Forever Yours

by Rita Bradshaw

  Rebecca hid a smile. It was obvious Mrs Mullen had suspected her grandmother had held out on her.

  ‘Likely she’ll pay you a call soon,’ Mrs Mullen continued. ‘Came on Friday from Yorkshire, she said, when Seth asked her, and when he went round the back to the outhouses with the coal and logs, there was a horse in the stable and a bonny trap. This house agent bloke saw to that an’ all. Seth found out from Mrs Duckworth whose daughter is married to the smith. So’ – Sarah Mullen looked her neighbour full in the face and now there was a note of what could be termed aggression in her voice when she said – ‘how does a lass like her come by the means to have all that?’

  Rebecca watched her grandmother’s face stiffen. ‘What do you mean?’ Ruth asked with deceptive mildness.

  ‘Just what I say. It was all cloak and dagger, Constance leaving here, don’t you think? And no one knew where she went. We only had Mabel’s word for it that the lass had gone into service and she’s a beautiful-looking girl. When I saw her at Mabel’s funeral there were plenty of men who couldn’t take their eyes off her.’ Mrs Mullen’s ample chin settled into her neck.

  ‘I know for a fact that Mabel used to visit Constance at her place and that she was employed as a scullerymaid before she saved the little lad from being trampled by a horse,’ Ruth said coldly. ‘After that, the family were grateful to her and no wonder. And Mabel was a friend of mine. A very good friend.’

  ‘Oh aye, I know, lass. I know.’

  ‘I’d as soon believe your Fanny had gone bad than Mabel’s lass, and since when was it a crime to be bonny?’

  ‘Now look, Ruth, I didn’t mean—’

  ‘You ought to be careful what you insinuate, Sarah Mullen, when a nice lass’s good reputation is at stake. And a lass who has friends in high places an’ all.’

  ‘Well!’ Rebecca watched as Mrs Mullen seemed to visibly swell, but she thought her voice now carried a note of apprehension when she continued, ‘I came here in good faith, Ruth, to tell you the news, knowing you thought a bit of the family, and now you accuse me of ’sinuating. Me, of all people!’

  ‘Constance Shelton has been treated like a daughter by that family since she saved the son and heir,’ said Ruth, warming to her theme and telling herself a little exaggeration was called for. This had to be nipped in the bud right now. If Constance was back to stay, then for the lass to have any hope of a reasonable life, the wagging tongues had to be silenced from the beginning – and who better to start with than the ringleader of any gossip? ‘They think the world of her and rightly so. That is where any reward has come from and she deserves it.’

  ‘Aye, well, that’s all right then,’ Mrs Mullen spluttered, backing towards the door. ‘I’d better go and see to me dinner; himself will be back from the pit shouting the odds afore long.’

  When the door shut behind her grandmother’s neighbour, Rebecca finished buttoning her coat before she said, ‘By, Gran, that told her,’ laughter in her voice. When her grandma didn’t smile back, she said, ‘She hasn’t upset you, has she?’

  Her grandmother had been staring at the door. Now she gave a little start, shaking her head, but the tone of her voice belied her words when she said, ‘No, no – I’m all right, hinny.’

  ‘What’s the matter, Gran?’

  ‘It’s nothing, lass, not really. It just seems strange that Constance didn’t let us know she was back, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m sure she will. She probably wanted to surprise you, but with the weather so bad it’s stopped her coming.’

  ‘Aye, mebbe.’ Her grandma didn’t sound convinced.

  ‘Da saved her life when she was a baby, didn’t he? I’ve never even seen her, you know.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose you have, hinny,’ Ruth said absently. ‘Anyway, you get yourself home. It’s coming down thicker than ever and you don’t want to be out in this.’

  Rebecca said goodbye and left by the back door. It was only a few yards down the lane to her own backyard, and she glanced back at her grandma’s house before she went inside. She hoped Constance Shelton came to see her grandma before too long. Her gran had clearly been upset that she’d heard about her homecoming second-hand. Blow Mrs Mullen. Her gaze travelled to the house on the far side of her grandmother’s. She’d stir up trouble in heaven itself, that woman, as her mam had been wont to say.

  Once in the scullery she stamped the snow off her boots and changed into her slippers before entering the kitchen. It had been a rule of her mother’s that they all changed their footwear in the scullery, be it rain, hail or shine, and for a moment she stood looking round the dark room before she lit the oil lamp. The banked-down range gave off a muted glow, but even in the faint light the white-washed walls and dresser with her mam’s fancy dinner set – used only on high days and holidays – radiated the spruceness she had grown up with. Her mam had liked things spick and span, and even after she started working for Mr Wood she had made sure their own house remained spotless and they came home to a hot meal. Rebecca sat down on a kitchen chair with a little plump. She suddenly wanted to cry.

  It had stopped snowing when Matt emerged out of the pit gates, but the fresh fall on top of what had been deep-packed snow made walking treacherous. He hadn’t hurried once the cage had brought them to the surface, letting the rest of his shift queue in front of him to give in their lamps and token. When Andrew and George had called to him once they were ready to leave he’d waved them off, saying he’d catch them up. He had no intention of doing so, however. He didn’t want to have to talk to anyone tonight.

  He’d had one of what he privately termed his ‘moments’ whilst working on the face today; a time of such blind panic and fear of being shut in and trapped beneath the earth that he’d had to bite the inside of his mouth until the blood ran to take his mind off what was going on in his head.

  Was he going mad? Satisfied that his brothers had gone, he began to walk through the clean white world in front of him that was so different from the filth and stench of the pit. Joe Benson had snapped last year, running amok and nearly braining himself when he’d cracked his head on the roof where he’d been working. In the asylum now, Joe was, and his wife and bairns in the workhouse.

  He shivered, the contrast to the heat and humidity he’d laboured in for hours and the bitingly cold air outside hard to adjust to. He lifted his face to the black cloudy sky which promised more snow and breathed long and deeply, pulling the icy air into his lungs over and over again.

  He needed to get out of the pit before he went barmy. He was sick of working in a black hole surrounded by rats and mice and beetles with feelers as long as bootlaces. He was sick of being reduced to little more than an animal grubbing away, eating his bait along with dust, sweat and grit every day and smelling the stench of human muck and even treading in it sometimes. He wanted— He stopped abruptly, shaking his head like a boxer after a hard blow.

  Pack it in, he told himself harshly. Thinking like this only made things worse. He had to get on with it. He had it easy compared to some and he was alive, wasn’t he? And with all his faculties. Not like them poor devils who had bought it just before Christmas at the Hutton Colliery near Bolton. Three hundred and fifty men and boys gone in one blast and over a thousand bairns without a da. Nice Christmas present. And that colliery had been held up as one of the safest and best equipped. They were all death traps, every last one of them.

  Even the final stragglers had passed him and now he stood on Blackburn Bridge, looking over the sparkling white countryside towards Nettlesworth as the quiet cold night settled around him. There were none of the usual sounds. All the farmers hereabouts had brought their animals in from the fields and nothing stirred.

  But there he was wrong. A movement from the lane behind him caught his eye and he turned to see Vincent McKenzie pass him. Their gaze met for a moment, expressing mutual loathing, and then the weighman strode on without a word being exchanged.

  The moment of tranquillity broken, Matt followed in
his wake, but slowly, his eyes fixed on the big, portly figure in front of him. McKenzie was the most hated man for miles and yet it didn’t seem to bother him. Indeed, he openly relished it. Even the owners and the managers weren’t detested in the same way. They were of a different class and as such had no link with the miner on the coalface, but McKenzie had been one of them, a working pitman. Matt knew any one of a number of men who would kill him if they got the chance and could get away with it, and it had crossed his mind more than once. Particularly so in the last weeks when he’d had to watch his own father being subjected to McKenzie’s special brand of viciousness. Fourteen shillings his da should have earned last week, and his wage-packet had contained less than half that amount after McKenzie put his oar in.

  He’d suffered himself under McKenzie’s trumped-up fines when he’d first gone to the coalface, but after his marriage to Tilly, McKenzie hadn’t seemed to bother with him much. Likely he’d got it in for other blokes by then. It didn’t take much.

  He was still thinking about the weighman when he reached home. It was gone half-past ten. He’d been on the afternoon shift from two until ten at night, but Rebecca was waiting up for him. He’d told her many times that she needn’t. He’d be happy with cheese and pickles and cold meat for his dinner but she insisted he needed a hot meal when he came in from the pit.

  She bounded up out of her chair like a puppy when he walked in, fussing round him while she got the tin bath full and then disappearing upstairs until he called her to say he was dressed again. She had waited to eat with him, and once they were seated at the table with a plate of steaming hodge podge each and between them a plate of stottie cake she’d made earlier, they talked of this and that while they ate. She always tried to make him laugh as she related the happenings of the day in the shop, and she usually succeeded. He looked at her as she cleared their dirty plates and fetched a bread and butter pudding out of the oven, and his voice was soft when he said, ‘You’re a good lass, none better. Larry’ll be a lucky man if he holds on to you.’

  She went red with pleasure, hiding her embarrassment by bustling about still more as she dished up the pudding.

  ‘So what time did old tight Turner let you out today then?’ Matt asked after a bite or two.

  ‘Oh, Da, he’s not tight, not really. And Mrs Turner gave me a big bag of bacon bits that I took round to Gran. There were some whole rashers in there which she’d slipped in when I looked once I got outside, and an end which was an inch thick an’ all. She’s so nice, Mrs Turner.’

  ‘And you took them to Gran’s? Bless you, hinny. I bet that cheered her up. Did you stay and have a bit of a crack with her? She looks forward to that.’

  Rebecca nodded. ‘But then Mrs Mullen came in just as I was leaving and I think she upset her.’

  ‘Mrs Mullen upset your gran? How?’

  ‘She was full of it, you know how she is sometimes. She was saying that Constance Shelton has come back home. She’s got a cottage near Findon Hill and she moved in at the end of last week. I think Gran was upset ’cos she hadn’t known anything about it.’

  Matt carefully lowered his spoon to his bowl. ‘And Mrs Mullen’s sure it’s Constance Shelton?’

  ‘Oh aye.’ Rebecca nodded, taking another mouthful before she said, ‘Her daughter Fanny – well, her husband Seth – delivered some coal and logs to Appleby Cottage and he recognised Constance.’

  ‘Appleby Cottage? The Colonel’s place?’

  ‘Aye, yes.’ Rebecca glanced at her father. ‘You all right, Da?’ When Matt inclined his head, she went on, ‘And Mrs Mullen was saying how did she get the money to buy such a grand cottage – Constance, I mean. And Seth, Fanny’s husband, said she’s got a bonny horse and trap an’ all. Mrs Mullen tried to make out . . . well, that Constance hadn’t been working in service but had been doing something else. You know? And then Gran went for her, she really did. She sent her away with a flea in her ear. She said the family Constance has worked for thought the world of her and they’d given her the money. Do you think that’s true, Da?’ There was a strained quality to Matt’s voice when he said quietly, ‘I’m sure it is and I’m absolutely certain Constance would never do anything like Mrs Mullen’s nasty little mind conjured up.’

  Rebecca’s voice was uncertain when she said again,‘Sure you’re all right, Da? What’s the matter?’

  Matt made a huge effort to pull himself together. She was back. Impossible though it was, she had returned home. But Appleby Cottage? He had gone into the kitchen there once as a lad when the Colonel’s wife had had a bunch of them picking the apples in the orchard at the back of the house for a few pennies apiece. She’d given them lemonade and a bun each in the middle of the afternoon and they had sat in the kitchen hardly daring to move. It had seemed like a palace at the time. What the rest of the house was like he didn’t dare to imagine, but it was big – four bedrooms reportedly, and all under a thatched roof that set off the cottage to perfection. And Constance had chosen to live there.

  Aware that Rebecca was looking at him, he forced his voice-box into action. ‘I think I feel a bit like your gran to be honest, hinny. Disappointed she didn’t let on she was back. Not that she was beholden to us to do that, of course, and no doubt the family know.’ He swallowed a mouthful of bread and butter pudding although it nearly choked him before he added, ‘This is every bit as good as your mam used to make. You’re a grand little cook. I reckon you could put in for a job at one of them big houses as cook and no one would turn you away, not if they had any sense, that is.’

  The diversion worked. Rebecca giggled. Her, ‘Oh, Da’, expressing her gratification of the compliment, meant they finished the pudding in a comfortable silence. Comfortable on Rebecca’s side, that was, which was all that mattered. For himself, Matt felt physically ill, the meal he’d just eaten threatening to rise up into his mouth.

  Constance was back, and by all accounts with the where-withal to live as a lady. But hadn’t he felt, five years ago at her grandmother’s funeral, that she had risen far above him? After that first time when he had gone round to Molly’s and talked with Constance in the kitchen, she had avoided him. He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but she had. Had he embarrassed her? Damn it, he was such a fool. Why would a beautiful lass like her look the side he was on? The Appleby place and her own horse and trap. She had no need of a common working man, that much was clear. She could have anyone she wanted.

  ‘Da?’ Rebecca rose, reaching for his empty bowl as she spoke.

  ‘Aye?’ He glanced up at her.

  ‘You could take Gran with you and call on Constance, couldn’t you? With you saving her life when she was a baby and all? I think Gran would like that.’

  He swallowed. ‘She has been away a long time, Rebecca. People change, circumstances change. It’s probably better she goes to see your grandma herself when she feels the time is right.’

  ‘But what if she doesn’t? Gran’s already hurt and—’

  ‘Leave it, lass.’ He stood up, reaching for his pipe and baccy.

  ‘But—’

  ‘I said leave it.’And quickly, to offset his abruptness, he added, ‘It’ll all pan out, lass. These things always do. Now it’s late. Get yourself off to bed – the dishes will wait till morning. And thanks for waiting up, hinny.’ He stretched out his hand and her face lightened as she took it. He pulled her close, kissing the top of her head. ‘Go and get your beauty sleep or I’ll be in trouble with Larry for turning you into an old hag before your time.’

  ‘Oh you, Da.’ She grinned at him, equilibrium restored, and did as she was told, calling, ‘’Night, Da,’ from the hall.

  Alone in the kitchen he sat down in his easy chair at the side of the range and lit his pipe, annoyed to see his hands were trembling. He sat there for a long time. And when he finally stood up to go to bed his hands weren’t shaking any longer but the trembling was inside him, shrinking the essence of him – the place wherein sat his pride, his self-esteem, his manhood
– down to nothing.

  Chapter 21

  Rebecca knew she shouldn’t have done it. If Mr and Mrs Turner found out, she could lose her job – and then where would she be? She’d been lucky to be taken on in the first place, and that was only because Mr Turner had known her mam when she worked in the post office, and had considered her what he called ‘a cut above’ most of the lasses roundabout. He was a bit like that, Mr Turner. Snobby.

  She paused and looked behind her. The village was still in sight but in the distance, and the view wasn’t so clear now, masked as it was by trees and the rise and fall of the road. She stood catching her breath; the snow was deep and made walking hard.

  When she had opened her eyes that morning after a restless night’s sleep she had known what she was going to do. At the shop she’d been purposely quiet as she worked, and towards midday she had rubbed a little flour on her face from one of the sacks in the storeroom and spent an inordinate amount of time in the privy in the backyard of the shop. It had been freezing but it had been worth it because when she’d come indoors again Mrs Turner had been insistent she go home when she said she had a tummy upset.

  ‘You look like death warmed up, child,’ Mrs Turner had said anxiously, making her feel awful for deceiving her. ‘You go home and go to bed and likely you’ll be as right as rain come morning.’

  Rebecca bit her bottom lip, her small white teeth gnawing away as she thought, I’ll make it up to her, I’ll work twice as hard tomorrow. And it’s not as if I’ve ever done anything like this before. She turned and began trudging through the snow again which was banked high either side of the road.

  Once she turned off into the thin lane opposite the reservoir, she breathed easier. The lane curved behind Findon Hill and there was less chance of being seen. A farm wagon had obviously trundled down the lane earlier and she walked in the tracks left by its wheels, but even so it was a struggle. She looked up into the pale grey sky, willing it not to snow until she had safely completed her mission and was home again, and warned herself that she had to be back on the main road before dark. Snow was thick on the hedgerows either side of the lane, and the long frozen branches of the trees overhanging the lane formed a canopy of glistening white as she plodded on. It was well over half a mile from the main road to Appleby Cottage, which was situated in a large amount of ground just past the old quarry.