An Independent Woman

by Anna Jacobs

  The train stopped at Horton’s small branch-line station and Marcus Graye got out slowly, signalling for the porter, who was a female. He was forced to let her take his luggage because he was still too weak to carry both bags himself, but it went against the grain to let a woman do that and he couldn’t help asking, “You’re sure they’re not too heavy for you?”

  She gave him a cheeky grin and he couldn’t help smiling back.

  “Thank you, sir, but I’m quite used to it now. Do you want a cab? Vic Scott’s waiting outside.

  His cab’s a bit old but it’s clean.” Then, as they turned to leave the station, she caught sight of his right cheek and her smile faded. In a softer voice she added, “Copped one, did you? We’re all grateful to those who fought for us.”

  He found it touching that she would come straight out with that remark, but then Lancashire folk had always been known for being forthright. “It’s not serious, just annoying.” The wounds had been deep but not life-threatening as long as they didn’t get infected, so he’d had to wait to get them tended, lying on a stretcher in a cold tent, hearing the screams coming from other more seriously wounded men.

  He hadn’t thought himself vain, but now hated to see himself in the mirror. That side of his face would always be a mess of scars, though they said it’d look better when it healed properly.

  He’d had to let a beard grow, since he couldn’t yet shave the injured cheek, so that added to the strangeness of the face that looked back at him every morning.

  Two weeks before the war ended, it’d happened. Several men closer to the blast than him had been killed by the same shell, poor devils, so he was fortunate really. But the deep wounds on the right side of his body and his right leg were taking a long time to heal and this journey had proved that he wasn’t as well as he’d thought.

  But at least he was back in Blighty for good, invalided out early instead of having to wait months for a discharge, sent home to recover in his own time. He still found it hard to believe he’d survived the horror of four years of killing, unlike most of his friends. But it had left its mark on him, he knew, as it had on all who’d been out there.

  Realising he’d been standing lost in thought while the porter waited patiently, he apologised and limped through the station entrance into the circular turning space outside. But there he had to stop again because seeing it proved that he really was home. It was two years since he’d been back to Horton and then only to bury his father, but he’d dreamed of it many a time and nearly wept as he woke up to find himself still in the trenches.

  The horse cab was driven by another ex-soldier, who had an artificial leg from the stiff way he set his foot down. You got to recognise those who’d served. Something in the upright posture, perhaps, or the smart way they were turned out, or just the look in the eyes. They exchanged understanding glances then the other asked, “It’s Mr Graye, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. You look familiar. Should I know you? I’m afraid I don’t remember.”

  “We played together as lads during the school holidays. Then I went to work in Tinsley when I was a fourteen and didn’t come back to Horton all that often. I’m Vic Scott. My brother was one of the gardeners at the Hall, but he was killed in ’16.”

  Marcus offered his hand. “You’ve changed but I do remember you now.”

  “We’ve all changed, haven’t we? War does that to you. Mind your greatcoat.” Vic closed the door of the shabby but clean vehicle and swung himself nimbly up on to the driving seat.

  The gentle gait of the elderly mare was soothing and Marcus leaned his head back thankfully, closing his eyes as the animal trotted the half-mile or so to his home. He must have dozed off because he was woken by cool air on his face and Vic’s voice.

  “We’re here, sir.”

  “What? Oh, yes. Sorry.” Marcus shook his head to clear it and stepped carefully down, grateful his companion didn’t try to help him, because he preferred to manage on his own.

  Vic was frowning at the untended garden and shabby cottage, which had no plume of smoke coming from the chimney. “Shouldn’t someone have opened up the place for you, sir, lit a fire at least?”

  Marcus stared at what had once been the gatehouse and was now called the Lodge. His mother had been the younger of the two children born to her generation of the Lonnerden family who’d been squires of Horton for more than two centuries. She’d been bookish, had married late in life a man despised by the family because of his studious ways and lack of fortune. And then she’d died within the year in childbirth, leaving his father and a hired nursemaid to look after him.

  Saul Graye had made it very plain that he hadn’t wanted the bother of a young lad in his old age, so Marcus had been sent away to boarding school when very young and had come home only for Christmas, Easter and the summer holidays, to run wild in the grounds of the Hall.

  He realised he was getting lost in his thoughts again. “Sorry, Vic. I’m more tired than I expected. I didn’t have time to let the family know I was coming back. They needed more beds at the convalescent home, so turfed a few of us out early. I’ll nip across to pay my respects to my cousin and aunt, and ask Cook to give me enough food to last until tomorrow. It’s not far to walk to the big house if you cut through the kitchen garden. I can manage that. And perhaps you could come back tomorrow morning and drive me into Tinsley? I shall have to do some shopping and put an advert in the Tinsley Telegraph for a daily maid.”

  The other man stared at him, pity in his eyes. “Didn’t they tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “About your cousin being dead.”

  “John? Yes. He was killed in ’15.”

  “Not John, Lawrence. He died last month. Influenza, it was. He never really recovered from being gassed.”

  Shock made Marcus reach for the gatepost to steady himself. “I didn’t know. If anyone wrote to tell me, I didn’t receive the letter. I’ve been moving around a bit, though, from France to England, then from the hospital to a convalescent home.”

  “Well, there’s only old Mrs Lonnerden left now. She hasn’t been well for a while, but I heard she had to be sedated when Mr Lawrence died. They’re all at sixes and sevens at the big house, from the sounds of it. Cook held things together after your uncle passed away, but she died in the spring and there are only two elderly maids left now.”

  “Cook’s gone as well? Ah, I’m sorry for that, though she must have been nearly eighty, so she had a long life! The place won’t seem the same without her, though. Why didn’t they let me know?” He’d been very fond of Cook, who’d had a lot of time for a lonely, motherless lad when he was growing up. “What about Hill? Is he still running the stables? And Parker—is he still in charge of the gardens?”

  “Hill’s looking after the horses though there are only a couple of them now, ones that were too old to go to war. Parker’s getting old and went to live with his daughter a few months ago, so Hill does a bit of gardening when he can. But he’s half-crippled with rheumatism. I take Mrs Lonnerden shopping sometimes.”

  “Oh, hell!” Marcus rubbed one hand over his beard then stared down at himself. “I’m in no fit state to go calling on a lady, but I think I must pay my respects to my aunt anyway and let her know I’m back.” He turned to walk towards the small house, tripped on the uneven paving and lost his balance.

  Vic caught his arm and steadied him. “You look like you need a bit of help.”

  Marcus nodded, hating to admit it.

  “I could stay. Help you unpack and change, then go with you across to the big house and carry stuff back. Old Dolly here will be happy to be turned loose on that lawn of yours. Only I’ll have to ask for some payment, I’m afraid. I’m still paying off the loan for the cab, you see, and only just scraping through. But I might as well work for you as for anyone else and I’d only charge you three shillings for an afternoon’s work, because that’s what I’d normally make.” He sighed.

  “It doesn’t bring in as much as I
’d hoped, driving a cab, not in a small place like Horton.”

  “Thanks. I’d be most grateful for your help.” Leaning on Vic’s arm, he started off again towards the front door of his house. “You’re very steady on that peg leg of yours.”

  “I was lucky. Got used to it quickly, and since I lost it below the knee, I can still bend my leg.

  How about you? You’re favouring your right leg? Will you always limp?”

  “No. But it’s still healing and that whole side hurts when I do too much, as I have today.”

  “You’re one of the lucky ones, then.”

  Another person telling him that! Marcus didn’t feel lucky, just extremely weary.

  And if his two cousins were dead, what would happen to the Hall? It wasn’t all that big, a pleasant little Georgian manor set in a few acres. He could see its outline through the bare-branched trees. He hoped it wouldn’t be sold to some war profiteer.

  But whoever inherited the Hall couldn’t touch the Lodge and its half-acre garden, because that had been his mother’s dowry and now belonged to him. Not that he’d be able to stay here for long. He’d have to rent the place out because he needed to find himself a job and would probably have to go back to his old one in Manchester. He was going to find it hard to settle down to working in a bank again after so much time in the open air.

  Time enough to make decisions and plans when he was feeling better.

  After a hasty wash Marcus donned a clean shirt, hoping its crumpled state wasn’t too obvious.

  He limped across to the big house, steadying himself with a walking stick he’d found in the hallstand. Vic walked with him but didn’t offer help, except to open and close the two gates. It felt comforting not to be on his own.

  He wasn’t looking forward to seeing his aunt again because his being alive would rub salt in the wound of her loss. She’d cared about nothing in life except her two sons, certainly not her husband, a bluff man of few words, who’d died before the war. It was dreadful that she’d lost both John and Lawrence, dreadful.

  He stopped for a moment to stare in shock at the vegetable garden, which hadn’t been cleared for the winter, and was a mass of mainly dead vegetation, with a few cabbages and Brussels sprouts standing sentinel in one corner and something green drooping in the middle.

  Vic shook his head sadly as they studied the mess. “I’d heard things were bad here, but hadn’t realised it had gone so far downhill. What a waste! And there’s me without a garden at all, just a poky little bedroom in Granny Diggle’s cottage.”

  When Marcus knocked on the back door of the Hall, the entrance he’d always used, no one answered. He knocked again, waited, then pushed the door open and called, “Hello!” The place was tidy, but it didn’t smell like Cook’s kitchen. There was nothing simmering on the stove, no trays of cakes and bread cooling, a memory which he’d summoned up sometimes in the trenches to cheer himself up. “Perhaps you’d better wait for me here, Vic? I’ll go and see if there’s anyone around.”

  “Right you are, sir.”

  Marcus went through into the front part of the house, still using the walking stick, hearing its tapping noise echoing up the stairwell. He heard a faint sound of voices from somewhere above and called, “Is anyone there?”

  There was silence, then footsteps and his aunt’s elderly maid appeared at the top of the stairs looking anxious. “It’s me, Marcus,” he called.

  She clapped one hand to her meagre breast. “Oh, sir, you did give me a shock. I didn’t recognise you with that beard. But I’m that glad to see you.”

  As he limped slowly up the stairs, she hesitated, looking over her shoulder, then saying in a low voice as he reached the top, “I’m at my wits’ end how to manage here and that’s the truth.”

  He paused to rest the leg and it was only then she seemed to notice his walking stick.

  “You’re injured, sir.”

  “Yes. I’ve been invalided out. How’s my aunt?”

  “Didn’t you get my letter?”

  He looked at her in surprise. “Your letter, Ada?”

  “Yes, sir. Madam wasn’t in a fit state to write, so I did.”

  “I’ve not received any letters for weeks. Yours will have been chasing after me. And I only heard about Lawrence this afternoon. I’m so sorry. My aunt must be very upset.”

  “She’s taking it badly.”

  “I’d better go in and see her.”

  She hesitated, still barring his way. “You’ll not—take offence at what she says?”

  “Of course not.” Grief took people in many different ways and he reckoned he’d seen them all after four years of war.

  The big front bedroom was hot and stuffy, smelling of some sickly perfume, with other less pleasant smells concealed beneath that. The woman in the bed was so shrunken and old-looking that he stopped in shock.

  “It’s Mr Marcus, come back from the wars,” Ada said.

  “Why was he spared and not my boys.” Pamela Lonnerden began to sob.

  Marcus moved closer to the bed, concerned at his aunt’s sallowness and the wild look in her eyes.

  She flapped her hands at him. “Get away from me! I don’t want you in here, gloating.”

  As he looked questioningly at the maid, his aunt shrieked, “Get out!” and began to sob wildly.

  “Better leave, sir. Give her time to get used to you being back.”

  When they were outside the bedroom, with the noise muted into a thin, despairing sobbing by the closed door, Ada said, “I’m sorry, Mr Marcus. She’s not in her right mind at the moment, and that’s a fact. She won’t see the doctor, won’t eat or drink properly, won’t even wash herself. I’ve my hands full trying to look after her, I can tell you.”

  “That’s obvious. I can’t leave things like this. Why hasn’t the new owner come to take charge?”

  “No one knows who that is. I think you’d better go and see the family lawyer about it, sir.

  Madam won’t speak to him. Mr Redway will know what to do, if anyone will, and he’s a distant cousin so he’s family.”

  Marcus made his way slowly down the stairs, finding Vic in the kitchen talking to an older woman. He thought she’d been a housemaid before the war. Now she seemed to be in charge of preparing the meals because she was chopping up a single onion and had a very small pile of chopped meat on a plate beside her. They both looked at him expectantly and he could only say,

  “My aunt doesn’t want to see me.”

  “She’s not seen anyone but Ada and the doctor since the funeral,” the woman volunteered.

  “Won’t even see the doctor now, says he can’t help what ails her. Won’t see the lawyer, either.”

  “I’ll go into Tinsley to see Mr Redway tomorrow. For now I wonder—Gladys, isn’t it?—if you could let me have something for my tea and breakfast? I’ve only just arrived and there’s nothing to eat at the Lodge.”

  Gladys looked dubiously at the food on the table. “I’m sorry, sir, but we haven’t got much to spare, what with the rationing and all. I can let you have some bread and cheese, though, and an egg. Oh, and there are some apples in the attic, if someone will go up and get them.” She looked at Vic.

  He smiled cheerfully. “I’ll go.”

  “Take this bag. You might as well fill it right up and have some yourself. They’re only going to waste. The orchard did well this year and we managed to pick quite a lot, but there’s no one to eat them, so we could have saved ourselves the trouble, because madam doesn’t eat more than a bird. Just follow the back stairs up to the very top, you can’t miss the smell of apples.”

  When Vic had left, she looked apologetically at Marcus. “I’m sorry it’s such poor pickings, sir, but what with the bills not being paid and all, we’re lucky they’re still letting us have any groceries.”

  He looked at her in shock. “Bills not being paid?”

  She nodded. “Not for months now. You uncle hadn’t a head for business, if you’ll excuse me saying so, only
us servants couldn’t help knowing that things were going downhill because they sold off some of the land. Mr John kept things going for a while, but when he and Mr Lawrence were called up there was no one to keep an eye on things so they went from bad to worse.

  After Mr Lawrence was gassed and invalided out, he kept to his bedroom mostly, except to sit with madam in the evenings sometimes or go out to that club in town that the gentlemen use.

  There’s only me and Ada left indoors now and Hill outside. It’s hard to keep the place going, though we do our best, I promise you.”

  “I’m sure you do, Gladys. No one can work miracles.”

  The two men walked back to the Lodge in silence, with Vic carrying the apples and some food. Marcus couldn’t hide the fact that he was exhausted and allowed himself to be persuaded to rest in front of the sitting room fire while Vic bustled round upstairs, making up a bed and unpacking the suitcase. The larder was completely empty and all the furniture covered in dust, but there was wood in the outhouse still, so he could light fires to chase away the feeling of damp and neglect. There was even enough oil to fill a couple of lamps and a packet of candles.

  As it grew fully dark Marcus paid Vic, who had more than earned his modest fee. “I’m grateful for your help. If you can come here tomorrow, take me into Tinsley then stay with me for the whole day, I’ll pay you whatever you think right. It’ll be easier than taking the train, because I can leave parcels in your cab as I buy things. I’m not in a fit state to manage on my own yet, I’m afraid. And if you know of anyone who wants a job as cook and general maid . .. ”

  “I may do, sir. I’ll ask her.”

  Marcus was sorry to see the other man go because the darkness was so quiet and still around the house that he felt as if it was pressing in on him. He boiled the egg and ate a solitary supper, after which, though it was only eight o’clock, he made his way painfully up the stairs to the front bedroom, where two earthenware hot water bottles had made a cosy nest of the creaking old bed and taken the dampness out of the bedding.