Twenty
‘Gran, what happened to Mam at the chapel all those years ago?’
Later that day, Eveleen had entered her grandmother’s house and sat down opposite the old woman. Wearied by the painful walk to the day’s two services, Bridget leant back in her chair. She was lost in thought for a few moments, perhaps deciding how much to confide in her granddaughter, before she went on, ‘When your mother got herself into trouble, we had a minister here at that time called Tranter.’
It was the name Eveleen had already heard but she said nothing and allowed her grandmother to continue.
‘He was very – very . . .’ Bridget sought for the right words. ‘Hell-fire and brimstone.’
‘I thought the one today was a bit like that.’
‘Old Tranter was ten times worse than him – or better, according to your point of view. Years ago, it was the practice in our chapel to denounce wrongdoers before the congregation and Tranter believed in carrying on the old tradition. That’s what he did to poor Mary. She was made to stand up in front of the whole congregation and confess her sins.’
‘You mean – you mean, the minister shamed her in front of the whole village?’
‘Oh aye,’ Bridget said in a matter-of-fact way. ‘Usually, the two concerned are brought before the chapel elders, but of course, they couldn’t get hold of Brinsley Stokes. His family considered themselves a cut above the rest of us poor stockingers and they were church-goers anyway. I suppose they thought of themselves as gentry.’
‘The man who was the father of Mam’s baby was gentry?’
‘Not what we’d think of as gentry. Middle class, maybe.’ Bridget gave a cackling laugh as she added, ‘It’s what the real gentry would call “new money”, earned from being in trade.’ As she said the final word, she pulled the corners of her mouth down, imitating the condescending attitude of the upper classes towards a man who, by the dint of his own efforts, raised himself to a higher standard of living.
‘How did my mother meet him?’ It was important to Eveleen to fill in the gaps in the picture she was already building up.
The old woman sighed. ‘His father was the bag hosier then. Brinsley was a nice young man, but that was the trouble, he was so young. They both were. But that didn’t stop them falling in love and, of course, her father and Harry didn’t approve. Neither did his parents when they found out.’
‘And you, Gran? What about you?’
‘Me? Oh, I just did as I was told.’
‘I don’t believe that for a minute.’
Bridget’s bright eyes twinkled. ‘Oh, lass, you’re so like me, you know me already, don’t you?’ Her expression sobered. ‘But be careful, love. Curb that wilful streak just a little, because it’s still a man’s world out there. You can kick against it now and again, and sometimes you can get your own way. But only for a while, because they’ll win in the end. They always do.’ She sighed. ‘Aye, it’s still a man’s world all right.’
There was silence between them for a few moments before Eveleen prompted gently, ‘So, what happened when everyone found out, apart from the scene in the chapel, I mean?’
‘In a way, I could understand your mam running away, though I was so hurt and angry at her for not letting me know where she was and that she was all right. Oh yes, I’d’ve tanned her backside for her and no mistake if I could have got me hands on her.’
With the intervening years having lessened the anger, Eveleen now felt able to say with a saucy smile, ‘Perhaps that’s why she didn’t keep in touch.’
Bridget laughed too and Eveleen thought, She is like me. Just like me. We even have the same sense of humour. Though they’d only known each other a few days, already a strong bond was growing between Eveleen and her grandmother.
Now Eveleen said soberly, ‘But I have to agree with you, she should at least have let you know she was all right. It was cruel not to. Mind you, from the bits she has said, and even yet I can’t quite piece it all together, I think the truth is that for some time after she ran away from here, she was anything but all right.’
Bridget sat up straight. ‘Tell me.’
Eveleen spoke slowly, trying to tie all the threads of her mother’s story together. ‘I think she found work on the land and I suppose, being with child, it was very hard for her. She – she said her child was born in a field while she was working. In the cold and in a ditch, she said, and that’s how it died.’
Bridget closed her eyes and sank back against the chair. Concerned that she had said too much, Eveleen leant forward and took her hand.
‘Gran, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you.’
‘Of course you should, child. I need to know. Even after all this time, I still need to be able to understand why.’
There was silence in the small room until Bridget asked, ‘So when and how did she meet your father?’
‘I think he was living alone at the time. His parents had died and he took her in. She was very ill and he looked after her, I think, but when she got better the wife of the man he worked for’ – for a moment her own memories of the Dunsmore family threatened to overwhelm her, but she went on bravely – ‘didn’t approve of them living in the same house and not being married. She went to work at the big house for a while until’ – an impish note came into her tone – ‘Dad “took her on” and married her.’
Her grandmother did not respond to her humour. Instead she looked straight into Eveleen’s eyes and said, ‘Your father must have been an extraordinary man to do that.’
‘He was,’ Eveleen said simply. ‘He was kind and gentle and – and good.’ She met her grandmother’s gaze steadily and said, ‘He was what I would call a true Christian.’
Now Bridget did smile and said softly, ‘Aye, I know what you mean, lass.’
After another pause, Bridget asked gently, ‘If it doesn’t hurt too much to talk about it, tell me about your life, about your father and what happened to him.’
So, sitting in the tranquillity of that first Sunday afternoon in Flawford, in the tiny parlour of a stockin-ger’s cottage, Eveleen told her grandmother about her family’s life in the farmhouse on the Dunsmores’ estate.
‘He was gathman—’
‘A what?’
‘He was responsible for all the livestock, even the herd of milkers and the beasts kept for beef. Both Jimmy and I worked on the farm, me in the dairy mostly, but I’d have to help out wherever there was work to do. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I’d have to help Dad deliver a calf. Oh I loved that,’ Eveleen’s eyes shone as she relived her former life. ‘Snug and warm in the cowhouse, even on the darkest, coldest night with the wind whistling through the rafters. Just me and Dad helping a new life into the world. And then at harvest-time, all the workers on the estate had to help get the crops in. That was fun too when our dinners would be brought out to the fields and we’d sit in the shade under the trees . . .’
On and on she talked but not once did she mention Stephen Dunsmore. Her memories of him were locked firmly away. The happy times when she had truly believed he loved her were buried deep, so deep that they could not surface above the final hurt and insult he had inflicted upon her.
‘You make it sound an idyllic life,’ Bridget said.
Eveleen shrugged. ‘It was hard work for all of us and we weren’t well off. But we were never hungry or without boots on our feet.’ Softly, she added, ‘Mam misses it dreadfully. All she wants is to go back and I’ve promised her that, one day, I’ll take her home. One day we’ll go back to Lincolnshire where she was happy.’
‘Aye, aye, I can understand that too,’ Bridget said, a note of sadness in her tone. ‘But you must realize, Eveleen, she will never be able to recapture her former happiness.’
‘Why?’ Eveleen asked defensively. ‘Do you think I can’t, or won’t, keep my promise to her?’
Bridget leaned forward and said seriously, ‘I think you’ll do everything you possibly can to keep your promise, even to the extent o
f sacrificing your own happiness. What I mean is that she can never know that same happiness, because he won’t be there. Even you can’t bring back the dead, lass, and her Walter won’t be there, now will he?’
‘No,’ Eveleen whispered. ‘But I have to try, Gran. I have to try. It’s the only thing that will keep her going.’
Before she left her grandmother’s cottage, Bridget asked, ‘Has your mother taught you how to make bobbin lace then?’
Eveleen shook her head.
‘Right then,’ the old woman said firmly. ‘Every Sunday afternoon after Chapel, you come here to see me and I’ll teach you. I may not be able to see well enough to do it myself any more, but I can still teach you. I’ve already taught Rebecca and I’d like to think that both my granddaughters were carrying on the family tradition.’ She wagged her forefinger playfully at Eveleen. ‘But not a word to your uncle, mind. He’s very strict about no work being done on the Sabbath and we wouldn’t want to upset him, now would we?’
Although a smile twitched at the corner of her mouth, Eveleen managed to say seriously, ‘Oh no, Gran, we wouldn’t.’
Twenty-One
It was on a Sunday afternoon, a few weeks after their arrival in Flawford, that Eveleen was obliged to change her opinion of her uncle just a little. The impromptu cricket match had already shown her, very briefly, another side to the stern, dour man who forced his own rigid principles and beliefs on all his family and even on all those who worked with him.
She arrived outside her grandmother’s cottage as usual and was about to enter, had even lifted her hand to push open the door that was already ajar, when she heard voices from inside. The shrill voice of her grandmother and her uncle’s deep rumbling tones. She was about to move away again to return later but then the sound of her own name being spoken caught her attention and held her there. She knew it was wrong, knew she should have gone away, but the temptation to eavesdrop was too strong.
‘I’m not one given to handing out praise,’ Harry was saying.
‘Don’t we know it.’
He went on, ignoring Bridget’s sarcasm: ‘Eveleen has mastered the Griswold very well. Between the three of them, they’ve more than doubled what Rebecca could manage on her own. And she’s a neat worker with her needle at seaming.’
‘Earning their keep, are they?’
‘Ah well now, I wouldn’t go as far as that,’ Harry said cautiously. ‘But Eveleen’s a worker, I’ll say that for her. She carries on long after the others of an evening. I’ve watched her. She examines her own work with a critical eye and tries to improve all the time.’
Bridget gave her cackling laugh. ‘Well, if she’s a worker, then she might even earn your approval, Harry Singleton. Eventually.’ Harry gave a grunt and Bridget went on. ‘What about the lad? How’s he shaping up?’
Now Harry had not even the faintest praise for his nephew. ‘He’s less than useless. He’ll find any excuse to leave his frame, and when he is sitting at it his work is not fit to sell.’
‘Oh dear,’ Bridget said, but Eveleen could still hear the sarcastic amusement in her grandmother’s tone. Then, more seriously, Bridget urged, ‘He’s not the stuff the girl’s made of, I grant you. They might be alike in looks, but that’s where the likeness ends. They’re totally different in character. But those youngsters’ve been through a lot just recently. Give the lad a bit of time, Harry.’
He gave another grunt of disapproval. ‘I’ll give him a bit longer. He’s operating an old frame that’s not needed for anything else at the moment, but he’s heading for trouble, you mark my words. Eveleen tries her best to keep him in line, but she’s not going to manage it for much longer.’
‘It’s a great pity,’ Bridget mused, ‘that Eveleen wasn’t born the boy. She’s strong and determined to do the best for her mother and brother. But whether she’ll get any thanks for it is another matter. Strikes me . . .’ The old lady was musing now and her voice dropped a little so that Eveleen could scarcely hear. ‘Mary’s soft with the lad, but too hard on the girl. Now, I wonder why?’
After a moment’s pause, while Eveleen stood on her toes ready to flee at the sound of her uncle preparing to leave, she heard him speak again. ‘You’re right, Mother. Eveleen’s twice the character of the lad. She’d’ve made a fine framework knitter.’
‘And,’ Bridget put in slyly, ‘you’d’ve had someone to carry on the family business then, wouldn’t you?’
‘Maybe. Aye, maybe so.’ There was the scrape of a wooden chair on the brick floor and Eveleen moved away but not before she had heard her uncle’s final words. ‘And don’t think I don’t know about your Sunday afternoons teaching the lass your bobbin lace. But this time I’ll turn a blind eye. At least it’s keeping the Devil from finding work for her idle hands. She’s better here with you than consorting with the village lads on a Sunday afternoon like her brother.’
Bridget’s shrill laugh followed Eveleen as she scurried away down the path. ‘Oho, you can turn a blind eye, Harry Singleton, when it suits you. When you can see a few more shillings being earned . . .’
As Eveleen hurried away towards the coal store on the pretext of collecting coal for her grandmother’s fire, she could not help feeling the warm glow of her uncle’s approval, even though she knew he would never say it to her face.
Perhaps, after all, things weren’t going to be so bad for them here. If only, she thought, I can make Jimmy toe the line.
‘Ugh, what’s this? It’s like eating a jellyfish.’
Jimmy prodded the thick white fleshy substance on his plate, while Eveleen stifled her laughter and kept her own eyes downcast. She knew what Jimmy meant. On their only trip to the seaside years earlier – a Sunday school outing from Bernby to the east coast – they had found a jellyfish on the beach and prodded it with a stick. Digging her fork into whatever it was on her plate, Eveleen thought, felt much the same.
‘It’s tripe and onions,’ Rebecca said in a small voice. ‘If you don’t like it, Jimmy, I can get you something else.’
‘You’ll do no such thing, Rebecca. Sit down and eat your tea,’ Harry boomed. ‘Jimmy will eat what’s given him or he’ll go without.’
Jimmy pushed his plate away and muttered, ‘Then I’ll go without.’
‘They’re not used to it, Harry,’ Mary put in tentatively, then turning to Jimmy, pleaded, ‘Please, love, just try a little more.’
But Jimmy was already standing up. ‘Sorry. I’m off out.’ He glanced round the table and grinned. ‘I’ll go and see Jane.’ Jane lived near the village green with her parents. Her father and brother were both framework knitters in Harry’s workshops.
Jimmy pushed his chair under the table and moved to the door. Taking down his scarf from the peg behind the door he turned back and, as a parting shot, he added, ‘Her mam makes a lovely stew.’
Eveleen risked a glance at her uncle’s face. It was purple with rage. Instead of shouting after Jimmy, he seemed bereft of speech. Mary was nervous, her knife and fork trembling in her grasp. But it was the expression on Rebecca’s face that shocked Eveleen the most.
Her dark eyes were huge in her pale face and she was staring at the closed door through which Jimmy had just left. She looked hurt and, yes, Eveleen thought, rejected.
Jimmy had done far more than insult the meal she had prepared. He had wounded the girl herself.
The rest of the meal continued in a stony silence, but Rebecca ate nothing.
The tension between uncle and nephew grew worse over the days that followed.
‘You’ll serve that up to him, Rebecca, each and every meal until he does eat it,’ Harry boomed after Jimmy had left, his bushy eyebrows almost meeting above the bridge of his nose as he frowned. ‘Do you hear me?’
Rebecca, pale and tearful, said, ‘Yes, Father.’
Eveleen said nothing, but she knew her brother. There was going to be trouble.
The horrified look on Jimmy’s face when the tripe and onions were placed before him the fol
lowing morning at breakfast would have made Eveleen laugh if the atmosphere in the room had not been so fraught. Mary glanced from Jimmy to Harry and back again. With trembling fingers, she touched Jimmy’s hand.
‘Please eat it, love. You’ll get used to the taste.’
Jimmy stood up, pushing back his chair in such a swift movement that it toppled backwards and crashed to the floor. ‘I won’t. It’s horrible. I’d sooner starve.’
‘Then as far as I’m concerned,’ Harry boomed, ‘you can.’
The two men glared at each other, while the women looked on helplessly.
Jimmy turned and left the house, slamming the door behind him. Mary began to wail. ‘Eveleen, let’s go home.’
Eveleen put down her spoon and got up from the table. She left the house, but more quietly than her brother, and went in search of him.
He was leaning moodily against the pump and, as she neared him, he repeated his mother’s plea, ‘Let’s get out of here, Evie. Let’s go back home.’
Eveleen stood with her hands on her hips. ‘Look, Jimmy,’ she said firmly. ‘It’s high time you started acting like a man instead of a boy. Start taking a bit of responsibility, for Heaven’s sake. You’re the man of the family. Why do you leave it all to me?’
‘Because you’re so much better at it than me, Evie.’
‘You mean I’m the bossy one.’
‘No, no, I don’t mean that. I’m being serious. You’re the only one who can look after Mam. I can’t.’
‘But you’re her blue-eyed boy. You can’t do any wrong in her eyes. We both know what’s going to happen now, don’t we? With this tripe and onion nonsense.’
He glanced at her questioningly.
‘You’re going to stick it out and so’s Uncle Harry. Neither of you is going to give way. That meal is going to be served up to you until there’s green mould growing on it. And then what’s going to happen?’
Jimmy grinned. ‘I’ll die of food poisoning and all the girls will weep at my funeral.’
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