Eppie

by Robertson, Janice

  Most curious was a dwelling built upon the bridge. The house, constructed of black timber and in-filled with yellow-green patched plasterwork, could only be Bridge House, where Gabriel occasionally stayed.

  They stepped, in single-file, along the bridge. Going about their daily business, people hurried past. Some, like themselves, drove pigs and other livestock. Others lingered to chat or watch water crashing and foaming in deep pockets between boulders.

  The thoroughfare that ran beneath Bridge House was only wide enough for one wagon to cross at a time. Eppie contemplated the mayhem caused if a wheel fell off a rickety wagon or animals being led across misbehaved.

  On the embankment, on the town side, was a garden which belonged to Bridge House, the canopies of trees visible above its high brick wall.

  A studded wooden door was set to one side of a central archway beneath Bridge House. As they passed by, the door was swept open and a housekeeper, her waistline bulging beneath a blue-spotted chemise, waved at a rat catcher who was about to step into the mill yard. ‘Mr Loafer! Rats!’

  Dressed entirely in brown, his spindly legs peeping from an overlarge coat, the rat catcher had the guise of a rat. ‘I ownee called by yesterdee, Miss Scratchings,’ he shouted, side-stepping a woman who carried a basket of vegetables upon her head. ‘You sure you ain’t inviting these bristly fellas in so’s you may have the benefit o’ my company?’

  ‘Mr Loafer! What a thing to fancy!’ Conscious of her work-worn appearance, she straightened her beribboned mobcap, and let him in.

  Beyond the bridge, the imposing homes of the wealthy nestled on a wooded hillside.

  Opposite Thurstan’s stagecoach inn, The Wolf and Child, stood a coaching workshop, a wheelwrights and a corn store. Further along was The Prince’s Theatre. A boy who had lost half a leg sat on the steps of the Town Hall, clutching a stick. Beside him was a girl who, having suffered an injury to her eyes, had her eyelids sewn down. Palm outstretched, she waited in silent expectation of receiving a coin from a kindly lady or gentleman.

  The Dunhams tramped down a constricted lane, heading towards the bustling market square.

  Whilst pleasantly surprised by the charm of the town higher up, Eppie’s spirits now sank. Dilapidated warrens, their roofs bowed and chimneys tottering dangerously, replaced the lush vales and expansive sky of the countryside. Over the doorway of one house hung a sign declaring it offered Good Beds and Logins fer Thravelers. The rundown appearance of the dwelling did not make the offer tempting.

  Skirting heaps of rubbish, Eppie could tell from the look of consternation upon Martha’s face that she was equally appalled by what she saw.

  Many of the houses around the marketplace were tall and ugly, their windowpanes grubby, the paintwork chipped. Standing in the doorway of Finagle’s Pawnbrokers, the proprietor bellowed a gruff reply to a neighbour who leant out of a top window.

  Hoping to earn a few coins for their labours, ragged children swept mud and filth clear before the feet of the few fine folk that milled around.

  Wakelin wrung his hands against the cold wind. ‘It’ll be dusk soon. The few shillings we’ve got left won’t go far.’ Eppie perceived a note of repentance in his voice.

  ‘I’ll speak to a couple of traders,’ he suggested. ‘See if they can recommend somewhere for us to stay overnight.’

  Having purchased a thrupenny loaf, Martha led the way to a disused shop. Legs aching, Eppie sank gratefully upon the icy step and sucked the coarse bread to make it last. Seen through the smashed door, the interior of the shop was littered with soaked rags and, judging from the reek, the dingy place served as a privy to poorer passers-by. To quench their thirst they bought drinks from a higgler who sold fresh water.

  Tinkers squatted amongst wares strewn upon the pavement, selling all manner of items, from spades and iron potato planters to chipped crockery. Chickens and geese, bound by their legs, dangled from a pole above the men’s heads.

  A pack of hounds, ribs projecting from their flesh, bounded towards them. Eppie and Martha jumped to their feet in alarm. Hurriedly, they made to the safety of the stalls where burly stallholders saw off the dogs with well-aimed kicks.

  Waiting for Wakelin to return, they wove their way around the jumble of stalls. Though plenty of baskets of vegetables and fruit were piled for sale, most looked bad, hardly fit for consumption. Less choosy, Bellringer and the pigs crunched rotten vegetables off the ground.

  The longer they hung around, the chillier Eppie became.

  She spied Wakelin’s head bobbing towards them through the press of market-goers. ‘At last!’

  ‘There are cheap quarters,’ he said jauntily, ‘ownee tuppence a night, though we’ll have to share with the roughest o’ the rough, six to a bed. This landlady showed me a room where, ownee last night, a woman was stabbed to death.’

  Despite being appalled by the incident, at the sight of Eppie’s stunned look he was unable to repress a grin. For her benefit, he added graphically, ‘I saw the trail of blood on the stairs where they’d dragged ‘er body. To save the landlady the trouble o’ changing the bed linen, she said we could have the room dirt-cheap tonight. Half-a-penny. The blood on the sheets was dryish, so I telled her it were fine by me.’

  Martha shook her head in incredulity. ‘Sometimes I wonder what goes on between your ears, Wakelin.’

  ‘I’ll keep asking.’

  Lottie rubbed away tears of weariness. They were quickly replaced by others.

  ‘This is a dreadful place,’ Eppie said. ‘Let’s go back to Litcombe and see if we can find work there.’

  She knew the only reason they had journeyed to Malstowe was because Wakelin was hoping to meet Ezra. Shearing machines had been introduced as a means to nap fibre and hand cropping was no longer lucrative employment. Several months ago, Ezra had been forced to bring his family here in search of work.

  ‘I agree with you,’ Martha said, ‘though we’re too tired to walk any further. We’re stuck here for at least a couple of days.’

  Darkness fell.

  Like a black tidal wave, workers, having collected their weekly wages, flowed into the lantern-lit market. By now little was left upon the stalls of any quality. The cheese they bought was mouldy, the vegetables wilted.

  Wakelin returned with a skull-faced boy in tow. The slight curvature of his spine, bowlegs and large hands, in which he clutched bruised potatoes, lent to him a frog-like appearance. Though tired from his day’s labour he spoke cheerily in his Irish cadence. ‘Oil ask my mother if you can stay with us.’ He led the way. ‘The Hoggett’s was with us for nigh on nine months. After Mr Hoggett dropped dead, his missus couldn’t pay her way no more, so the rent collector chucked her and her children on the streets. It was the fumes what did for Mr Hoggett. He worked at the bleachers. I’m Feargus O’Ruarc. You can call me Fur. Everyone does.’

  ‘Why are your clothes wet?’ Eppie asked.

  ‘My mother, sister and I work at the cotton mill. My job’s wet spinning of the linen-yarn. I get soaked by water spurting from the spindle.’

  A row of houses, once grand, now dilapidated, lined the river embankment. Generally, the members of each family shared a room and most families having a brood of children, everywhere, from behind un-curtained or raggedly curtained windows, could be heard the sound of clanging pots, men and women shouting, children crying and yelling. Beneath the railings of each of the three-storey houses a flight of steps led to low-ceiling dwellings half-buried in the earth.

  ‘This is our place, in the basement of River View House,’ Fur said. ‘It isn’t a palace, I grant you.’

  They were greeted by the heavy, cold stench of urine so strong that Eppie craved fresh air even before she had set foot in the dwelling.

  Entering the smoky, dim cellar, Fur grabbed a ragged blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders. ‘These folk want to know if they can stay, Mother. Them’s the Dunhams.’

  A frail-looking woman languished upon a sack which leaked straw an
d shavings. Though she must only be about Martha’s age, her face was so pale that her lively eyes seemed to protrude from a paltry offering of watery gruel, giving her a prematurely aged appearance. ‘You’re most welcome, to be sure. Mr Leather, the landlord, calls by of a Saturday night. A shilling a week he asks.’

  A girl abstractedly stirred the stew, her tangled chestnut locks tumbling about her wasted face.

  Chickens, on the scrawny side, wandered freely.

  Rising, Mrs O’Ruarc, a thin, slightly stooping figure, with a small, nervous mouth, erupted into such a fit of coughing that she could barely catch her breath. ‘You’ll have to excuse me; I’m a bad case of the wheezers. You and the girls may have those sacks.’ She indicated to what Eppie took to be a heap of worm-eaten timber and rags. ‘There’s that other for your lad.’

  Fetching Tipsy out the basket, Eppie soothed, ‘Don’t be scared. It’s only a new place.’

  Stiffening, the cat pressed its head under her armpit.

  ‘Wipe some dripping on her paws,’ Mrs O’Ruarc suggested. ‘Once she’s licked it off, she’ll feel at home.’

  ‘What shall we do with our beasts?’ Martha asked.

  ‘There’s a fenced yard at the back for pigs. Everyone throws in peelings. Or you could keep them in here. The other family bring in their horse.’

  ‘A horse?’ Martha said. ‘And there’s another family living in here? There doesn’t seem much room.’

  ‘Mr Leather crams us in. That way he gets more rent. Truth be told, I wish we could move out. We came six years ago, when my husband was taken in at the weaving shed. He and my youngest died of the fever. Ever since, we’ve lived hand to mouth. Pawned nearly everything we owned to make ends meet.’ She took the wooden spoon from her daughter. ‘It must be warmed through by now, Coline?’

  As a means of cooking, bricks were built into a square with a central hole. A cauldron hung over the blazing faggots.

  ‘Though there isn’t much, we’d be delighted to share our meal with you and yours, Mrs Dunham. We could do with a better stew pot. This was got from the truck store only a few months ago. The metal’s so thin that the fire’s nearly burnt through it.’

  Rush-bottomed chairs were set around an upturned market basket that served as a table.

  Settling beside Coline, Eppie smiled. Coline glanced away, clutching her skirts.

  ‘She’s a bit frightful,’ Mrs O’Ruarc said, alluding to her daughter’s shyness. ‘We’re a quiet family, used to keeping to ourselves.’

  Gratefully, Eppie sipped the bland liquid from the grubby bowl.

  Fur and Wakelin were seated on cut-down tea chests.

  Fur pointed to a couple of rancid-smelling fish hung from the rafters. ‘There’s a good pool beyond the woollen mill. You can fish with me tomorrow, if you like.’

  Wakelin chucked an indigestible cabbage stalk to the pigs. ‘Yur, all right.’

  ‘No doubt you’ll be looking for work?’ Mrs O’Ruarc asked Wakelin. ‘They’re always glad of folk at the mills.’

  ‘Nay, it’s the outdoor life for me. Good hard work with a load o’ sweat.’

  The meal over, Lottie wriggled fretfully on Martha’s lap, desperate to pay a visit to the toilet.

  ‘There’s a bucket behind that screen,’ Mrs O’Ruarc told Martha. ‘For the wet stuff, you know. We earn a few pennies selling it to the fulling mill. They use it to bleach woven cloth. At the far end of the lane is a necessary, though it’s for thirty houses and there’s always a queue. I keep a separate bucket beside my bed for drinking and cooking water.’

  Loud and steady came the digging of carthorse shoes along the broken stone road. They stopped outside.

  ‘That’s them,’ Mrs O’Ruarc said nervously.

  The door was booted open and in marched a tinker, his arms filled with unsold bric-a-brac. Another man soon joined him. Judging by the shared facial characteristics, weasel-like eyes and seemingly non-existent chins merging into necks, they were brothers. Striding back and forth to the furthest corner of the cellar, carrying clothing and tools, including a barley-cocking fork and a swan-neck hoe, they cast grim, inquisitive glances at the newcomers. An elderly man, presumably their father, led in the small, shaggy horse. Upon the man’s head was Gillow’s magpie feather hat.

  Martha gaped in surprise.

  Wakelin swept towards the tinker. ‘It was you, you what stole our stuff!’

  Martha was more circumspect, not wishing to condemn the tinker without evidence. ‘Please, could you tell me where you got that hat?’

  Wakelin made a grab for it. ‘Give it back, swine!’

  The brothers leapt on Wakelin and knocked him against a wall.

  ‘Leave it, Wakelin!’ Martha pleaded, seeing a dagger at her son’s chest. ‘We can’t do anything.’

  Glaring at the men, Wakelin dusted himself down.

  ‘If you know what’s good for you, yu’ll do as yer owd woman sez,’ the tinker advised. ‘Me and me lads know nowt about nowt.’

  Martha followed the man to his part of the cellar, where he kicked up sticks ready to fix a fire. ‘That hat. It belonged to my late husband. I would like it back if it’s no bother.’

  ‘Keep yer filthy hands ta yersen. This hat’s mine, me own, and always has been.’

  Despite this being a time when most birds were at roost, a white robin flitted into the cellar and caught up the hat by its brim.

  Grunting in surprise, the tinker slapped a hand to his sparse locks, his tankard of cold vinegar beef tea slopping down his trousers.

  Eppie tore along the lane in pursuit of the hat, which was borne aloft like a dry leaf in a gale.

  With a flick of its tail, the robin about-turned, released the floppy hat into her outstretched hands, and vanished.

  Fur dashed up. ‘How can a bird as tiny as that pick up a hat?’

  Eppie grinned, overjoyed that Talia had followed her to this grimy town. ‘This little bird can do anything!’

  That evening, Eppie and Martha hugged one another for warmth and comfort.

  Mrs O’Ruarc and Coline had been asleep for a while, as had Lottie.

  Evil-smelling mutton candles illuminated the tinkers, who were singing and drinking with gusto.

  The horse drank from a cut-down barrel, blustering nosily.

  Eppie feared lying down, sure that she could feel beetles crawling inside the mouldering sack and scurrying beneath the rags. Also, a dread of the tinkers was growing in her mind.

  Finding it difficult to settle, Wakelin had gone to the market with Fur. Though foul and rotten, the meat on sale, from old, diseased cattle or half-decayed animals, found its way onto the stalls of hucksters, who bought up inferior meat and sold it cheaply by reason of its toughness or badness. As nothing could be sold on the Sabbath, such things as would not keep were bartered. The meat made up the O’Ruarc’s Sunday dinner.

  ‘I suppose we ought to look on the bright side,’ Martha said.

  Eppie was sick with anxiety. ‘What’s bright about this?’

  ‘We might’ve been sleeping in sheets drenched with blood.’

  In spite of her sadness, Eppie smiled at the appalling vision.

  Without knowing it, she slept.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  NOT MUCH TO LOOK AT

  Eppie awoke, with a start, to the harsh call of a cockerel beating its grimy wings.

  In daylight the cellar looked worse. Sour-smelling dampness oozed from walls glistening with water. Chalk whitewash flaked around mildewed cracks. The only natural light filtered meanly through a rusty grate set into the outside wall.

  With a backward glance at the sleepers, she tiptoed out.

  It was a grey morning, perfectly still with a melting mist. She recalled mornings such as these back home when she would happily gaze upon the hills, veiled in a purple haze. Here all she surveyed was a river used as a depository for excrement and household waste and row upon row of cottages, wholly or half ruined, though with evidence of occupation.

>   A man was propped against an open doorway, smoking. Women emptied foul liquids before their doors, or traipsed to the river to drain buckets. In the distance, the elegant spires of a church, the only feature of beauty in this otherwise dreary environment, floated on a cushion of fog.

  She wandered up the lane. A stench arose from dismembered corpses of farm animals and horses that littered a knacker’s yard. All along the riverbank, fetid pools containing rotting offal were greedily alighted upon by carrion crows. Next to the knacker’s yard was a brick building with Blincoe Brother’s Finest Ground Bones painted beneath the second storey windows.

  Fur sidled up. ‘Not much to look at is it?’

  ‘Everywhere is so filthy.’

  ‘When it rains, hard like, the river overflows. All this muck runs into our cellar. It was during the last flood that my father and brother died.’

  Wakelin appeared at the end of the alley. ‘Quit dawdlin’, Fur.’

  ‘We’re off hunting,’ Fur told Eppie. ‘Your mother was wondering where you’d gone. It’s not a good thing to get lost. There are some queer folk around here, far worse than the tinkers.’

  ‘Opposite the mill, when we were walking into Malstowe, we saw a chapel,’ Martha said, over a breakfast of flour and a little butter mixed with hot water from the tea-kettle. ‘Do you fancy we’d find a welcome there, Mrs O’Ruarc?’

  ‘I’m sure, and do call me Eibhlin. That’s the mill chapel, though I doubt you’ll find many in the congregation. Workers prefer to be idle of a Sunday or, like me, they feel too ill to attend. I know it sounds heathen, but if you ask any of the women I work with they’d tell you they’ve nothing to thank the Good Lord for. We labour like the devil is after us, what with the heat and the toil.’

  Eppie’s spirits rose as they reached the upper town. Gone was the filth that so attacked her senses. Here was a sweet, earthy scent. By the light from the rising sun, withered leaves in the woodland flashed golden with tinges of red.

  It was as Eibhlin had said, hardly more than a handful of worshippers attended the service. Of those most were poor, elderly women. The man reading the prayers was a kindly-looking, portly gentleman who, though smartly dressed in a beige tailcoat and well-pressed trousers, did not exhibit about his character any considerable display of wealth. Accompanying him, as he left the chapel, was a handsome tawny-haired girl of about Eppie’s age, whom she presumed to be his granddaughter.