The Wheelwright's Daughter

by Eleanor Porter

  ‘Content to be lame?’

  ‘Content with your lot, and your fortune. Even before this it was never likely that you’d marry. You’re a little brown thing and your family is not fortunate. But there’s no question of it now. Best to put it right out of your head.’

  I stared at the red scar on the ridge, but it made my eyes hurt to look at it. The horizon was ripped and beneath it all was ragged and raw, with scraps of snow lying in the wreckage. I had to blink hard. I had no wish to marry, I assured her.

  The Widow eyed me closely. ‘The world’s not a kind place for a plain girl with no family and no prospect of gaining one.’

  ‘I have my father,’ I said. I would have said more, but I couldn’t trust my voice.

  ‘Your father,’ she said, smiling. ‘You need to find yourself a place, girl. Don’t think they’ll let you keep your cottage when he’s gone. There’s others as could make use of a roof. You need to think about the future lest you end up one of those wantons sleeping in ditches, good for nothing but rogues and thieving. Come now, don’t take on. I’m saying this for your own good, girl, because you haven’t anyone to guide you.’

  ‘People have been kind. There’s been no end of gifts left at our door. You’ve said so yourself.’

  ‘There was gratitude the boy was found, I’ll not deny that, but the hand you had in it was heaped and pooked, if you ask me, out of all measure. That is one way of telling the story and it’ll do for the present. What if it goes ill with the boy? Folks might remember then that you’ve done things and said things that’ve put fear in the hearts of good people, people who’ve ever tried to defend you and stand by you. Folks might call you by another name then. Then there’d be an end to any freeness towards you, right enough. You’d be turned out before you could say cock robin.’

  She was right, though she herself was the worm in the apple. I could have cursed my own eyes for welling up. I seemed to have taken in weakness with the cold. Fie on her and her counsel, time was I should not have given two peas, but since I had been carried back from dying I seemed to be made of water. I pulled my cloak about me, to wrap myself tight in myself, as I used to do. Then I stared at old Bert. His head was sunk into his shoulders and he creased his eyes against the road and us. A large papery wart grew by his nose. If he turns to me and speaks, or if he helps me down and wishes my father well, I thought, I will make him up some tormentil and dandelion milk, birch-bark and skullcap, and charm it gone. I would I could pick it off and stick it on the Widow. Her face was long and thin and had all the comfort of wet-wrung linen. For all that, she was tall and had once been fair enough. The lines of her bones were strong still; she was like her son in that. Little nut my father used to call me when he still sat me on his knee, little cob. In my dreams my mother wears white, but she was small and dark like me and yet my father loved her.

  I turned away from the Widow, rude as I could, but the cart was small and at every turn of the wheel I was slung against her and the jag of pain made me gasp once or twice. It was all she could have wished.

  Then I saw Jacob a field away up at the warrens. I forgot myself and called to him. Turn, I thought, turn and look at me and let your mother see it. He looked up sure enough, took us in: the cart with old Bert driving, his mother, the mending, me. But he didn’t smile. He just nodded quickly, then studied the grass as he walked towards us, fondling the muzzle of the dog that bounced at his heels. I remembered his visits to Aggie, then. Perhaps they were paddling palms already. I looked at the way he cupped his fingers and tickled the dog beneath its chin. My face burned. His mother saw, of course; she savoured it like honey on her tongue.

  ‘Oh, that’s a fine boy,’ the Widow said when he had finally done his ‘good days’ and we were on our way again. ‘Our Lord sent him to me, and no mistake. He’d never take a step without my blessing. Mother, he’ll say, you brought me up. All alone you did it, and I’m not about to repay you with ingratitude.’

  I gazed out where the plough had ripped and scored the earth. One of these days soon I would have to hobble up to the Hall for work. No good cart to lollop in for ever. The Widow wanted rid of me – well and good, I had no love for her – but I had depended on her these last weeks for food and fire. She was right: with father gone the village would brush me off its skirts and turn away. My grandmother’s bones were strewn from the churchyard and who else would stir themselves an inch for me? There was only Miss Elizabeth. I looked out across to the east where the road to Gloucester must lie, and tried to summon all my old dreams of flight, but all I could see was a coming cloudbank and a band of thick slant rain.

  Bert dropped me off with barely a glance and no word for my father. Let your wart grow all over your face, I thought, thanking him.

  When Goody Tranter opened her door, all smiles, and beckoned me in, I hung back a moment in a dizzy kind of fear. The cottage was dark. There was a fire, but it was pitiful. The flame staggered worse than a weary pedlar. But it wasn’t the dark that made my eyes smart, it was the sour smell of sickness.

  Ruth Tranter took both of my hands. ‘Oh, Martha, you’ve come,’ she said, pulling me gently in. ‘I said to your father only yesterday, it’ll be today or tomorrow, mark my words. And here you are. He’s sleeping now. Come sit down with me – you can help me with the yarn. Can you hear how easy he’s breathing? If only the bile would let up. A few hours like this and he’d have his strength coming back.’

  She drew up old Ben’s chair for me and I sat down beside the thread of a fire while she built it up. Then I held my hands out so that she could wind her wool. She was about the age of the Widow, but as unlike her as honey is sour cider, for her body was soft as cushions and her face was creased with kindness. They had a daughter living – she’d married the miller out at Sollers Hope – but she’d had three other children, two babies and a boy of nine, who’d been lying by the chapel when it was torn and scattered. Nobody knew where they might be now. Perhaps they were among those some said that they’d seen walking in the hours before dawn. If their boy had not drowned he’d have been about my age, or a little older. I remembered him. He was always after water. We’d built dams together on Pentaloe Brook, where it falls along from Canwood Knoll, and we’d swung from a willow bough all across the stream with the water skiffing at our feet. When he died, I remember old Ben had come to my father for a coffin, because Robert was away and there was no one else to make it. His face worked without speaking as they measured at the wood and every now and then he cuffed at his leaking eyes.

  With the fire built up the room was not so desolate. Light from the flames played over a basket hung on the wall and the leeks and ham tied to the beam, and threw a glow on us both as we sat drawing on the warmth of it. It seemed natural not to say a word; Ruth smiled at me from time to time, lifting her eyes from the yarn. Her son, my friend, had been called William. It had been easy to like him. There’d been none of the pain my liking for Jacob brought me. If he’d lived perhaps he would have loved me and then she would in time have been my mother, too. I would spend my evenings in the firelight and we’d tell one another stories as we baked good food to eat, and during the day I would walk in Miss Elizabeth’s garden, through the rows of box and the roses to the Hall and Miss Elizabeth would say, ‘I cannot do without you, Martha, now my eyes are weak.’

  A long spasm of a cough jolted me out of silly fancies. Goody Tranter leaned in to me. ‘That’s him; he must have woken. He’s his right self again, has been these last few days. As gentle as a lamb. Seeing you will do him better than any physic.’

  She led me to the back of the cottage and drew back the curtain around a bed, pushing me forwards. ‘Walter, it’s your daughter, it’s Martha. Don’t mind me,’ she added. ‘You sit as long as you like. I’ll be making oatcakes. I’ll bring you some when they’re done.’

  The pale figure in the bed opened his eyes and roused himself up onto his elbows. I busied myself with the bolster to help him sit up, so I wouldn’t have to look. T
his was not my father. My father was a big-boned man, who could lift a length of oak as if it were a petticoat. Time was, I would place my hand on his just to feel the size and strength of it. The man on the bed seemed made of paper; he patted at my hand as if unsure that it was there. His breath was like the whining of a saw. It came to me that he had crumpled like the hill. Or perhaps I had forgotten how the drink had shrunk him.

  I sat down on the bed with his hand between both my own. I had done this to him. It came to me like a blow to the chest. He had wanted me to stay and I had gone. The Widow was right, I was wilful. Whatever I did, wherever I went, my father’s ruin would be like a shadow at my shoulder. I cast my gaze down and tried to stop from crying.

  He pulled his hand away and waved it in my face. ‘Martha, stop that. What good does that do? Why, child, I am not dead yet.’ And though he gasped it out, his voice was strong enough and had the old impatience to it. ‘Look at me!’

  I got down on my knees, wincing at the stretch it gave my ankle, and looked at him properly. Even in the darkness of the cottage his eyes were my father’s eyes, fierce with love and bitterness. ‘Forgive me, Father. Bless me,’ I said, but my voice came out a wail.

  ‘Away with all that, Martha. Let’s not waste time. You’re not to blame, you hear me? You’re sad now, ready to weep yourself into any kind of guilt, but by and by you’ll be angry too. I did this to myself; over years I did it. I know that and you do too. You left to get some wood. You did not know what was coming. I had an idea it was time. For weeks I’d had a sense of it, though it could have been then, or next week, or never, but the skies have fallen down on me before. We are cracked, me and the world both. You survived, girl. You should be glad. I’m glad. I thought they had buried you.’

  He paused then and sat staring into a dark corner of the hut. Minutes passed. I turned to look at Ruth Tranter, shaping each oatcake with a swift swivel before tossing it into the pan. Soon the baking smell filled the room and pushed aside the tang of sickness. Still he stayed quiet. A bit of talk had made him weary, but it wasn’t only that. This was an old game for me: the silences when he’d be thinking of his other life, the life before we came here. I used to think that if I sat quiet enough and thought hard enough I would be able to see the visions that passed before his eyes, but I never did. Sometimes he would shake himself and smile and return, and sometimes a cold look would gather in his eyes and he would take his coat and leave for the alehouse.

  It was a surprise when he finally spoke. ‘Do you remember her?’ he asked. ‘Your mother? You were two years old when… when she was taken from us. Do you recollect her at all? Do you remember how she died?’ I glanced sharply at him. He never talked of her death, never. My grandmother had warned me not to ask about it. Some wounds stay raw, she’d said.

  ‘I have a memory of before,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if it’s true or if it is a picture I made up. I remember being held and her hair falling around my face and listening to her sing to me. And I remember walking, with my arm stretched up and my hand held firm, near to an unmeasurable stone building. I think it was the Cathedral. And we turned a corner and the sun splashed golden, and she swooped me up and round and round, and above me all the goblin faces whirled.’ And, I thought, I dream about a white bird in a tree and I know I must not speak of that.

  He nodded. ‘You were born in Gloucester, as you know, in the shadow of the dockyard and the tall-masted ships. It may be we should have stayed there, but after she died I was headlong in the gutter more than I was upright. There was a kind of peace in that. In the gutter you have a choice of prospects: stinking filth or the reachless sky; both offer a satisfying torment. I loved you, child, but I could not see how I could bear to live. Too much of my pity was for myself, of course.

  ‘I have often thought it strange that we came here, to your mother’s country, after all that happened. For a long time I thought it must be fate, or the will of God. Your grandmother was here. That was a part of it. But to go back to your mother’s story. She was in service and when her mistress married a Gloucester merchant she was taken along too. They were fine people – oh, very fine – and the mistress wanted Bessie for a pretty lady’s maid, for all that she was just a country girl.’

  He paused again and I waited, but differently now, because I knew he was telling me a story he had not told before, though I had patched much of it together from the tales my grandmother told. I waited for more.

  ‘The mistress liked Bessie, but the master liked her too. She was never safe from him, not in the kitchen, not in the parlour, not even in his lady’s chamber. The mistress saw what was going on and because she could not hate her husband she hated your mother. Bessie was turned out without a penny, the mistress howling her a strumpet in the street. It was not easy for her, friendless like that. I had done work at the house and noticed her then, but scarcely dared to speak. When I found her she was waiting tables at a tavern. I did not drink overmuch then, but I’d had a thirsty morning and stooped in at The Mermaid. There she was, shrugging off a sailor who was grabbing at her like she was so much cloth. She looked at me and knew me and did not look away. Oh, she was proud, Martha. She could not bear contempt or pity.

  ‘After she was taken, after no hope was left, I think I went mad for a while. Like I said, my soul was blasted with pity for itself. I put you out to a nurse. I worked and then when I had money I haunted the alehouses near the wood yards, till I was dirty and sodden as the sawdust on the floor. Soon there was no work and I had to get money however I could. Sometimes at dawn I came to in the street, ringing out curses to the stars. Even the beggars kicked me as they hobbled by. There came a day, though – it was early, I had barely started drinking – when I… well, I was able to do someone a good turn and that led me here.’

  He nodded and glanced up over my head. A figure had come into the cottage and approached the bed. It was Miss Elizabeth.

  28

  Miss Elizabeth Interrupts

  ‘Martha, don’t curtsy. I doubt your leg will stand it and I came to visit your father. It is good that I did, for he has left out the most important part of the story. I will let him gather his strength while I tell you myself. It is true that he had listened too much to the devil at his left ear, but there was an angel at his right. I believe it was the angel that woke him that morning and led him to that inn so that our paths would cross. No man is so lost but that our Shepherd cannot find him and lead him back to the flock. Many times I have praised God for His mercy in leading your father to the yard that morning, so that he could prove our salvation and we could do what was in our power to raise him.’

  I glanced at my father. The suggestion of a smile played at the corners of his mouth. Miss Elizabeth liked the pulpit. Father used to come back from the Hall laughing that she’d have made a fine Doctor of Divinity, if she could only swap her skirts for hose. I did not like to hear him mock her, for it led me to look at her askance, and that interfered with my delight at her favour. But today, for the first time in her presence, I found myself nettled. I wished she would get on with the story, now she had seized it.

  ‘We were changing horses in Gloucester,’ she went on at last, ‘and my mother and I were waiting at the inn while my father saw to some business. I was only a girl then and the parlour where we waited was stifling. The nurse who should have been attending me had business in the jakes; I slipped away to go to see the horses. There was a young Spanish jennet in the yard. Oh, she was a delicate, fine creature, red-brown as our Herefordshire earth, with a white star on her forehead. I came forward to greet her, and she let me place my hand on her neck. It was so warm and alive, thrilling with spirit. I could see the fool of a stable-hand was handling her roughly and I was about to chide him, when she kicked out. The dolt struck her and she went wild. One moment later and the yard was in uproar, carriage horses rearing in their traces, the stable lad knocked into the straw. Heavenly providence was with me that I was not struck. I could see my mother by the gates, screa
ming for the hands to help me, but no one dared approach. No one except your father. He walked over, bent down among the shying, kicking beasts, picked me up and took me to my mother. Then he went back and took hold of the frightened filly and talked to her gently till he could lead her to a stall. By chance we had lost a carpenter, and my father, seeing he was in dire need, offered him a position on the estate. Two weeks later he appeared at the Hall, with a little girl beside him.’

  Miss Elizabeth looked down at me, pleased with her story. My father’s eyes were closing. We should be going now, she told Goody Tranter, or we would tire him too much. As I pulled my hand away he pressed my fingers lightly. I did not want to go. I did not want to leave him there in the dark, gathering each breath in so slowly. But Miss Elizabeth guided me away. I felt aggrieved. Why did she have to interrupt us? I glanced back at his face and knew this was not the story he had wanted to tell me. He had wanted to talk to me about my mother and how she died. About the white bird.

  Miss Elizabeth smilingly brushed aside the dish of oatcakes Ruth Tranter entreated us to share with her. They smelled so good, I felt giddish at the sight of them. I was about to sit down despite her but she was firm.

  ‘Come, Martha. I think we have intruded on Mother Tranter’s goodwill quite enough.’ Oh, the pang in my belly at that! At the cottage door Ruth Tranter’s voice brought me back to the present.

  ‘Very well, thank you, your ladyship. And young Martha here was saying when she got here how very grateful she was for all your kindness. Weren’t you, Martha my dear?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said.

  Miss Elizabeth turned to me graciously. ‘There is good in you, Martha. You are like your father – and your mother, too, I dare say – in that, but in all of you there is something of that wild horse, child, and you will need to be careful. I will do what I can for you, not just more copying, though there is some of that. The schoolroom is the darling of my heart, but there are those who might make it difficult for us to continue. And now Owen. Poor, poor Owen, I had such plans for him. But God is merciful.’ She sighed. ‘Come to me at the Hall when your ankle is well and we will talk about your future.’