by Leah Fleming
Hester stepped into the tiny cottage parlour. It smelled of beeswax polish and fresh lavender. There were crocheted lace valances at the window and a thick velour curtain, the colour of dried blood, which the woman quickly drew across. A small round table stood in front of the fire but the room was cool; there was almost a chill in the air Hester sensed she was in the presence of a decent soul.
The first thing she noticed were her ice-blue eyes with the dark circles around the blue, piercing eyes fringed with black lashes: Irish eyes that seemed to look into her very soul. It was hard to hold her gaze.
‘Let me say from the start, I am not a fortune-teller wanting silver. The gift of knowledge that I have comes from on high. I was born with a seeing eye and it must be used only for God’s glory. I am at the mercy of the will of our great Creator. What I reveal comes from His realms of glory. It is to Him that you must make account. Let me also say what’s spoken here is between ourselves and not to be talked about to others. How may I help you?’
All Hester’s doubts leached away, replaced with a surge of relief. Here was a safe place.
‘I have a son who is no longer with us. I have to know he is safe,’ Hester said.
‘You have two sons, each the half of the other. Don’t worry, your twins are well known in the district but one is safe, the other has passed over.’
‘That is what I just said.’ This was not impressive.
Martha Holbeck closed her eyes, took a deep breath and opened them again, piercing Hester with a stare that felt like an arrow’s dart. ‘There is a cloud of mist round your head, a cloud of anger and sad disappointments all mixed up together. I’m not sure…’
Martha closed her eyes again and breathed in deeply, muttering as if in prayer.
‘The son you have lost is not the one who stands in heavenly light. He is safe now. What I see is the one in life in danger. There is sea and a ship faraway—’
Hester cut her off. ‘It’s not him I’m worried about. It’s my son who died in battle. Did he suffer?’
‘I have no message for you on that score but I sense he is content to be now, where he is. It’s the other half of him who is far from you. There was anger and a falling out?’
Was she fishing for information? ‘Thank you, if that is all. What do I owe you?’ Hester made to gather herself to leave the room.
‘There’s no charge for the gift, but donations are welcome. I am getting a strong feeling of distance…an ocean of distance between the living and the dead. You must not worry. What was done in war and love will one day be put right in peacetime; ties broken will be bound together one day. Forgiveness, hope and justice…Why am I getting those words? Justice for someone wronged. You must help put justice back where it belongs and with it will come forgiveness.’
‘You are talking in riddles, woman,’ Hester protested.
‘But this is what you must hear. I can only speak what has been given to me. These are not my words.’
Hester wanted to run from the room. These were not the words of consolation she was expecting but challenging accusations. Had Martha Holbeck somehow guessed what had happened between them all?
‘Don’t worry. It’s always hard the first time,’ Martha said gently. ‘Don’t expect to understand everything. But write this down before you go, as a reminder, and one day perhaps it will all make sense. You have an important role to play in something that will be revealed in the fullness of time. That’s my humble understanding of the matter. The rest is veiled from my eyes.’
‘I’m not sure you have helped me very much, Mrs Holbeck,’ Hester said stiffly.
‘I’m sorry about that, but we are all here to help each other, Lady Hester, high or low. It is in the helping that your peace will be found.’
‘I will see myself out. I bid you good night. I won’t be returning,’ Hester said as she stumbled out of the front door into the summer evening. The stars were already high in the ink-blue sky.
What was there of comfort in the words she’d dutifully written down? Guy was out there…at sea, in danger? What did that mean, all that stuff about justice? She felt cheated. Martha’s words had brought only confusion and despair.
Essie walked back from the town in the darkness. The silence around her was soothing to her aching heart. To have seen that woman sitting in Martha’s kitchen…She could scarce believe it, but then, like so many others Lady Hester had lost her son. It was only to be expected she wanted contact with him now her other son had left the district too, just as Selma had been exiled to Bradford.
How she missed her daughter’s cheery presence, but she must honour Frank’s request that Selma be spared the disgrace of his execution. She would never forget the hurt look in her daughter’s eyes as she was bundled on the down train out of harm’s way. There was no choice since those horrible anonymous letters arrived, accusing them of harbouring a coward and a deserter, the shunnings in the street every day as if they were now strangers to be avoided. Asa’s work was drying up; just a few outlying farmers who came in, as usual, but once they were put in the picture at the Hart’s Head, they too soon stopped their custom.
The Lord had been merciful and there were other more comforting letters from Frank’s comrades; one in particular that she kept in her Bible. It told a very different story about how Frank died.
Her son was no coward. He had stood his ground, lost his temper and paid heavily for it. But the hardest part was knowing that Captain Cantrell had not given a testimonial on his behalf. She didn’t understand, but the soldiers were in no position to say anything. They were lucky to know anything at all. The official notification was so brief. There would be no medals or further pay. Frank no longer existed and this public disgrace couldn’t be hidden for long once the rumour mill got to work. She was glad Selma would be shielded from it. Ruth had been sworn to secrecy.
As she trudged uphill, under the night sky, she paused to look at its dark beauty. A dog fox barked, sheep were bleating out on the moor.
Martha had sensed her anguish, pouring her a glass of something gingery and soothing to ease her churning stomach.
‘Where is my lad?’ she had whispered.
‘He’s close by, Essie, very close. You’ll feel his spirit with you always. He loved you very much. His last thoughts were of you.’
‘But is he at peace?’
‘He will be when things are made right.’
‘What things?’
‘When what is right and just comes to pass. Hold these words to your heart. One day all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.’
‘You’re not making sense to me,’ Essie had sobbed.
‘Be patient. Frank is close by. He will comfort you.’
As she ironed these words over and over her mind, trying to flatten them into some shape for future comfort, she felt such sadness. ‘All my sons gone and my daughter exiled…how do we live with this?’ she had cried out.
‘One day at a time, Essie. Put one foot in front of the other. You will survive this just one day at a time,’ Martha had comforted her.
As she took the steep path towards West Sharland now, she sensed she wasn’t alone. For a second she felt fear and she turned round. ‘I know you’re there!’ she shouted. ‘Stop mucking about!’
There was nobody there, but in the gloom she thought she saw a figure walking ahead. A solitary shape, trudging in front of her, shoulders stooped.
‘No moon tonight, but such stars,’ she called out.
The figure didn’t stop. It kept on walking, lost in its own thoughts.
Just somebody else who thought a Bartley were a bad lot she thought. When she came to the first crossroads in the village, she’d soon see who it was ignoring her. The figure marched ahead and she followed behind, out of puff, trying to keep up with him. Then she stopped for breath, looking up, blinking, and the figure had vanished into thin air. There was no gate or lane end, there was no one there. At least he hadn’t turned round and cursed her. She was
getting used to that when drunks came out of the pub to pee up the back lane outside their entrance, making it reek.
How were they going to manage if their trade entirely dried up? Sell up, get jobs in a factory? Perhaps she could go back into service? In the darkness the future looked so bleak and uncertain, but she must try to keep Martha’s sayings in her heart.
All shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. How could that be? Their lives were broken, the family lost.
Selma peered out of her bedroom window over a dusty privet hedge and a line of washing down below. Above her, slate roofs and blackened chimneys, dark stone houses glowered, but in the distance, a mystic outline of hills cheered her soul. Would she ever get used to the blackened stone and the clutter of houses, the rattle of the trams up and down the Main Road? She felt she was drowning in a torrent of misery, utterly wretched at being forced into this strange city.
It wasn’t as if Sam and Ruth weren’t kindness itself. Her bedroom was small but cosy, with a rag rug to warm her toes, a fireplace, a little bookshelf and chest of drawers, even a tiny writing bureau to write from, but who was there to write to now?
Marigold had made it plain that her absence would not be missed: ‘I’m not surprised you’re going away. I wouldn’t be in a hurry to get back.’
‘But why? What have I done?’ Selma had asked, determined to get some answers.
‘It’s not my place to tell you what I’m sure you already know. We don’t want traitors in this village.’
‘Traitor? Who’s a traitor,’ she had asked but Marigold had just sniffed and walked away.
Selma had run home to ask her mother. ‘Why are we traitors?’
‘Take no notice, love. No one’s a traitor. The villagers make the usual two and two into five. Bartleys have every reason to hold their heads up. We stand for what is right.’
Mother hadn’t made sense, but something had made her parents want her out of the way. It was the first thing she’d asked Aunty Ruth after she’d arrived: ‘Why am I here?’
‘Because it’s time you sampled a bit of city life after all that hard work. We want to make a lady of you, open your eyes, widen your horizons.’ Ruth had bustled round her, not pausing for breath. ‘First, though, I’m going to take you into town to buy some dresses for church, and show you how to catch a tram. Show you all our grand buildings. Then we’ll go to the market in Kirkgate and Swan Arcade, and for walks in Lister Park to hear the brass bands. You will love it all.’
They were living in one of the outlying suburbs. Not quite as grand as Heaton Park, where the rich wool merchants had their mansions, those great stone palaces with turrets and iron gates, but in a neat avenue of semidetached villas with snug rooms and gas mantles that flickered a warm light. They had a large marble fireplace that Alice, the maid, who slept in the attic bedroom, kept banked up night and day.
Ruth was one for tidiness and housework, everything having its place, or covered from the coal dust with crocheted doilies and antimacassars. She was so proud of all her ornaments in the china cabinet: shepherdesses and pretty cups and saucers. Her wedding china was for display only. The windows of the parlour were draped with lace and then surrounded with velvet curtains the colour of treacle, fringed with gold braid.
They were attenders at the Wesleyan Chapel, a barn of a bricked church with a gallery above and the mighty organ in the middle. It was a much freer congregation than Selma was used to, who wore bright hats and cheerful smiles despite so many of them being in mourning. There was a tennis court within the grounds, a room that doubled up for concert parties, Sunday school and public meetings. It was all very different from Sharland chapel.
Some Sundays they entertained visiting preachers with vast high teas on the dining table, white tablecloths laden with home baking and pots of tea. Aunty Ruth worked them all hard when company was expected.
Uncle Sam spent his week in the wool sorter’s office, grading wool, and promised to give Selma a tour of the mill. He sang in the chapel choir in a deep baritone. They were trying so hard to make her welcome but she was missing the intimacy of the village, her tiny room, the horses in the field, even her old life in the forge. There was too much time to brood. She needed to make herself useful. But no one would want a female blacksmith’s apprentice round here. There were plenty of jobs in the woollen mills or shops, but the idea of them scared her. Aunty Ruth could see she was pining.
‘I know it’s hard, but it is for the best. Your mam wants to give you a fresh start.’
‘Why?’ Selma saw the flustered look on Ruth’s face.
‘That business with the officer chappie…It hurt your mother to see you pulled down, but we mustn’t speak ill of the dead, I suppose.’
‘What do you mean?’ Selma said, feeling her heart beat fast.
‘I thought you knew? It was in the Yorkshire Post. The captain was killed. Your mother wrote to tell me…I’m sorry, didn’t they tell you?’
Selma was stunned, shaking her head, trying not to cry. ‘Nobody tells me anything,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t believe it. Guy dead?’
‘I’m afraid so, after Passchendaele. There’s been a lot round here made widows. Oh, love, she knew you were that fond of him. Happen this was one way she could soften the blow. It’s a good job you’re down here. It’ll give you a chance to meet other young people like yourself and put it behind you.’
‘So they’ve sent me here to find a husband?’ Selma was shaking. ‘Why must I have to be kept in the dark since Frank died? There’s been something going on. Have we done something wrong?’
‘I’ll fetch you a cup of tea. It’s the shock. I’m sorry to break such bad news. I know you were very pally. I can’t believe your mother didn’t tell you anything.’
‘I thought we were more than pen pals, but then he turned up one day and it was like he was a different person, looking down his nose at us from a great height. It just wasn’t like him and now he’s dead and I never got to say goodbye. Jemima will miss him so.’ Selma was choking with emotion.
‘Who’s Jemima?’ asked Ruth
‘His favourite horse, the one the army didn’t take because we hid her. We used to ride out over the Ridge. She once threw me in the field and Guy raced after her to rein her in. Are you sure it’s him? He has a twin brother, the one that Frank and Newt saved from the Foss.’
‘Oh, yes, we know all about that. It seems everyone has forgotten about that fact. Poor Frank, it didn’t help him, did it?’
‘What do you mean?’ Selma asked.
Ruth blanched. ‘Take no notice of me wittering on…Sit down and have a drink and some shortcake with real butter in it.’
‘I’m not hungry, thank you.’ All she wanted to do was to be alone.
‘Please yourself, but don’t go mithering. Sounds as if that young man weren’t worth much.’
How could she say that? She didn’t know the real Guy; the kind and loving Guy. How could they brush his death off as if it were nothing? All her secret hopes had gone; those silly fantasies of coming here to better herself, to go back home and woo him back to her side, dashed with one terrible sentence.
She sobbed on her bed.
Oh, Guy, we had so little time and you had such a short life, no more cantering on Jemima, no late nights under the stars or falling in love. Your life’s been mown down like grass in the field.
She felt such a wave of sadness gripping at her throat. Life would never be the same again.
14
December 1917
Guy was woken in the bunkhouse by the fleabites itching on his legs. He was living on the south side of Halifax, Nova Scotia, where they had volunteered to escort the horses from out of town back to the ship. It had been a restless night, and he was hung over from a night in the bars along the harbour. The crew of SS Santa Philomena were celebrating crossing the Atlantic safely, zigzagging away from the threat of submarines and travelling in a convoy. Their escort had brought them safely into Bedford Basin, an i
deal anchorage to assemble the return convoy back to France.
They’d been given leave to lower themselves down and head for the darkness of Halifax. The place was packed with sailors and crews and cargo waiting to be loaded, and ladies willing to take every penny off them for their favours.
Guy lay back, thinking what a different world he had discovered when he’d signed on in Liverpool dock in the merchant navy. It had been a terrible year for the merchant ships. Back in October on the Scandinavian run, their escort was destroyed and the Mary Rose and Strongbow were sunk in the North Sea. It was whispered that London was now down to six weeks’ supply of food if the Atlantic convoys didn’t get through.
When he’d left Holt Park he’d taken a train straight to Liverpool Lime Street, determined to carry on in His Majesty’s service. He spun some tale of having been ill and robbed of all his baggage, his papers stolen, signing himself on as Charles Arthur West, and took the first job offered as a humble deckhand.
‘You don’t look like a deckhand to me.’ The officer had eyed him with suspicion.
‘I’ve been ill; the fresh air will do me good,’ Guy said, trying to flatten his vowels and disguise his pukka accent. The man looked at him with surprise. It took an officer to know one but he shrugged his shoulders. ‘Here are your papers then.’
It was simple. They were desperate. He was desperate, and now he trawled up and down the Atlantic crossing, earning his sea legs the hard way, no longer a first tripper but a hardened sea dog. When they found he was good with horses he was relieved of some of his chores and sent below to help calm the poor beasts being enlisted for France. It was a smelly stable, and the horses were nervous, kicking out, but, packed together, their own herd mentality seemed to bring a measure of calm. But sometimes he could have done with Frank Bartley’s gentling hand on the poor beasts.
The crew were a tough no-nonsense lot of scousers, men like the rank and file of his own soldiers, salt-of-the-earth types. They were curious why he was putting himself in danger, with only rough seas and fog as their friends.