Tilly Trotter

by Catherine Cookson

  George Ross now closed his eyes for a moment as he said with strained patience, "You are getting away from the point, Ellen. were you or were you not dancing with Tilly Trotter in the vestry?"

  "Yes! Yes! Yes! All right if you say we were dancing we were dancing, but as I've already told you, it was the first time it had happened there, and ... and it was all over in a matter of seconds. And we didn't move the benches back; we went round the table once."

  Ellen looked at her husband as he closed his eyes again while his head slowly drooped towards his chest and, her voice pleading now, she whispered,

  "Oh! George, George, I'm so sorry if this has distressed you, but it all started so innocently. One day in the summer-house after I had taken Tilly for her letters I remarked that there was a barn dance being held outside of Westoe village and I asked her if she was going, and sadly, that was it ... that was it, George. There was so much sadness in her voice when she replied she never went to barn dances,

  that in fact she couldn't dance at all, she had never danced. Well, George, you know yourself what used to happen on birthdays and anniversaries at home when Mother played the spinet and Robert the violin, you were there, and you enjoyed it you did. Our drawing-room was gayer than any court ball; you said so yourself."

  The vicar slowly raised his head now and looked with infinite sadness at his wife as he said softly,

  "That was before we were married, Ellen. When you agreed to become my wife you knew there would be responsibilities, and these responsibilities would be heavily laden with decorum. We talked about this, didn't we?"

  "Yes, George." Her voice was flat, her hands remained still, joined tightly together at her waist now.

  "The first Mrs Ross was... ."

  "Oh! Oh no! George." Her hands had sprung apart and her head was shaking widely.

  "Please, don't tell me again of the first Mrs Ross's qualities. If you do I shall scream."

  "Ellen! Ellen! Ellen! Calm yourself. Dear!

  Dear!" He stared sadly at her. "I wasn't going to do any such thing except to admit that an excess of decorum can have its drawbacks when it impinges on happiness."

  "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry,

  George." She moved a step nearer to him and, putting out her hands, she gripped his and, looking up into his face, she said softly, "I will try, George. Honestly and faithfully, I give you my promise that from today I will try to be different."

  The parson stared down into the face he so dearly loved. Then his nose twitched, his eyelids blinked, he wetted his lips and, his voice now soft and unlike its previous tone, he said, "Oh, Ellen, Ellen, I do so want you to be happy, and

  ... and, I would like to add, I want you to be free to take the line your active mind directs, but...

  but I am hampered, my very position hampers us both."

  "I know, I know, my dear."

  "Well now, Ellen, I'm sorry to have to say this, but you must stop seeing Tilly."

  Now it was her eyes that blinked and her whole face twitched and she glanced to the side before she said, "Not even teach her her letters?"

  "Not even that, my dear. They ... the villagers, they have strange ideas about Tilly, weird, stupid ideas, but these ideas could make them dangerous."

  "What... what kind of ideas?" Her head had swung quickly round towards him again.

  "Well--" he became embarrassed for a moment and his lips worked

  in and out before he answered, "She is apparently a descendant of an old lady who ... who is buried in the churchyard. Her name was Cissy Clackett and she was ... well, they seem to think she had supernatural powers."

  "A witch?"

  "Yes, yes, I suppose she would in those days have been called a witch."

  Ellen's hands jerked quickly away from her husband's and her body bristled with indignation as she cried, "And they're saying that Tilly is a witch!

  Tilly Trotter a witch!"

  "My dear, you must have realised yourself that most of the villagers are ignorant people and ignorant people thrive on superstition... ."

  "But Tilly a witch, huh!" She gave a mirthless laugh. "I have never heard anything so stupid in my life. She's a sweet, kind, quite innocent girl, and I've never heard her say a wrong word about anyone, not even about that horrible McGrath man." She paused for a moment while

  they stared at each other; then in a high, clear voice, like someone asking a question of the platform, she said, "Are they intending to burn Tilly Trotter, sir?"

  "Don't be silly, Ellen."

  "I am not being silly, at least not any more silly than the villagers or anyone else who takes notice of them."

  "Ellen!"

  Although his voice held a stern reprimand it seemingly had no effect on her now for, swinging round from him and walking to the far end of the drawing-room, she looked out of the window for a moment before turning again with the same swinging movement and facing him across the room as she cried, "And what sentence are they likely to put on me should they discover that I sit alone for an hour at a time in the summer-house with three coal-begrimed pitmen?"

  "What! What did you say?"

  "I think you heard, George, what I said. I sit alone at least one hour a week, sometimes two hours a week, with three very dirty, ignorant miners from Mr Rosier's pit."

  The vicar's long face seemed to take on inches. His mouth dropped into a gape, his eyebrows moved up towards his receding hair, and as he walked towards her his gait could have suggested that he had been indulging early in the day. An arm's length from her he stopped and his head moved with a small unbelieving motion as he said, "No! no! Ellen, you couldn't, not Mr Rosier's men. Do you know what you're doing?"

  "Yes, yes, I do. I am helping them to express themselves; I am pushing them through the thick barrier of ignorance, the ignorance that you yourself say is prevalent in this village. But these men are different, they've had enough of ignorance, they have at last realised the power that lies in the pen, and in being able to read the written word."

  The parson now drew in a long breath and let it out slowly before he said in a flat unemotional tone,

  "And of what help, may I ask, will this knowledge be to them when they are dismissed from their work, and not only dismissed but more probably they and their families turned out of their cottages?"

  Her lids were blinking again and it was some seconds before she said, "They ... they know the risk they are taking and, as one of them has already said, except for the cold they'd have to endure during the winter he'd rather sleep on the hillside, in fact bring his family up there, than in the hovels that Mr Rosier provides for the men who work for him."

  The parson's face was a deep red now, there were beads of sweat on his brow, and he seemed to find difficulty in speaking. "This must stop and at once.

  You have gone too far, Ellen. You are young, you know nothing about the privations of these men, what can happen to them when they are without work. Outside this very parish last year a man died on the road through starvation.

  He was found stiff in a ditch. He was one of Rosier's men. You haven't as yet seen people standing for hours waiting for a bowl of weak soup; you haven't as yet seen a child tugging at the breast that held no milk. You have a lot to learn, Ellen. Now tell me, when are you seeing these men again?"

  It was some time before she answered him. Her hands hanging slack by her sides, her head bent, she seemed for the moment defeated as she whispered, "They're ... they're waiting for me now in ... in the summer-house."

  "Dear God! Dear God!"

  Ellen's head came up slowly. The fact that her husband had used God's name outside of prayer or when in the pulpit showed how deeply troubled he was, and so she was torn inside between the hope of bringing the glory of reading and writing to the poor and the love, the deep passionate love, she had for this man.

  Sensing some of her feelings, his manner softened.

  He put his hand out and gently took her arm, saying,

  "Come, we will settle the matter
now at once.

  They will understand. Put on your cloak and bonnet."

  His last command brought a slight stiffening to her body. Put on her cloak and bonnet to go down to the summer-house! But it melted away on the thought that, as he said, she was the parson's wife, she was going out in the open and her head must be covered, as must her dress.

  A few minutes later they were walking side by side over the stone flags of the large hall, through the heavy oak door, across the narrow terrace and down the six broad stone steps that led on to the gravel drive.

  The drive curved away to the iron gates that gave on to the road, but since they were going to the bottom of the garden they took the path along past the three mullioned windows and were about to go under the topiary archway leading into the flower garden when the sound of running steps and a voice calling "Parson!

  Parson!" brought them to a stop, and they both looked to where Tom Pearson hurried panting up the drive towards them.

  When the painter came to a stop in front of them he was unable to speak, and the parson said with some concern,

  "What is it, Tom? Something wrong?"

  "Don't know, parson, don't know for sure yet, but I fear something could go wrong, and badly so."

  "Your family?"

  "Oh no! No! No, not me family." Tom Pearson now glanced towards Ellen and muttered in a gasping shy manner, "'Tis young Tilly Trotter I fear, ma'am."

  "Tilly! What's happened to her?"

  "Don't know, ma'am, not yet, but things could."

  "Speak up, Tom." The parson's voice was brisk now. "What can happen to Tilly?"

  "Well--" Tom swallowed deeply, drew some spittle into his mouth, made as if to get rid of it, changed his mind, swallowed again, then blurted out,

  "'Tis the stocks, the old stocks that used to be on the slab in the centre of the village years gone by; been lying in Tillson's barn this age. I wouldn't have believed it, wouldn't have known nowt about it but for young Steve McGrath. I found him crying, poor little devil, in the wood, Hal had thrashed the daylights out of him, I think he's broken the boy's arm. I told him to go to Sep Logan, he knows more about bones than most, but the lad had been and Sep, like everybody else seemingly, was away to the fair, except the three concerned, Burk Laudimer, Andy Fairweather, and Hal McGrath himself."

  "But... but what about Tilly? What about her?"

  "I'm comin" to that, ma'am. They set up the stocks again in the old barn and Laudimer sent his young Frank with some sort of a message; apparently young Steve was on his way to tip Tilly the wink but Hal McGrath sensed what he was up to and by! he has lathered that lad, there won't be a place on him that's not black and blue the morrer. But ... I knew it was no good me goin'

  on me own, I couldn't tackle the three of "em and ... and it's authority they want"--he was looking at the vicar--"brawn alone won't stop

  'em, parson."

  Again Ellen heard her husband murmur "Dear God! Dear God!" Then without further words the three of them were going through the garden at a pace between a trot and a run.

  It was when they came to the side path which would lead them into the vegetable garden and so into the meadow beyond that Ellen, glancing over the long lawn which ran right up to the very steps of the summer-house, stopped and cried,

  "The miners! George. I'll bring the miners."

  "No! No!" He paused in his walk and again said, "No, no." Yet there was a doubt now in the words and she, sensing it, ran from him lifting her skirts above her shoes as she did so, and when she burst into the summer-house the three grimed men rose slowly from the slatted wooden bench while their caps remained on their heads and were nodding towards her when she startled them by crying, "Come! Come quickly. You can help us. My ... my friend, I mean a young girl, she's in trouble with some men. The vicar and I would ...

  would be obliged if you would come and ... and help us."

  "Is it a fight, ma'am?"

  They were out of the door now, following her running steps towards the parson and Tom Pearson, and she had almost reached her husband before she answered them, saying, "It well might be. It well might be."

  The parson gave no explanation to the miners; instead, after glancing at them with a look of dismay, all he said was, "We'd better hurry."

  A wall separated the boundary of the vicarage from the meadow. It was a low wall and the men were over it in a moment and the parson, about to follow them, turned and looked at his wife and said, "Run to the gate, my dear." He pointed to the far end of the meadow, but for answer Ellen caused a shiver of shock to run through him while at the same time evoking a thrill of admiration from the men as she sat on top of the wall, pausing a moment as if in deference to her husband's feelings to spread her skirts over her ankles before swinging them to the other side.

  They were all running again now. "Where we making for, sir?" One of the pitmen turned his head and shouted towards the minister, and

  George Ross called back, "The barn.

  Tillson's barn. It's in the far end of the other field. We... we must cross the road."

  Having crossed the meadow, this time they went through a gate, over the road, jumped a narrow ditch, climbed a bank, they were now in a large field. It was rutted here and there with outcrops of rock which made it unsuitable for farming and the sparse grass in between the outcrops hardly afforded enough grass even for a few sheep, yet at the far side of this field there had at one time been a farmhouse. But all that remained of the house now were the foundations buried among long tangled grass. Many years previous a fire had destroyed the house and most of the outbuildings, leaving only the barn whose timbers had stood the outrage of time for two hundred years and were still persevering; only time it seemed was now winning the battle, for the roof had fallen in a number of places, and the owner of the barn, Mr Tillson, who now farmed about half a mile away, did not consider the place even worth attention. If it was used at all it was as a questionable shelter for those travelling the road or at some season in the year when the village children would decide to scramble over it.

  That a commotion was going on inside the barn became evident to them all as they neared it, and when the parson, with the help of the miners, dragged open the half-door they were all brought into a moment's amazed silence at the scene before them.

  Their entry also brought to a frozen halt the three men who were in the act of aiming something they had cupped in their hands at the bedraggled and gagged figure pinioned by arms, legs and head in the stocks.

  Again the parson said, "Oh my God!" but now it was merely a whisper on a long soft outgoing breath, but the exclamations from the three pitmen were anything but soft. Their curses rang round the barn as they cried, first one, "Why you bugger in hell!" Then

  "You bloody maniacs!" And lastly as they seemed to leap forward of one accord the smallest and broadest of the three men yelled, "Stocks! Bloody stocks!"

  What followed was a melee of blows and curses and figures slipping on the overturned box of rotten apples.

  The parson was yelling now, his voice higher than ever he had allowed it to go in his life before; he was screaming at the combating men, "Give over! Cease I say! Stop it this moment all of you, stop it!"

  But when no one paid any heed to him he edged himself along by the barn wall, closely followed by Tom Pearson. They were making their way towards the top end of the stocks but before they reached them they were both thrown together by the combined force of the joined bodies of Andy Fairweather and one of the pitmen.

  Ellen Ross had remained standing in the open doorway, her hands clapped tightly over her mouth, and moving from one foot to the other as if she was doing a standing march, but now seeing that her husband was being impeded in his efforts to reach Tilly, she ran blindly from the doorway and, weaving her way between the battling men, reached the end of the stocks, and as she moaned

  "Oh Tilly! Tilly!" she reached out and touched the bent shoulders pressed against the wood.

  As her eyes darted over
the back of the stocks she saw that the top section, which clamped Tilly's head down, was held in place by long wooden spikes set in sockets at each side. Gripping one of them she wrenched it back and forward and when she managed to ease it upwards it came away so quickly that she stumbled backwards. It was at this moment she saw, within an arm's length of her, that her brightest pupil was about to be given a final blow by Burk Laudimer.

  Laudimer had his fist upraised and her instinct told her that if it reached its aim Sam Drew would fall to the floor because his body was only being kept upright by the fact that Laudimer had him held by the front of his jacket.

  Ellen never remembered turning the long peg in her hand, nor could she ever believe that even in her anger she had enough strength to fell a man, but when her swinging arm, her hand now gripping the narrow end of the peg, came in contact with Laudimer's neck, he became quite still for what appeared a long second. His left hand was still holding Sam Drew by the coat while his right arm, fist doubled, was raised in the air.

  So many things happened in that second, blood spurted from a hole in his neck, he screamed a high wild scream, at the same time loosening his hold on Sam Drew and swinging round to confront the parson's wife.

  Ellen was still standing, her arm hah5 extended; her hand was open now and the peg was lying across it but there was no blood on it, not what you could see.

  Following the scream there fell on the barn a silence; then the parson and Tom Pearson came rushing towards the stocks, not to release Tilly, but for both to stand stock-still. Their eyes darted between the huddled prostrate figure on the barn floor and Ellen looking like a piece of sculpture carved in stone presenting an offering of a stock peg.

  "What ... what have you done?" The parson was now kneeling by the side of Burk Laudimer and, tearing a handkerchief from his pocket, he thrust it around the man's neck, then cried,