by Val Wood
Alice smiled back. ‘So would I. So I’ll hold off all ’other jobs I’m offered, shall I?’
Bella laughed, and although nothing was certain until such time as they received a reply to her letter, she felt relief. Here was someone she could rely upon, someone she could trust.
Sarah said that they should hold a birthday tea for Henry before they left the Woodman. ‘He’ll not be going to ’village school with ’other bairns, but we’ll invite some of them and give them cake and lemonade, so that he’ll remember ’time he was here. It’s important,’ she said, ‘that he remembers where he comes from.’
Bella was astonished that her mother would take the trouble. She couldn’t recall any time when she or her siblings had ever invited friends to tea, birthdays or not. She put it down to her mother’s awareness that she was taking them away from the only home they had ever known, and although she, Joe, William and Nell would retain their memories of childhood at the Woodman, Henry probably wouldn’t.
They asked several children of Henry’s age, including Aaron, Alice’s brother. Bella took Henry with her and called to fetch him and noticed the difference in height, even allowing for Henry’s lopsided gait as they walked back. Aaron was small and thin, with a runny nose which he constantly wiped on his sleeve. Henry stared at him and refused to hold his hand as Bella asked him to, defiantly putting his own hands behind his back.
The other children gobbled up food as fast as they could and then went out to play in the paddock, and one by one they went off home. Aaron ate all that was put in front of him except the yellow jelly, which he said was alive because it kept wobbling. When he’d eaten his fill he took what little bread and cake was left on the table and put it in his pocket and said he was taking it to his ma. Bella told him she would wrap it up and put it in a basket, but he shook his head as if he didn’t believe her, got down from the table and said he was going home.
Not a great success, she thought, as she walked him back. She had agreed with her mother that it would be nice for Henry to have children of his own age to play with on his birthday, but he didn’t want to play with them. None were interested in his books, which had once been Bella’s, and Aaron had looked at them with disdain. Henry had glared at Aaron and wrinkled his nose; then he picked up his books and went and sat in a corner and didn’t speak to him.
The next day the postman brought them the news they were waiting for. ‘It’s here, Ma.’ Bella ran into the kitchen waving the letter. ‘It’s come. It’s got ’Hull postmark.’
‘You open it, Bella,’ her mother said. ‘I daren’t. I’m afeard of what it’ll say.’
Bella took a knife from the drawer to slit open the envelope, and then went to the door. ‘Letter’s come, Joe,’ she shouted and he appeared from down the corridor, wiping his hand across his mouth. She gave a slight shake of her head and he frowned.
‘I’m doing nowt,’ he muttered but she didn’t answer. Now wasn’t the time for arguments.
She scanned the letter before lifting her eyes to her mother and giving a nod. ‘It’s an apology of sorts from one of ’directors,’ she said and began to read aloud.
‘Dear Madam, It is with the greatest concern that I have perused your letter regarding the tenancy of the Maritime and understand your disquiet and distress over the state of it. It seems that there has been a misunderstanding between my company and Mr Bartholomew Stroud, who informed us that you were willing to take the premises no matter the condition.’
Bella looked at her mother. ‘Is that Uncle Bart?’
Her mother nodded. ‘I never told him that,’ she said. ‘I told him to find us a nice place.’
‘Well,’ said Bella. ‘It seems he took it upon himself to say you’d have it.’
She went on to read the part in which the director said they would like to come to an agreement with Mrs Thorp if she was still willing to take up the tenancy and make some contribution towards the restoration. It went on to say that they also would contribute and a proposal would be drawn up to the advantage of them both.
‘I don’t understand it,’ Joe said. ‘Why has it been allowed to get in that state?’
‘Maybe it wasn’t making money and the previous tenant just let it run down,’ Bella suggested. ‘So what do you think, Ma? Do we take it or not? It’s a public house, or was, not an inn like we’ve got now.’
‘Aye,’ Joe said, ‘and running a public house will be different from running ’Woodman.’
Bella looked anxiously at her mother. Part of her wanted her to say that they would stay here after all, that they would carry on just as usual. She was fairly sure the owners of the Woodman would be happy to accept the withdrawal of the notice they had given. But part of her also wanted a challenge, a chance to do something other than their usual daily routine, and she thought it might be more exciting to live in a busy town than it was in a country inn.
‘Ma?’ she said again.
Sarah clasped her hands together and rubbed her knuckles against her mouth as she considered. Then slowly she nodded and looked first at Joe and then at Bella. She glanced towards the door where Nell had just come in and was leaning against it.
‘I say let’s tek it.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
JAMIE HAD HAD every intention of calling again at the Woodman Inn. But his visits home had been few during the last term at Hull Grammar School. He had worked exceedingly hard, anxious always that his best wouldn’t be good enough and that his father would change his mind and insist that he come home to play his part in running the estate. He was also convinced that it was only the possibility that he had a prestigious medical career in front of him, bringing fame to the family name, that persuaded his father to even consider allowing him this fragile opportunity.
Because of his infrequent visits home, his father had taken it upon himself to pay Jamie a visit at his lodgings, travelling to Hull by brougham. On hearing that Jamie barely had time to exercise Bonny, he insisted that he take her home with him.
‘When you decide to come home for weekends, send a postcard and I’ll send Hopkins with the carriage or come myself,’ Roger Lucan had said firmly. ‘And you can bring your books with you.’
There was no excuse that Jamie could offer, and so his intention to visit Bella was thwarted. He thought of writing to her, but recalling her brother decided that that option might make it awkward for her.
He had passed his exams with the highest possible results and he almost whooped with joy. Not only did it mean he would be able to achieve his ambition to study medicine, it also signified freedom from paternal constraints. And on his acceptance into university, in the first rush of awareness of liberty and self-importance, he had been resolute in ambition and certainty: I can be anything I want to be, he thought jubilantly. Even a country doctor.
In the September his father drove with him to catch the train from Hull to London. There wasn’t yet a through train service to the capital, but only one that would take him to Selby and then to Leeds to catch the London connection.
Jamie’s eyes had wandered towards the Woodman as they’d passed and he thought with regret that he couldn’t call and tell Bella his news. How horrified his father would be to know he had been dancing attendance, if only occasionally, on an innkeeper’s daughter. He’d sighed, feeling wistfully that perhaps nothing would have materialized from the friendship, but he hoped that she would remember it as a pleasant episode.
During his first year at King’s College he did little work. His study days were spent in the Strand campus facing the Thames, but in the first flush of freedom and independence he often wandered away and became lost in London as he explored the city; he made friends, joined societies and left them, met intelligent young ladies and fell in and out of love with the prettiest of them. He hoped that his two sisters, now at boarding school, would have the same expectations and fervour as most of these eager, talented young women. His life was so full of excitement and anticipation that only occasionally did he think of Bella.
During the second year he came to realize that there were many students who were more brilliant than he was, more studious, more likely to make their mark in their chosen career than he unless he got down to some serious study. He cut down on his social activities, keeping only those which interested him the most: debating societies, fencing lessons to sharpen his mind and exercise his body, and poetry readings into which he had ventured only in the pursuit of a young woman, and in which he stayed upon discovering that not only was he captivated by the essence of the creativity of words as much as he was by her, but both John Keats and Percy Shelley had studied there.
When the young lady spurned his advances for another he put his yearnings on paper, but found that rather than writing of her pale skin, sunlit curls and eyes of azure blue he was lauding a comely country girl with coal-black hair and lips of rosy hue who danced in poppy-scattered rippling cornfields.
He had now completed his third year, and after considering surgery as a career had decided on medicine and put away starry-eyed notions of love and poetry. He had made a good friend in Gerald Maugham-Hunt, known always as Hunter, who had also decided on medicine, and they discussed setting up in practice together, ministering to the poor and finding a cure for all the nation’s ills, including cholera, typhus and syphilis.
‘But where shall we set up our practice, old fellow?’ Hunter queried. ‘My father would say London.’
‘So would mine,’ Jamie responded, and laughed. ‘But he would far rather I became an eminent physician! I’d thought initially that I might become a country doctor, but that was because of the doctor who looked after my mother when she was ill.’ He frowned. ‘I think I might have changed my mind since then. Still, we have to qualify first.’
‘You needn’t worry too much about that,’ Hunter declared. ‘I’m the one who might fail.’
‘Nonsense,’ Jamie said. ‘We’ll help each other out with our weaker points.’
‘Like my Latin,’ Hunter said glumly.
‘Or my dissecting,’ Jamie added. Not a subject that appealed to him.
‘We’ll be fine,’ they chorused with the confidence of youth. ‘We’ll get through.’
He travelled home at the end of term to spend Christmas with his family. He hadn’t seen his sisters for some time and was looking forward to hearing, in particular from Mary, always more talkative than Frances, just what they had been up to whilst away from home. They often spent their weekends with their mother’s sister, Aunt Jane, who, Jamie suspected, would be much more fun to be with than their father or brother.
As luck would have it, it was Bob Hopkins who came to pick him up in Hull with an empty brougham. He told him that his father was confined to the house with a heavy cold.
‘Mrs Greenwood insisted that he shouldn’t come out,’ he told Jamie.
‘She’s the only one he listens to.’ Jamie handed Hopkins his portmanteau to stow inside the carriage, and said, ‘I’ll come up front with you and you can tell me all that’s been happening on the farm.’
‘Nowt much has changed, sir,’ the groom said as they moved off. ‘We see ’same seasons every year, some wetter, some drier, but we allus get a harvest.’
Jamie laughed. ‘I’m pleased to hear it. How’s my lovely Bonny? Do you think she’ll know me?’
‘Aye, I reckon she will. I tek her down on ’sands most days, she likes that. Likes to get her feet wet. Which way home, Master Jamie?’
‘Straight up through Holderness,’ Jamie said. ‘I fancy breathing in some country air, even though it’s a bit damp and drizzly. And,’ he said as if he’d just thought of it, ‘we’ll stop for a glass of whatever you fancy when we’re halfway home.’
‘That’d be very welcome sir.’ Hopkins grinned. ‘We can allus say that ’train was late.’
So they drove from the new terminal of Paragon station down Paragon Street, which ran parallel with Osborne Street, and Waterworks Street, skirted the town dock by way of Savile Street, and headed along George Street towards North Bridge, leaving the town of fishing and shipping behind.
A mile from the Woodman Inn, Jamie made pretence of yawning and shrugging his shoulders as if he were stiff, which he was; it had been a long day and dusk was well on them.
‘We’ll stop at the next hostelry, Bob,’ he said. ‘I need to stretch my legs and I’m sure you do too. And a glass of beverage. What do you drink?’
‘Stout, sir, with a good head on it, when I can get it.’
‘I’m sure you’ll get it at the Woodman,’ Jamie told him. ‘I used to stop there sometimes when I came home from Hull. Mild I drank then, but tonight I have a fancy for a cognac to keep out the cold. I swear it’s colder here than in London.’
‘Aye, well, you’re a long way from ’sea in London, so I reckon that’s why. This place has changed hands,’ he said, as he drew into the yard. ‘Or so I’ve heard.’
Jamie glanced sharply at him. ‘Changed hands? Why – where have the former tenants gone?’
‘Dunno, sir.’
A man came running towards them to take the reins. ‘Does she need watering, sir?’
‘Not too much,’ Hopkins answered for Jamie. ‘Onny a wetting. We’re nearly home.’
Jamie strode to the door, frowning. I can’t believe they’ve gone! Hopkins must be mistaken. She said – Bella said she would always be here. But sense told him that moving on or staying would not necessarily be her decision. There could be all kinds of reasons why the family might leave, and as soon as he entered the inn he knew it was true that the Thorps were no longer there. There was a different atmosphere, even though he reasoned that the inn would still have the same customers, those from the village and the neighbourhood.
The taproom was dark, with only a low fire and candles burning on the mantelshelf. Gone were the chairs and the tables where there had been jugs of meadow flowers or greenery, and in their place was a long table with a bench on either side. Two men sat opposite each other with a jug of ale between them. They both looked up as he entered but didn’t greet him.
The landlord, a burly man with sparse grey hair, stood behind the counter. ‘What can I get you, sir?’ He asked the question without any other greeting.
‘A glass of stout for my man and a cognac, please.’
The landlord’s mouth twisted. ‘No cognac at present. I’m waiting on supplies.’
‘A glass of mild then, if you please.’ Jamie took an instant dislike to him, he knew not why. ‘Are you a new tenant? I recall the previous family who were here.’
The man nodded as he drew the stout and placed it on the counter, and Jamie knew that Hopkins would not be happy with it. The head was thin and he wondered if it had been watered down.
‘So,’ he said lightly, as the man hadn’t answered his question. ‘Where have they gone? Has Mrs Thorp retired from the innkeeping business?’
The landlord drew the mild before answering. ‘Don’t think so.’
One of the men at the table behind him cleared his throat. ‘They’ve gone to live in Hull, sir.’
Bob Hopkins came in and looked at his glass with distaste. ‘What’s this?’ he muttered and took a drink, then screwed up his mouth, glancing at Jamie, who was moving towards the long table.
Jamie nodded at the man who had spoken, who half rose to his feet and touched his forehead.
‘Evening, Mr Lucan,’ he said, and Jamie was only partially surprised that the fellow knew him. ‘I remember you from when you was a nipper, sir. I did a few jobs for your father. Johnson’s me name.’
‘Oh! How do you do, Johnson? I believe I’ve seen you here before, when the Thorps were here?’ It was not so much a pleasantry as a question requiring an answer.
‘Aye,’ Johnson said, and Jamie sat astride the bench beside him and took a sip of mild that had definitely been watered. ‘They’ve onny just gone,’ Johnson droned on. ‘Took us all by surprise. They’d been here nigh on twenty years.’
The man opposite him nodded gloomily a
nd bent over his tankard.
‘So, you say they’ve gone into Hull? To another hostelry?’
‘Aye,’ Johnson said again. ‘Seemingly Mrs Thorp had tekken a fancy to going back to where she lived afore she married Joseph. Shame,’ he mumbled into his ale. ‘She was one of us, even if she was an incomer.’ He held up his tankard. ‘This ain’t mine,’ he grumbled. ‘I’ve been having ’same one for years.’ He dropped his voice. ‘This feller says they’re all ’same; but they’re not.’
The other customer looked up. ‘Greens don’t come in any more.’
Jamie looked at him. Was he supposed to know what that meant? He nodded in acknowledgement.
‘Came in regular, they did,’ the man continued, ‘but they don’t come in now.’ He sighed, lifted his tankard and took a long swallow.
‘So where have they gone?’ Jamie tried to steer the conversation back to the Thorps. ‘The Thorps, I mean.’
‘Hull,’ Johnson said mournfully. ‘Big place. They’ll not like it.’
Jamie half finished his mild and stood up to leave. ‘I might drop in to see them sometime,’ he said. ‘Do you know the name of the hostelry?’
Johnson shook his head. ‘No, I’ve nivver been to Hull.’ He paused as if thinking. ‘Summat to do wi’ ships, I think.’
Ships! What a task, Jamie thought, remembering all the inns, public houses and beer houses that were named after ships. He could die of the effects of drink if he called at them all.
‘Aye.’ Johnson pushed away his tankard. ‘It were either ships or fish. I can’t remember which.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ALL THROUGH THE Christmas holiday Jamie was restless. His father was confined to his room as the cold had settled on his chest and he coughed constantly. He grumbled at Jamie, saying as he was the doctor why couldn’t he suggest something to ease the soreness?
‘Because I’m not a doctor, Father,’ he said. ‘And I’m quite sure that Mrs Greenwood knows more about cold remedies than I do. Rest, keep warm and lots of fluids.’ Jamie turned his head to glance at the patient housekeeper beside the bed and raised his eyebrows. ‘If I can find a cure for the common cold then I’ll make my fortune.’