The Forget-Me-Not Girl

by Sheila Newberry

  Isabella’s companion looked at her mistress and felt compelled to ask her, ‘Are you sure, Miss Isabella, you want to go through with this? If you want the driver to turn and take us back home, I won’t say anything, if I should be asked . . .’

  ‘Thank you, Milly,’ Isabella said. ‘I’m afraid my father will never forgive me for a runaway marriage, but if I don’t go through with it, I will forever regret it . . . Have you ever been in love?’

  Milly shook her head. ‘I never had no chance of that, Miss Isabella. Never!’ She dabbed at her eyes, then added, ‘I just want you to be happy, that’s all.’

  ‘I know you do. I wish you could come with me wherever I am going, but I will have to learn to do things for myself now. Here we are, and there’s my Irish Tom waiting by the church gate. Please ask the driver to leave my trunk in the porch. Well, goodbye, Milly, and good luck!’

  *

  Isabella had been born in Ashton-under-Lyne to a wealthy family, was educated privately at home, where she also had three younger sisters and a small brother, and enjoyed a lively social life when she stayed with her father, Abraham, in his city apartment. She had met her ‘Irish Tom’ when he was employed by her father as a skilled painter in a team of maintenance men who refurbished the fleet of cargo ships which delivered coals from Newcastle. Tom was born in 1812 in London, Middlesex when his parents had come over for the summer harvest, but he was brought up in County Clare on the family smallholding. He had a lively mind and a cheerful disposition, but his education was patchy, and as a youth he became an apprentice house painter. Like many young men, before and after the potato famine, he had ventured first to Liverpool to find work, and then to Newcastle. The two were an unlikely match, but fell in love immediately, despite her family’s disapproval at Irish Tom’s lowly status.

  Isabella had always known she was her father’s favourite child and that he had hoped she would eventually be involved with the family business. He had confided to her once that ‘Marriage is not the be-all and end-all for an intelligent young woman like you. This fellow you appear infatuated with is never going to rise above his humble beginnings. Don’t do something you will regret.’

  Despite this, and against her father’s wishes, Isabella and Irish Tom married in a quiet ceremony with only two witnesses and later made their way to a lodging house in a not very salubrious area for the night. Their landlady, a grim-faced woman, looked at them suspiciously and scrutinised the new wedding ring on Isabella’s finger. ‘This is a respectable house,’ she said curtly as she escorted them up some rickety stairs to an attic room. ‘I’ll bring you up some supper, that’s an extra sixpence, mind, and you can boil a kettle on the fire. The privy is out in the yard.’

  When she had gone, Isabella sat down on the bed and said through her tears, ‘I thought this was to be our honeymoon.’

  Tom sank down beside her to a twanging of broken springs. ‘The mattress is all lumpy,’ he said, ‘and there’s no window apart from the skylight, but we’re together at last, and things will get better – the first thing I must do tomorrow is find another job.’ He looked round at the walls. ‘Can’t see any bugs,’ he said reassuringly.

  Isabella gave a shriek, ‘Bugs!’ She was horrified at the thought.

  *

  Supper was hard bread and lumps of cheese, but they ate it all because they were hungry. Then they went to bed. It was a honeymoon night after all, despite the drawbacks. He respected her innocence and she responded to him accordingly. ‘I love you so much, Tom!’ she whispered. She would always blush when she remembered what happened that night, when her life changed forever.

  Tom whispered, ‘I never dreamt I would marry a wonderful girl like you, Isabella. Life will be good from now on, I’m sure.’

  *

  Tom went out early next morning to look for work. He knocked on doors but had no luck. After almost a week, they heard of a farm cottage in the parish of Glanton in Northumberland. And when the man in the local shop who passed on this information mentioned that he was visiting his grandmother in Glanton the following weekend, and offered to take them along to introduce them to the farmer who owned the cottage, they took a chance and travelled there.

  They could move in right away, as it had been unoccupied since the summer, the farmer told them. ‘Too quiet and cut off for most people,’ he observed. There were wonderful views over the valleys of the rivers Aln and Breamish. ‘How beautiful!’ Isabella cried out in her excitement from the cart where they sat in the back among packages and swathed in horse blankets to keep warm.

  When they saw Field Cottage, which was down a long track from the farmhouse and opposite a ploughed field, it wasn’t quite what they’d expected. It was a large single-storey, wooden hut, obviously erected some time ago, though it was well-made. Inside, the walls were lined with sacking, to keep the rooms warm and draughtproof. There was a tiled roof, however, which would keep the place dry. There were no curtains at the windows, and Isabella immediately thought, My first sewing job! She was pleasantly surprised to discover how big the rooms were: two bedrooms, a large living room with a fireplace, a kitchen with a stove and a small scullery with two tin baths hanging on the wall.

  ‘One each,’ Tom said with a wink. He pointed out the copper. ‘You can boil all the linen, Isabella,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll have to help with that,’ she told him.

  Outside was the privy, which was festooned with cobwebs and needed a good clean. Nearby was the pump, with a bucket ready to fill with water. Tom spotted an overgrown vegetable patch at the rear of the house, and he wondered if they could keep a few chickens there as well.

  The previous tenant had left a few sticks of furniture, including a double bed. The farmer’s wife had provided a bundle of bedding and a clean mattress. She had also put pots and pans in the kitchen, and her husband had left a large box of chopped wood for the fire. It was a chilly November day and Irish Tom’s first task was to light the fire in the living room. The chimney had obviously not been swept, for they were soon choking from billowing smoke, and Tom had to force open the windows, despite the cold air rushing in. Isabella huddled in a blanket. She couldn’t wait to get into that comfortable bed. Still, she felt happy and relieved – they had a place they could call home, and their love would help to keep them warm.

  The kindly farmer’s wife, suspecting that the delicate-looking girl might be pregnant, provided them with home-made bread, vegetables, eggs, a round cheese wrapped in muslin, a flitch of streaky bacon a crock of flour, and buttermilk. Tom, she said, could repay her by whitewashing the farm kitchen in the spring. She would also enquire among the farming fraternity who might need a house painter. It was a thriving community, thanks to the road links to Newcastle.

  But there was a downside. In the larder Isabella discovered, to her horror, a rabbit hanging stiffly by its heels on the back of the door, which she was expected to skin and joint for a stew or pie. As a girl from a wealthy background, she had never learned to cook, to sweep and dust a room, wash clothes and linen, or even make up a bed. Tom had done that chore in the lodging house. She sat down on the one easy chair and wept. ‘Oh, Tom, you have married a useless woman – I know nothing about running a house – I was spoiled by my father and ignored by my mother!’

  Tom knelt by the chair and put his arms round her. ‘I’m sorry mavourneen,’ he said simply, ‘but you will get used to it. I will help you all I can.’ He gave her a long and lingering kiss. ‘I never imagined I would marry a lovely girl like you because I’m just a labourer, and you’re a lady.’

  Before long Isabella was smiling again as the cottage was becoming a home to them both. Their love life was also blissful, and Tom was an ardent lover. She was learning to cook and she was an accomplished needlewoman. She even darned Tom’s socks, and that wasn’t fancy needlework, she thought ruefully.

  *

  ‘I am putting on weight,’ Isabella mentioned to Tom one evening.

  He looked at her sp
eculatively. ‘Do you think,’ he said slowly, ‘a baby could be on the way?’

  ‘Oh, Tom, I never thought of that!’ she looked alarmed.

  ‘Well, you have felt sick several mornings, haven’t you? And . . .’ he hesitated, for she didn’t like to discuss certain things. ‘I believe you have missed something these past two months . . .’ He wasn’t sure how to put it. ‘That could be a sign,’ he added awkwardly.

  ‘I know nothing about babies. My mother always went away for a while before my brothers and sisters were born, and I was never told why. Mother would return with the babies, but I had no idea where they came from. We have been so happy, just the two of us, my parents quarrelled all the time until my father left home. I’m not sure I can care for a baby.’

  Tom put his arms round her. ‘I’ll look after you, Isabella. I am used to these things.’ Her reaction worried him, but he was excited at the thought of being a father. I must encourage her, he thought, she didn’t have a normal childhood like me.

  *

  Isabella was heavily pregnant during the long, hot, dry summer. In July, she wore a coarse sacking pinafore over her dress like the other women on the farm, and a large hat, tied round with a scarf, which she knotted under her chin. Being fair-skinned, with fine, light-brown hair, she needed protection from the sun. Even at this late stage in her pregnancy, she could help a little with the work in the fields. Besides, they needed her earnings and she actually preferred being out of the house, for what was there to do in such a small space? Her only domestic skill was sewing, but she had already made a pile of flannel garments for the baby. As for cooking, she had learned to throw everything in the stock pot, including marrow bones, and Tom had showed her how to make dumplings, and to call potatoes ‘tatties’.

  When she clutched at her back, a fellow toiler paused in her hay-raking. ‘Is it time, hinny?’ She had a small child clinging to her skirts, but Isabella was aware she wasn’t married. There were also four widows in the workforce.

  ‘I – I’m not sure . . .’ Isabella managed, before she sat down abruptly among the stubble, doubling-up with the pain in her middle.

  ‘What does the midwife say?’

  ‘I . . . haven’t seen her yet.’

  The women, having observed the damp patch spreading on Isabella’s skirts, provided a protective circle around the girl, to screen her from the gaze of the male workers. A large matron, who was in charge of the women, called out sternly to the men, ‘Dinna keek, mind!’ She turned to Isabella. ‘Your waters have broke, hinny. Where is Irish Tom? The laddie will need to fetch him.’ She indicated the youngest worker who could run fast and was usually sent on errands.

  ‘He is painting at the doctor’s house,’ Isabella gasped, as another pain gripped her.

  The doctor, an elderly man, had just arrived home in his gig, intending to have some lunch before his afternoon calls, when the lad ran up the drive to the house.

  ‘Sir,’ he panted, ‘the painter’s wife – the bairn is comin’.’

  ‘Tom!’ the doctor shouted. ‘You are needed at home. I’ll turn the horse round and take you there – you too, boy.’

  ‘Hurry, sir, She’s in the field. They canna move her!’

  Irish Tom had been painting the top windows of the house and came down the ladder. He wiped his hands on his painter’s smock and climbed aboard the conveyance. They set off at a fast trot and reached the field in a few minutes.

  Isabella was lifted up and carried across to the cottage in her husband’s strong arms. The doctor, concerned for her well-being, followed them indoors, carrying his bag. ‘Is there no woman who can help?’ he asked.

  Tom shook his head. ‘I will make her ready. There is hot water in the fire kettle, and clean linen in the bedroom chest. I must top up the stockpot and put tatties to bake in the wall oven, he thought to himself. We will need our supper when this is all over. Had she remembered to fetch cheese and butter? he wondered.

  ‘We must hurry. The patient is in distress . . .’ The doctor looked Tom in the eye. ‘What does this young lady know of childbirth?’ He deduced that Isabella had ‘married beneath her’ and that like most of her contemporaries she would probably be ignorant of the basic facts of life.

  ‘Nothing,’ Tom said. He coloured up, recalling that Isabella had not even been aware what would happen when they first made love. However, her passion had soon matched his own.

  ‘You have some knowledge, I take it? You are from a large family in Ireland?’

  ‘Yes, but I have never witnessed a birthing, sir . . .’

  ‘Well, you are about to, and your wife will need your comfort and support. Just do as I say.’

  Two long hours later, the baby arrived, a boy, crying lustily. The doctor was impressed by Isabella’s fortitude. She hadn’t become hysterical like some well-bred young ladies, even though it was not an easy labour. The doctor estimated the baby’s weight at more than nine pounds. Seeing him, Tom marvelled at his size and wondered if he would fit into the tiny garments his mother had sewn. The baby had not inherited his red hair, but was so fair, he appeared to have none at all. Tom glimpsed blue eyes, before the baby closed them again.

  ‘I will fetch the midwife,’ the doctor decided. He hesitated, ‘Don’t worry about paying my fee, but the nurse will need her money. She has a family of her own to feed. Will this be a problem?’

  They turned at the door at the sound of Isabella’s voice, loud and clear, from the bed. ‘We have a guinea – will that be sufficient? We must pay our way. Thank you, doctor, for your kind attention. I could not have got through all this without your help – or without Tom at my side.’

  ‘You have a healthy son – I am glad to have been of help. What is his name?’

  ‘Thomas Frederick, after his father,’ Isabella said. They had not discussed baby names, but she was determined to name the baby after her beloved Tom.

  After the doctor left, Tom held out his arms for the baby and stood by the bed, gently rocking him in his arms. ‘Thank you for our wonderful son, Isabella,’ he said huskily. ‘I am the proudest man in Ireland tonight!’

  ‘You aren’t in Ireland, my darling,’ Isabella reminded him with a smile, looking up at him cuddling his newborn son. ‘We’re here, and now we are a family. I’m glad I married you, Tom’

  ‘So am I,’ he said. The baby began to whimper. ‘Do you think he needs, you know, his mother’s milk – you should put him to your breast—’

  Isabella gave a shriek, ‘No! I thought we could give him a bottle of cow’s milk!’

  ‘Didn’t you see your mother nurse the babies who came after you?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course not, she had a wet nurse, but we weren’t allowed to watch her feed them. Mother was always out and about, a social butterfly, my father called her.’

  Tom looked at his wife, who was weeping now with her face pressed against her pillow. He wouldn’t tell her that he was hungry and needed his supper, he decided. ‘I should make you comfortable – wash you and change the bed; the nurse will expect that to have been done. I’ll put the baby in the cradle while I’m busy.’

  Tom put the linen to soak in cold water in a tin bath and washed his wife tenderly, before slipping a clean nightgown over her head. He tentatively touched her swollen breasts. He said to himself, I must encourage her to nurse the baby. It’s not something well-bred ladies do, I think.

  When the nurse arrived, she saw the new mother clasping the baby in her arms while Tom coaxed her to feed him.

  ‘You’ve done well,’ she said to them. ‘Now, you both need a rest. Tomorrow is another day, as they say.’

  *

  Their son was baptised in the nearest Catholic church. He was soon known as TF to differentiate him from his father. Irish Tom’s brother Pat, who was in Woolwich, passed on the good news to their family in County Clare, but Isabella did not tell her parents of the happy event because there had been no contact with them since her marriage. She wrote instea
d to her Aunt Nesbit, secretly hoping that she might inform her nephew Abraham in Newcastle. Surely, she thought, Papa will forgive me now? But the silence continued.

  *

  In 1840, the same year Emma Wright was born, Irish Tom and Isabella, who were expecting their second child, moved to Harbottle, an historic village on the border with Scotland, at Aunt Nesbit’s invitation. Mrs Nesbit was eighty and a widow. Like Isabella, she had been rejected by her own family when she married ‘into trade’. She and her late husband were childless, but had a working partnership as well as a happy marriage, and she was eventually reconciled with her parents and extended family. The local Nesbits, who were numerous, had taken her to their hearts without reservation.

  Eliza Nesbit now existed on a modest income, boosted by the rent from a nearby property, in which she had invested. This house she generously offered to Isabella and Tom with their growing family. In return for a modest rent she said she would be glad of their support and company, for she was not able to get out and about because of her painful ‘rheumatics’.

  The young couple and their small son travelled to Harbottle with their few possessions in the carrier’s cart. ‘Aunt Nesbit was right,’ Isabella exclaimed, as they rattled along the cobbled street to their new home. ‘This is obviously a respectable place! Most of our new neighbours are retired like her, she says, with private means . . . Oh, there’s the parade of shops she mentioned – a butcher, a baker, an ironmonger, and a general store, and somewhere along here lives a Methodist minister and a judge!’

  ‘What about the candlestick maker?’ Tom quipped.

  ‘Perhaps not, but now there will be a house-painter!’ she returned.

  They arrived at their journey’s end. The villa would be their first real home. Inside they found the furniture was second-hand but well-polished, there were good curtains at the windows and, best of all, a new feather bed.

  ‘I wonder if Queen Margaret had such a bed when she retired here in 1518,’ Isabella said when they snuggled down on the soft mattress that night.