing his own on her shoulders and forcing her to look up at him.
“You could never do either,” he said, “and I hope never to hear you say such a thing again.”
He wanted to tell her that he was proud because she belonged to him. He could not say as his wife, but in the eyes of the law that was what she was and with that, for the present, he had to be content.
Through the thin fabric of her summer gown she felt the pressure of his hands and, not for the first time, experienced a surprising self-consciousness. Since moving into the wheelwright’s cottage she had become increasingly aware of his personality. Prior to that they had talked little together, a mutual shyness reducing their conversations to no more than the polite interchanges of strangers living beneath one roof. In the Larch Lane cottage the only demands on her time had been purely domestic, and the hours awaiting his return from the canal site had been occ
upied with sewing for the coming child — and this, when he came in, had been hastily thrust out of sight for fear that such a reminder might not be wholly welcome. But she had dropped this habit when he seemed to be unaware of how she occupied herself while he was at his books or working in his outhouse.
For the most part, books absorbed him and when the supper table was cleared he would sit there, reading or writing, oblivious not only of her but of the world. Sometimes she had wondered if the gap between them would widen until it became impossible to bridge, and at such moments both guilt and depression would take hold of her. If he felt he had made a poor bargain in marrying her, she could not blame him, and if he were already regretting it, she levelled no blame against him for that either.
Patience had never come easily to Jessica, but life forced it upon her now. Nine months of waiting for a child to be born taught patience to any woman, but some quality had crept into the relationship between her husband and herself which had not been there in the beginning; silences fell between them which both tried to avoid by busying themselves with things the other could not share, and yet it was still not a cold relationship, rather a self-conscious one which threatened to turn into a kind of endurance test.
But things began to ease miraculously once they moved to Cooperfield. The new cottage needed a lot doing to it, the neglected garden equally, and while Simon embarked on improvements to the property Jessica launched an attack on the garden, knee high in grass and shoulder high in overgrown shrubs.
It was a pioneering period and it united them as no amount of determined effort could have done. Together they discovered unexpected nooks and crannies — off the kitchen, a concealed cupboard big enough to walk into, which Simon converted into a fine cold larder with the installation of stone slabbed shelves, then an ingle-nook which some former occupant had bricked up — “Probably because the chimney smoked,” Si said, and promptly dealt with that too, so they were able to sit on the ingle seats, one each side of a great iron-backed fireplace, drinking their nightly toddy while exchanging news of the day. There seemed much to talk about now, but in an inexplicable way the self-consciousness on either side had increased.