She nodded, watching while George climbed up to sit with his mother and father. By what stroke of luck was it Ellen going to market rather than Annie? Not that it mattered. She would just be grateful that, somehow, her prayers of the last few days had been answered.
‘Yes. George has finished the henhouse so we’re going to buy hens.’
‘And how are you settling at Keeper’s Cottage?’
She still needed to be careful with what she said, though. Ellen may appear to have taken a liking to her but her first loyalty would surely still be to Ma Strong.
‘Oh, fine, thanks.’
‘I do envy you, you know, in a place of your own.’
She frowned, and then as the cart lurched forward, reached out to steady herself.
‘Truly? But the farmhouse is lovely, an’ you got all the family there.’
‘Aye, I won’t disagree with you that it’s a lovely house,’ Ellen responded with a quick glance to the backs of her in-laws, ‘but the family, well, that’s a different story; they’re a real… funny lot. And although it might seem to you that there’s plenty of space, truth of the matter is that you’re never alone; not even for a single minute. And there’s always someone ready to tell you what to do, too and you don’t get no say in what it is or when you do it, either.’ She, too, glanced to her in-laws. Surely Ellen was courting trouble to talk like this? ‘If you stay on the right side of Ma Strong, though,’ she was continuing, her voice little more than a whisper now, ‘then for the most part, she’s fair-handed. And Annie can be friendly enough if the mood takes her but Tabitha, well, she’s a real…’ she glanced again at the shadowy profile of her mother-in-law, ‘…nuisance. Always skulking off, that one. And even though everyone knows how she is, she still gets away with it. Don’t get me wrong Mary, I know it’s not my place to mind these things but when she doesn’t do her share of the work, it just means that someone else has to.’
‘Yes, I see that.’
‘And that’s why I envy you, even if envy is such an ugly sin. My point, though, is that at least at Keeper’s Cottage, the two of you are on your own—’
‘Aye, that’s true but—’
‘—with only yourselves to look out for.’
She pressed her lips together. The prospect of life at Keeper’s Cottage clearly seemed more attractive to Ellen than it did to herself. In fact, in her own mind, it had already taken on a rather bleak air. And while she wouldn’t admit that to anyone else, perhaps she could share those feelings with Ellen. It might help her to work out whether they were normal or not. Or at the very least, understandable.
‘A place of our own is… well, it’s nice, of course it is but…’ The problem, she realised then, was that it would be all too easy to appear ungrateful. ‘…and no doubt you’ll think me silly but you see, before I came here, I didn’t know that George wasn’t going to be working at the farm any more. I only found out a few days back that he’s going to work for the estate. And when he does, well, being up at the cottage means that as often as not, I shan’t see another soul all day long.’
When Ellen’s woollen mitten clasped the bare skin of her hand, it felt cold and rough.
‘You had no reason to know otherwise, I suppose. But oh, Mary, I’d still rather be in my own home, even if it did mean being alone all day. ’Tis surely preferable to the constant frettin’ an’ bossin’ an’ arguin’ that goes on all day at Summerleas. George was always all right and of course, Will, too but you should hear how Tom and Pa Strong do set about each other. And anyway, I fancy you won’t be on your own for long.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Once you start with the babies.’
‘Oh.’
‘Won’t have a minute of loneliness then.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘But then you’ll be used to all that, what with you being the eldest daughter.’
Half turning from Ellen’s gaze, she sighed. A half-dozen siblings hardly felt like adequate preparation for having a child of her own. Or for being left on her own with it all day long, either.
‘You ain’t got any yet, then?’ The speed with which Ellen ducked her head took her by surprise. And then it didn’t: five years wed and no children? That there was some sort of problem ought surely to have been obvious to her. ‘Forgive me, I didn’t mean to pry.’
‘No, it’s not an unreasonable question. See, Mary, I’ve fallen several times, three, in fact. But God called them all back.’ And now what was she supposed to say? Nothing that came to mind felt in the least helpful or sincere. ‘But it’s more than a year now since I lost the last one and well, while it’s a terrible thing to lose a baby, Mary, to my mind, it’s just as bad not to fall in the first place. I pray feverish hard every day, too; we both do. But despite our prayers, every month it’s the same. I try to draw comfort from the words of the Bible but just lately, I’ve oftentimes come to thinking that maybe God’s never going to let us have a child. And I’m not sure I’m strong enough to bear that, even if it is His path for me.’
‘Oh, Ellen…’
‘You know, Mary, when me an’ Will first wed, I dreamed of a house filled with children; you know, a big family like I grew up in but now, well, now I’d settle for just one child. Just one. After all, ʼtis what we’re here for, ain’t it, to serve God an’ to have children?’
Ellen’s face – a pale and ghostly oval peering out from her shawl – seemed to have lost all of its life. How unfair things had a habit of being. How deeply unfair to want a child and not be able to have one when, by all accounts, a good many women felt themselves to be in precisely the opposite predicament.
‘Well, perhaps it’ll still happen one day.’ It was a sentiment that she offered uncertainly, though; Ellen’s long, tremulous sigh by way of response seeming to suggest that she didn’t agree.
‘I do hope for it, Mary, although I’m not rightly sure I know what to think any more. See, what I can’t fathom, is how with one hand God can give a husband and wife such an act of love for creating new life but then, with the other, see fit to let all of that tenderness… go to waste; to not produce a child. It just don’t seem right, do it?’
Although she hadn’t intended to, she shook her head. What act of love? What tenderness? What, precisely, was Ellen talking about? She knew of course that eventually, George’s efforts would give her a child – always assuming that God was willing – but surely that wasn’t love? Surely, love meant two people sharing deep feelings or a bond of some sort. George hadn’t said that he loved her and in fairness, she didn’t think that she loved him, although having no scale by which to measure such things, it was hard to say. But she did feel certain that if by some chance she did love him, then she would somehow know it. She was beginning to quite like him and as a husband he did seem, much to her relief, to be a considerate one. But tender? Already she had become used to his needs and rather indifferent to his efforts to satisfy them but the whole thing was still largely just a fair bit of discomfort and a lot of grunting; definitely not something she could describe as an act of love. And, when he was on top of her in the dark, her original notion that she was missing the point still insisted upon creeping back. No, Ellen, it seemed, was talking about something altogether different.
Raising her head, she stared out over fields that were now slowly beginning to emerge from obscurity into the first fingers of daylight. Was it possible that there was something that she still didn’t know? And if so, how was she ever going to find out? Clearly, this wasn’t the time to ask Ellen and anyway, she wasn’t even sure that she knew what to ask.
Biting her bottom lip, she saw Ellen looking back at her. She seemed to be expecting an answer.
‘I still don’t think you should give up hope.’ How deeply unhelpful that sounded. But then given the misfortune of the matter, it was hard to know what would sound any better.
‘No. I know. You’re right of course. It’s not too late yet. But enough of my problems: yo
u don’t want talk of my misery when you’re on your honeymoon!’
‘Hm.’
‘Do you know, I can still remember as plain as plain those first few weeks of being wed; such a perfect time.’
At the brightening of Ellen’s face, she smiled. Perhaps after all, now might just be a good time to share some of her concerns.
‘Ellen, when you first met Will, did you… you know, did you fall in love with him straight away?’
‘Oh, most definitely I did, yes.’ There it was: that liveliness back in her eyes again, that sparkle. ‘It’s summat I shan’t ever forget. You see, me an’ Annie slipped out of home one night to go to Wembridge Fair. Needless to say, it was her idea, not mine. Anyway, that’s where we met them; the three lads, that is. Course, as you might well imagine, it was Annie who spotted them first and wanted to get a closer look. Me, I was mortified. I didn’t want anything to do with that sort of thing.’ She watched Ellen pull the blanket up to her chin, seemingly in a bid to quell laughter, her subsequent glance to the front of the cart suggesting that she didn’t want to be drawn into explaining what it was they were talking about. ‘Then Tom caught us looking at them and before we knew it, they were coming over to talk to us. And as soon as I saw Will proper, well, all I felt was giddiness and the sense that I’d forgotten how to breathe; such a powerful feeling that I’ll never forget it as long as I live! But I was so naïve that I didn’t know it for what it was. I thought I’d taken ill! All I could do was blush and stare at my feet, so it never occurred to me, even for one minute that Will would be interested in courting me.’
‘But he obviously was.’
‘He was, yes! And next thing we knew, him and Tom started walking all the way over to Wych Green just to see us. And when they walked over on the last Sunday of Advent, we all went up the church and I remember how me and Will sat in the porch talking and watching a washy sort of a sunset. And that’s when, out of the blue, he asked me to marry him. And even though I scarce knew him, I said yes, right away.’
‘But weren’t you ever… you know, nervous?’
‘Nervous? No, I don’t remember bein’ nervous. I just remember being excited and impatient to be wed and well, completely in love, I suppose.’
Looking away from Ellen’s smile, she directed her eyes out beyond the dark hedgerows and into the fields, still characterless in the flat, early light.
‘And once you were wed, was it, you know, everything you thought it’d be?’ In truth it was a half-baked question to start with. Worse still was the fact that Ellen’s answer was never really in any doubt.
‘More even, if that don’t sound daft because I’d never before imagined the pleasure to be had from tending to a good man. See, to my thinking, Mary, love between a man and a woman is God’s greatest creation and all I can say is that it made a better person of me.’
It was hard, she thought when Ellen stopped talking, to imagine this woman as anything other than a good person anyway, married or no.
‘So…’ But her thoughts about her own situation were far less straightforward. ‘You never had any… doubts?’
Feeling Ellen’s hand on her arm, she glanced up to see what looked like understanding on her face.
‘George is a good man, Mary; a decent man. You’ve no need to fear him. And I’m sure that if you do as he asks and give yourself freely, then your union will be truly blessed.’
She cast her eyes down to the blanket covering their laps. It would be no use talking to Ellen, then, about all of the other things bothering her because clearly she had never experienced such anxieties. Perhaps, though, the basis of her advice about doing as George asked was sensible enough.
With the cart continuing its swaying progress over the deeply rutted track, she pulled the blanket back up to her chin and let out a long and shivery sigh. Above them, the heavens were a cloudless indigo, and looking across, she could just pick out the morning star clinging low to the easterly horizon. But by the time they reached the outskirts of the town, its twinkling had been consumed by the daylight and when, shortly afterwards, they finally arrived in the square, she vowed to try and set aside her preoccupations. After all, what would be would be.
*
Leaving Hannah and Ellen to set up their stall, George and Mary headed towards the livestock enclosures where, with the ripe humours of a score of farmyards hanging thick in the air, reluctant animals were being herded into the wattle pens; close scrutiny being paid by farmers in the mood to buy and the pedigree and quality of stock being talked up by those who had come to sell.
‘When I was a little ʼun, Ma used to bring me into town on market day to sell our eggs to Dunne’s the Baker,’ Mary said, skipping a couple of steps to keep pace with George’s stride.
‘Aye?’
‘But by the time I came old enough to bring them in on my own, I remember thinking how the market seemed smaller than it did before.’
‘Most likely because it was,’ she heard George saying as he stopped abruptly in front of her to avoid trampling a piglet making a run for freedom in a whir of tiny pink legs. She looked up at him. ‘When I was a lad, the cattle pens stretched all the way down Broad Street, well beyond Abbey Place.’
‘So it was bigger then.’ Following his weaving path through the people milling around the Butter Cross, she didn’t think he had heard.
‘Aye most likely it was. But these past few years have been lean ones, bringing the end for many a good trader. If I put my mind to it, I could most likely count at least a dozen faces that ain’t here any more.’
A memory of the two labourers at the wedding randy and their rambling discussion about wages and unrest came back to her but she set it aside, all of her concentration being required to keep George within her sights in the narrow and crowded walkways. Darting into any space big enough, she shadowed his progress between the wattle pens, suddenly glimpsing the distinctive cap of a fowl dealer from whom her mother had previously bought birds.
‘That’s Jim Cobb over there,’ she called ahead to him. ‘Ma always thought his birds to be particular good.’
‘Aye. I know Jim Cobb. Let’s go and see what he’s got then.’
Jim Cobb was a man with a face ridged like a ripe acorn, and it looked exactly the same to her now as it had ten years ago. And having made their way towards him, she bent down to look over his hens; picking one at random, lifting it from the basket and running her fingers over the scales on its legs and feet. Bright, beady eyes looked back at her, and satisfied that it seemed perky and a good weight, she nodded.
‘How much do he want for them?’
Above her head, she heard George make a casual enquiry, the reply to which brought his hand down to her arm to help her up and lead her away.
‘They may be good hens but not at that price. We’d best look at some others.’
They walked on to another trader – a dumpy man no taller than she was with a desiccated face and brown lips pursed about the stem of an empty pipe – but even at first glance she thought his birds inferior. ‘No,’ she whispered aside to George, ‘not them. Their legs are bright yellow, a sure sign they ain’t laying yet. And they all look in need of a good feed.’ Without meeting the stallholder’s eyes, they moved on to a third dealer but when George asked the price, she shrugged her shoulders. ‘Well, his price might be better but look; not all their combs are red so they ain’t all laying. ’Tis chancey.’
‘Aye, the first birds were better,’ George agreed. ‘But he’ll need to be in the mood for a keen deal. Go and fetch the baskets from Ma, then and meet me back there.’
She did as he said, the feeling of kinship once again back in her stomach. She had proved that she knew what she was about and it felt good.
When she returned with the three cumbersome baskets, George was concluding business with Jim Cobb, who, it transpired, had been anxious to get the first sale of the day under his belt.
‘Well, here’s hoping you’re not my only buyer today,’ she hear
d him comment as she bent down amongst the clucking and squawking to choose her dozen hens.
‘That bad, is it?’ George was asking above her head.
‘Parlous. Without a word of a lie, ’tis the hardest I’ve known it. Hens only; that’s all I rear these days. Scant call for neither ducks nor geese. See, the only folk still dining on goose are the idle ones in the big houses, and with them mostly having the pick of their own flocks, they’ve little call for the likes of me.’
‘Aye, must be hard these days,’ she heard George answer him.
‘Your young wife’s got a good eye for fowl, though,’ the dealer pronounced as payment was handed over and they shook hands.
‘Aye, seems she has,’ she was heartened to hear her husband reply.
*
A few days later, the arrival of Michaelmas signalled the time for George to take up his employment at High Beeches Place.
‘’Tis real good fortune,’ he announced, bending to lace his boots. It wasn’t the first time in the last few days that he had said as much. ‘A chance to work at the estate ain’t commonplace, especially for a family with no connection, so even though it’s only labouring, I’ll admit to being real glad of it.’
‘Shame you can’t stay on at the farm, though,’ she replied this time.
‘Aye, well, this moment’s been a fair time coming. In Grandpa’s day, Summerleas provided for everyone; no family member ever needed to look outside for work. But from the minute I was old enough to understand it, Pa made plain that there wouldn’t be a place there for neither me nor Robert and that one day, the two of us would have to make our own ways. And since things ain’t got no easier… and now that I got this rent to pay, well, I need a proper wage. In truth, I’m not greatly concerned. Work’s work wherever you do it and I fancy I won’t miss the strife down there, day-in, day-out.’
A Country Marriage Page 7