Shadows & Lies

by Marjorie Eccles

  My mother, never very strong, died in 1891, when I was fourteen. My father, the Rev. Aldous Jackson, followed her to the grave within six months, allegedly dying from a stroke, though they’d been such a devoted couple it didn’t seem inconceivable to me that he’d died of a broken heart. A good Christian man, he hadn’t, alas, been a provident one. I wasn’t quite destitute, however; he’d made provisions for me in the way of my future education, and a tiny allowance was to be paid to me when I reached the age of eighteen.

  Mrs Crowther had been a good friend of my mother, and after the funeral, she took me to Wakefield, to what was to be my new home: a school for the orphaned daughters of the clergy with which my father had had some connections. We went by train and when we arrived, Mrs Crowther sniffed the carbolic-scented air and cast a searching look at the room where we were received: varnished pitch pine seats and one picture, The Light of the World. She listened with me to the strictures of the pious, though no doubt well-intentioned, woman who met us, as to how I should continue to receive a Christian education as long as I conducted myself properly. She said, “Hannah, wouldn’t you rather come and live with us at Bridge End House?”

  What a question! If she’d asked me if I would rather live in Paradise, the answer could have been no more joyful.

  Mrs Crowther briskly dealt with the formalities, brushing aside any difficulties, and after some discussion we returned to Bridge End, where it was arranged that I would live with the Crowthers as one of the family and continue to share lessons with their daughter, Lyddie (which I had in any case been doing for some time) until I was old enough to earn my living, or perhaps to act as companion to Mrs Crowther, though I couldn’t see how she could ever need a companion, so full and busy was her life with her family and all manner of occupations and social and charitable duties, not to mention the entertaining of countless friends. Alfred Crowther was one of the town’s most respected alderman, and a JP, the head of Abraham Crowther & Sons Ltd, prosperous woollen manufacturers, makers of blankets, and very well regarded both locally and throughout the West Riding. A ‘warm’ man (which in Yorkshire stood for wealthy) but, though his family lacked for nothing, he kept a modest household.

  From the very first, I was welcomed into their happy family. I remained closest to Lyddie, the only girl, already the dearest friend I had in the world, though her nature, as well as her appearance, was very different from mine. I was a little, black-haired thing, my olive green eyes too big for my pale face, and ‘thin as a match wi’ t‘wood scraped off’, as ’Lijah Mellor used to say, and the cold winds were apt to give me chills and chest infections. I was also inclined to be shy and retiring, while Lyddie, having grown up with boisterous brothers, was lively, brimming with energy and full of fun, with a smile that lit up the day. Her mass of soft, light brown hair, which began the day smoothly brushed and tidy, by midday usually reverted to its natural curls, and was the bane of her life. Her hastily tucked in blouses soon became untucked, her collars askew. But her smile never varied.

  For a while, we continued to share her governess, a small, sour-looking woman from Alsace, who was supposed to improve our French but instead, since her mother came from Strasbourg and her sympathies were with those who lived on the other side of the Rhine, spoke mostly German to us. Alderman Crowther was deeply patriotic and not fond of Germans – or foreigners of any kind, for that matter – and when he found out, he issued Mam’selle with her marching orders and thereafter we were put in the charge of a young woman called Rhoda Rouncewell, uncompromisingly English, but also well-educated, sympathetic and of an open and enquiring mind.

  Not only did Rouncey, as we affectionately called her, improve our education and our knowledge of the wider world: as we grew up, she taught Lyddie to be less impatient when dressing, so that her clothes and her unruly hair remained more or less in place throughout the day, and myself how to make the most of what figure I had. I might still have grown up in Lyddie’s shadow, given her bonny good looks and my drab appearance, but that would be to deny her sweet good nature, which meant she never set herself above anyone. As I grew older I began to fill out a little and gradually began to outgrow my tendency to take cold so easily, albeit I was prone to troublesome coughs on occasions and still looked deceptively fragile. I use the word deceptive advisedly, for the truth was, I had become energetic both in actions and opinions, entirely due to Rouncey’s bolstering of my self-confidence. I was in fact in danger of becoming too outspoken, so I took refuge in becoming known for my common sense.

  In the evenings, Rouncey would drop her role of governess and we’d sit and listen while she talked to us about the paintings and sculpture in the great art galleries and churches of Florence and Paris and Venice, all cities she had visited. I, in particular, hung on her words, seeing in my mind the pictures she drew, though sadly aware that I was never likely to have the opportunity to travel to such exotic locations. But above all she taught me, at least, to love books and reading, something which even my meagre means would always allow.

  She’d been educated at Girton College, Cambridge, though she had, of course, been denied a degree, since women couldn’t be admitted to full membership of the university, but her education had given her an emancipated outlook and a strong belief in her own abilities to make her way in the world: we were left in no doubt that she was only working as a governess until something more suitable to her talents turned up. On winter evenings we curled up on the rug before the fire as it burned frostily, our hands around cups of cocoa, and talked endlessly about women’s situation in the world, the good they could do if only they had equality with men. She encouraged us to believe that a woman’s role consisted of more than being easy on the eye, domesticated, charming and obedient to either husband or father, as most men believed they should be.

  Mrs Crowther, however, saw no reason why all this high-flown thinking should prevent Lyddie and me from being taught how to cook and keep a house running properly. At Bridge End, come what may, the washing blew on the line every Monday; the ironing was done on Tuesday; Wednesday was baking day, and every single day the sweeping, polishing and dusting was attended to, the doors and windows flung open to let the fresh, moorland breezes blow in to air the rooms. She was determined that exercising our brains shouldn’t make us ashamed of being good Yorkshire housewives.

  It was inevitable that our lives seemed less colourful when eventually Rouncey decided to leave us, having stayed much longer than she had originally intended. Now that she’d lain down the foundations of our education, and we were both seventeen and young women, she really couldn’t lay any claim to stay with us. She was leaving with regret, she said, but it had been obvious for some time that she was growing restless to be off again. So it came as no surprise when she told us that she’d succeeded in obtaining a position in America, no less, doing some kind of confidential work for an official in the British Embassy in Washington. The news caused such a stir! We girls thought it unbelievably exotic, but after we’d seen her off on the first stage of the journey that was to lead her to the other side of the world, I was left with an empty feeling I didn’t seem able to fill, wishing for the impossible, that I might have gone with her, and a longing which I knew could never be satisfied, to experience a world that was wider than the proscribed circle in which we moved.

  Lyddie missed Rouncey too, of course, but not, I think, with the same intensity as I did. She wasn’t in the least bookish, her only contribution to culture being to thump out tunes from the latest operettas on the piano and enthusiastically sing the words; but she too longed for adventure, though of a different kind to me. Her heroines were those intrepid ladies who climbed the Matterhorn, lived alone and undaunted amongst Arab tribes in the desert, sailed as far as Australia, or travelled the golden road to Samarkand. “We’ll see the world, too, someday, you and I, Hannah,” she often declared, forgetting that her situation was, after all, entirely different from mine. The possibility of foreign travel wasn’t excluded from her
future by lack of money or anything else. Her life was predictably laid out – she would in all probability marry someone with means, and even if by some quirk she didn’t, she would at some time have money of her own. Within limits she would be able to do exactly as she pleased.

  But for the moment, at any rate, she was quite happy and content to be with her family and friends, in the place where she’d been born.

  Whereas I …

  I really didn’t in the least wish to contemplate my future, when I should, at some time, be forced to find work, possibly – horrid thought! – as a governess, like mam’selle from Alsace. Or remain here, growing plain and middle-aged, as Mrs Crowther’s companion. The allowance my father had left me would scarcely be enough to keep body and soul together. Meanwhile, our life went on pretty much as before. But not for long. It was to be less than a year before Lyddie left us, too.

  Chapter Ten

  Life changed for all of us when Lyddie became engaged to Lyall Armitage.

  He was Yorkshire born and bred, the youngest son of a solid family in the wool trade. Amos Armitage, Sons & CO Ltd, Spinners & Dyers, were a long-established firm, and its present head, Frederick Armitage, was well-known to Lyddie’s father through their dealings at the Wool Exchange in Bradford. The two men were on the best of terms, both inside and outside business; the families moved in the same social circles and the Armitages’ eldest son, Lyall’s brother, had married a cousin of Lyddie’s, so it appeared to be a suitable match from almost every point of view.

  Nothing is perfect, however, and there was one big flaw in the arrangement, which was that Lyall, unlike his brothers, had declined to enter the family concern, much to the aggravation of his father, who totally failed to understand his lack of interest in the wool trade. At seventeen, he’d sailed out to Africa, the land of limitless opportunities, where fortunes were being made overnight in diamonds or gold. But it was in the wild and rich game country north of the Limpopo where he had settled and lived an active and adventurous life, often on the edge of danger, working as a big-game hunter, and later also as an interior trader. He led hunting expeditions and exported ivory and ebony, ostrich feathers, and the tobacco, coffee and cotton planted by the pioneers who’d flocked there and established towns such as Salisbury and Bulawayo. Operating from this last place, Lyall’s eventual success had by now justified himself in the eyes of his father.

  On this first visit home to England for several years, he had arrived laden with trophies: an hour ago he’d come up to Bridge End House for tea, bearing an elephant’s foot made into a stand, now standing in the bay window of the dining room, holding an aspidistra in a brass pot.

  There were five of us in the dining room that day: myself and Lyddie; Lyall Armitage; Mrs Crowther; and Ned, who was the youngest of the family, grounded from his boarding school in Harrogate through a mumps epidemic, and though he was sixteen and fairly grown up on the whole, as impatient for his tea as though he hadn’t eaten for months. But we wouldn’t start until the head of the house came in. Meanwhile, Mrs Crowther, whose hands were rarely idle, made pleasant conversation while stabbing a fine steel crotchet hook into white cotton, creating a froth of fine lace destined to be a doyley for the Girls’ Friendly Society sale of work. In front of the fireplace stood Lyall, in characteristic attitude, arms folded across his chest, one leg thrust forward. Lyddie sat nearby, intent on hearing more of the exploits, already legendary from his letters to his family who now, in the light of his success, relayed them to anyone who would listen, embellishing them in the process. Tales were being passed around of hunting expeditions into the bush, and his many dangerous encounters with wild beasts: how he’d shot his first lion when he was seventeen; escaped from a charging rhino; killed crocodiles; of his experiences confronting equally wild, unknown tribes with strange names. Lyall only smiled faintly and did his best to play down these tales of desperate adventure, but his far-seeing gaze, even as he spoke, seemed to be looking out over the dramatic wide views and the untrammelled far horizons of the veld’s wide open spaces.

  “I think it’s that which makes Africa so special to you, Lyall. Being free,” murmured Lyddie, with a barely discernible sigh. I knew she was afraid that even now, in view of the difficulties ahead, he might change his mind about taking her back with him as his wife.

  His eyes on her bent head, he took a deep breath and said quietly, “It’s more than that. Being there is – being alive.” It was clear that he loved Africa with all his heart and soul, and from every word he spoke it was very obvious he hoped she would learn to love it, too. The last time she and Lyall had met, Lyddie had still been a schoolgirl, but now she’d matured into a lovely and lively young woman. He was lean and dark and burnt brown as a nut, an attractive if rather serious man, one who knew his own mind, and no doubt could have made his choice of a wife from any of a dozen women. But from the moment he’d looked into Lyddie’s laughing eyes it was obvious to everyone he was lost. She was, in any case, a blueprint for the sort of wife he needed – courageous and spirited, unafraid of the distance which would separate her from her parents and family and the safe and settled life she had been brought up to expect; and with enough British grit to face the edge of danger associated with the unknown and the hardships she would inevitably be exposed to. Indeed, she was afraid of nothing. Had she been a man, she might well have chosen for herself the life that Lyall had followed.

  She, too, had fallen in love with her whole impetuous nature. She didn’t always consider the consequences of her actions, but this time she had, and was prepared, if Lyall asked her, to follow wherever his interests dictated, ready to brush aside every objection. Lyall wasn’t quite so sanguine about the outcome of his proposal as she was. He was afraid, she told me, that her father might think he didn’t have the right to ask for her hand in the circumstances.

  “But if that turns out to be the case, then he and I must beg to differ. He won’t think that, though, will he, Hannah? Not my father? He’d never stand in the way of my happiness. I won’t let him!”

  It was true that Alfred Crowther could deny his only daughter nothing, but of course, as Lyall – and Lyddie, too, for that matter – well knew, he had good reason to be worried that this young man proposed to take her off to Africa after they were married. He could have forbidden her to marry Lyall, of course, but he was wise enough to see opposition would only strengthen Lyddie’s determination – this daughter who could twist him round her little finger, but who he knew to his cost could be stubborn as a mule when she’d set her mind on anything. It was not perversity or heavy-handedness on his part which prompted his reluctance, however, nor even the thought of losing his daughter to another man, whom he in any case liked, it was simply his fears for her safety.

  “What’s going to happen out there in South Africa, hm?” he demanded of Lyall, as we drew up to the table and addressed ourselves to what was before us. Nothing was ever allowed to interfere with mealtimes in the Crowther household. Dinner we ate at half past twelve, and high tea we always had at six, after work was done. Today it was pork pie, cold meat and tomatoes, followed by buttered currant teacake, slabs of parkin, seed cake and the apple pie left over from dinner, should anyone still be hungry. “Are we going to let old Kruger and his Boers get away with it, then?”

  Anyone who read the newspapers couldn’t fail to be aware of the present troubles in South Africa – most of it stemming from the scramble for land there between the Boers, the native black peoples and the whites who had settled there; land rich in diamonds, gold and other precious minerals. We all knew by now, since the Daily Mail had told us so often, that the Afrikaans-speaking Boers were a stiff-necked, pigheaded, intensely religious people who believed they were the elect of God. Following the lead of their intransigent old leader, Kruger, the President of the Transvaal, they regarded the black Kaffirs on whose land they’d settled as ignorant savages, another species of being, while using them as slaves to perform the manual labour and menial tasks tha
t were beneath a white man. More than that, however, the Boers, who were predominantly farmers cultivating their isolated tracts of farmlands out on the veld, considered themselves to be superior to other white men who’d settled there, most of them British – Uitlanders, they were called, foreigners, aliens – especially the British: Godless foreigners, who tended towards a dangerous liberality with the blacks and had actually abolished slavery.

  “I don’t believe there’s any intention of letting them get away with anything, sir. But the situation is tense, and above all we need to be moderate. Our government could easily do something they might later regret.”

  “That means we continue to sit back and do nothing, I suppose?” Alderman Crowther was a man softly spoken and comfortably built, with a long, melancholy face and old-fashioned Dundreary whiskers, but he had a pair of shrewd eyes that belied any tendency to self-indulgence, in himself or in others. “Rather than giving the Uitlanders some support against these beggars?”