‘City filth! City scum!’ they heard.
‘But we ain’t even strikin’, Mum,’ Jess protested.
‘Don’t matter to them, by the looks of it, Jess. They reckon we’re all the same,’ said Rose.
‘Damned foreigners,’ yelled a woman who was marching alongside Theo’s wife.
‘Ladies, please. Blasphemy is quite unnecessary.’
‘That’s a good ’un, vicar,’ shouted Elsie, ‘callin’ them old cats “ladies”. What’s that make you and Theo? The toms?’
The first blow came from a rock, thrown by a villager at the Worlington pickers; it coincided with a squawking voice calling, ‘That’s for making up to our husbands, you foreign muck.’
Even the regular pickers were shocked by the venom of the curses which then flowed from the homedwellers’ mouths. It was as though they had been saving poison and bile all their lives with the sole purpose of directing it at the Londoners.
‘I ain’t puttin’ up with this shit,’ said Elsie, pushing her sleeves up above her elbows. ‘’Oo’s with me?’
Worlington and Fanshawe pickers were united. They fell on the offending village women with flailing fists.
Name-calling was one thing, but as soon as the violence became physical, Theo rapidly followed the Reverend Henry Batsford’s example and slipped away, anxious not to be caught up in the bloody fighting.
‘Mum, where are yer?’ called Jess.
‘Don’t worry about me. Look after yerself. Some of ’em ’ave got broken ’op poles. Watch out!’ Rose dodged a flying clod of earth. ‘See if yer can find Mabel.’
‘Mabel?’ called Jess, narrowly avoiding another well-aimed throw.
‘Ssh. She’s over ’ere with me, Jess,’ hissed Winnie from behind the thick tangles of growing hops. ‘We’re gettin’ ‘er kids back to the ’uts.’
‘I’ll be there with yer when I’ve found Lil. Ouch!’ Jess felt a stinging pain as the thin end of a long chestnut pole was swiped round her cheek. ‘Yer ol’ cow.’
‘Harlot!’ shrieked her attacker, the woman who had supported the measurer’s wife. ‘Your red hair shows you for what you are. Jezebel!’
‘An’ I’ll show yer what you bloody are,’ shouted Lil, leaping to Jess’s defence and knocking the pole from the woman’s grip. ‘Now show us ’ow clever yer are, yer snooty-nosed ol’ bag.’
The two women circled each other, ominously silent in the yelling, fighting melee.
‘Don’t, Lil. Don’t lose yer temper,’ reasoned Jess. She’d seen Lil fight full-grown men outside The Star on a Saturday night. She knew how she could completely lose control. But Lil was deaf to Jess’s pleadings. She sprang at the woman who had injured her friend, interested only in revenge for the insults. The combatants fell in an undignified sprawl between the hop bins.
‘Lil, please. Don’t.’ Jess did her best to drag her champion away, but succeeded only in grabbing a handful of the village woman’s hair. The woman screamed. Jess’s confused attempts at apology were silenced by a thick length of wood hitting her hard across the back of the neck. She collapsed unconscious, and unnoticed by the fighting women, behind a half-full bin of hops.
‘Oi! The rozzers are ’ere. Quick, leg it!’
Most of the Londoners, used to reacting quickly to such shouts, did not need a second warning. They did not wait to see the local police officer and his two mounted reinforcements, the so-called hopping coppers, who had been fortuitously summoned by the vicar before he left the village. The cockneys had no interest in watching the men rush along the rows, truncheons at the ready. Instead, they grabbed the younger children, regardless of family ties, and fled back to their huts. Only Bessie Shea and a few of her allies from Fanshawe’s stood firm, surrounded by their village adversaries.
‘Not you again, Bessie,’ groaned PC Clarke. ‘I thought we were going to have a peaceful harvest this year.’
‘We’ll ’ave peace when we ’ave justice,’ said Bessie as dignified as her dishevelled appearance would allow. ‘If yer gonna arrest me, yer’d best get on with it, or else I’ll be gettin’ back to me kids.’
‘Go on. Out of my sight.’ PC Clarke jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Fanshawe’s. ‘And if you know what’s good for you. I’d suggest you ladies all go back to the village.’
The sight of Bessie Shea walking away without so much as a crack over the head from a police truncheon was more than Theo’s wife could tolerate.
‘They’ve bamboozled you as well,’ she gasped. ‘You men. You’re all the same. Show you a glimpse of their filthy city ankles and you’re useless. Useless.’
‘Bessie Shea’s ankles?’ PC Clarke asked incredulously. He was a man out of his depth. ‘I think you’d better let us escort you ladies back.’ The constable gestured to his fellow officers. Wearily they coaxed the women into a disgruntled line and accompanied them back to their cottages.
* * *
‘Elsie,’ said Rose, knocking on the hut door, ‘is Jess in there with your Lilly?’
‘No, Rose. Not seen ’er,’ said Elsie, sticking her head out of the hut, her pipe bobbing as she spoke.
Rose rubbed her tired eyes. ‘I’ve looked everywhere. There was such a turn-out when the coppers come, I didn’t know what was ’appenin’.’
‘Not ’elpin’ Mabel with the kids or nothin’?’ suggested Elsie.
‘No.’
‘Don’t worry, Rose. Jess’ll look after ’erself. Them village women couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag. Daft old cows. An’ that copper ain’t a bad old boy. She’ll be all right.’
‘It ain’t the women I’m worried about,’ said Rose to herself.
* * *
Jess whimpered. Her head swam, her neck was stiff and bruised, her face smarted.
‘It’s all right, Jess. You’re safe.’
Jess’s eyes flickered open. She could make out the blurred face of Robert Worlington. He was kneeling over her, tenderly swabbing her wounds. Cautiously she touched a fingertip to the cut on her forehead. The pain made her draw in her breath sharply.
‘No, don’t touch it,’ he said. ‘Leave it to me. I can see what I’m doing.’
Jess closed her eyes again and let Robert get on with it. His hands were so gentle, and if she didn’t move she hardly felt any pain at all.
‘Where are we?’ Her voice was hoarse with the effort of speaking.
‘Sssh. We’re in the stable block. I found you in the hop gardens after those rampaging women had been packed off by the constable. You must have taken quite a blow. You were out cold.’
‘I… I don’t remember.’ Jess tried to sit up.
‘It doesn’t matter. Lie still.’
‘It does. I… I was tryin’ to stop Lilly. She was…’ Jess bit her lip, willing herself not to cry with the pain. ‘I ’ope she ain’t got ’urt.’
‘Listen to me. I told you, everything’s going to be all right. You’re safe.’
The cloth felt so cool as Robert wiped and dabbed at her skin. She let herself sink back into the hay as comfortably as she could.
‘You’re going to have quite a few bruises in the morning.’
‘What?’ Jess’s head was spinning.
‘Bruises. On your face.’
‘Oh.’
‘Try and rest. I’ll take care of you.’
‘Me ’ead. It ’urts so much.’
‘I know,’ he whispered.
Jess felt him loosen her blouse and slowly undo the buttons, one by one.
‘Don’t do that,’ she moaned.
‘Why?’
With a great effort she opened her eyes for a moment and looked up at him. His face was very close to hers. She flushed. ‘Me underthings,’ she managed to say. ‘They ain’t very nice. All ’oles in ’em.
‘You rest,’ he assured her, and slipped his hands into her blouse.
She closed her eyes, letting the smooth coolness of his hands soothe her hot skin.
‘Does that feel go
od?’ he said, running his hands over her breasts.
‘Don’t,’ she said weakly.
‘I’ll be gentle,’ he whispered. ‘I won’t hurt you.’
‘Don’t,’ she managed to say again, ‘it ain’t right. Me mum and me. We ’ad a little talk. She said…’
Jess never finished telling Robert what her mother had told her in their little talk. Instead she floated back into blissful, pain-free unconsciousness.
* * *
‘Hardly picked a damned thing for two days. Lazy blighters. This harvest will never be finished. Damn them. All of them.’
‘Shouting at me won’t help, George,’ said Leonore, cutting her mutton into manageable mouthfuls. ‘You must calm things down out there after the trouble. Get the pickers back to feeling happy about their work. Don’t bluster around antagonising everybody.’
‘And what exactly do you suggest, Leonore? Invite the vermin into the Hall for dinner?’ Sir George’s eyes were bulging with fury. His voice rose with his temper. ‘Perhaps we could have a few rubbers of bridge after? Or why not a masked ball?’
‘You’d like that, Robert, wouldn’t you?’ smirked Paul. ‘An opportunity to dance with all the girls.’
‘You never dance with me,’ complained Julia, nibbling at the tiny morsel of meat impaled on the end of her fork.
‘No, but Paul does, doesn’t he, my sweet?’ retorted Robert through a fixed, ugly smile.
‘And I don’t think your squabbling helps either,’ said Lady Worlington stiffly.
Paul and Robert glowered at each other. Julia looked down at her plate.
‘But George, you might have an idea there,’ Leonore said pensively. ‘About putting on a ball, I mean.’
‘Put on a ball for the buggers? You’re out of your mind, woman.’ He turned to his sons in disbelief, nodding with alarming vigour. ‘She’s out of her mind. Same as her father. And her mother. Batty as coots, the whole family. And that cousin of hers, Amelia. Worst of the lot. All mad. Need certifying, the lot of them.’
‘If I might continue,’ Leonore said.
Sir George rolled his eyes at his wife’s reprimand. His sons laughed impolitely at their mother. Julia continued to stare down at her plate.
‘I did not intend, as you well know, George, to suggest that you should organise a grand ball. I rather thought we could have some kind of social occasion at which the locals and the Londoners might make their peace.’ Her husband looked slightly more interested. ‘It would hardly cost a thing,’ she added.
That settled the matter as far as Sir George was concerned. A supper dance was to be held the coming Friday in the big barn, and Leonore could organise it.
* * *
‘What’s their game then?’ asked Florrie suspiciously, cutting a fat hunk of cheese to go with the bread and pickles she’d already piled high on her plate. ‘We don’t never ’ave no party until the end of the ’arvest. An’ what’re all that lot doin’ ’ere?’ She jerked her head towards the glowering villagers who were grouped at the other end of the barn. ‘An’ ’avin’ it all done out like this. Why ain’t we sittin’ down proper? Like we always do. An’ them pies look a bit overdone to me an’ all.’
‘Seein’ ’ow they’ve invited us an’ all the locals, I reckon it’s obvious,’ said Rose. ‘They’re tryin’ to get us to make our peace.’
‘What? Us an’ the ’omedwellers? ’E’s got some chance,’ said Florrie, still piling up her plate with more food.
‘Well, Sir George has gone to enough trouble,’ said Mabel, awestruck by the huge tables groaning under the weight of pies, cheeses, fruit, ale, cider, cakes, buns, breads, pickles and sauces.
‘Aw yeh, did all this lot with ’is own fair ’ands, I don’t think,’ griped Florrie. ‘’E’s got ’undreds of bloody skivvies to do all this for ’im. Don’t even wipe ’is own arse, I’ll bet.’
‘Shut yer cake ’ole, for once, Florrie, an’ stop complainin’, will yer. Why don’t yer just tuck in,’ said Elsie, pouring her moaning neighbour another jug of cider. ‘Way yer goin’ on, yer’d think there was somethin’ wrong with it.’
‘Probably is,’ said Florrie, emptying the tankard in two gulping swallows.
‘Well, I think it’s beautiful,’ said Mabel. ‘I ain’t never seen nothin’ like it in all me life.’
‘Make sure yer sticks plenty in yer apron to take back for later on,’ advised Elsie wisely.
‘Cor. Don’t yer think they’d mind?’ Mabel was truly in paradise.
The women eventually fell into silence and got on with the serious business of eating and drinking their fill.
‘’Old up, there’s the fiddler startin’ up for the dancin’,’ whooped Lil, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. ‘Come on, Jess, let’s show these yokels ’ow it’s done.’
‘Careful, Lil, yer’ll make me spill me cider.’
Jess managed to hand her half-empty jug to Winnie before she resigned herself to being yanked around the makeshift dance floor by the less than elegant, but very enthusiastic Lilly Dorkin.
‘My Lil’s a gel,’ said Elsie fondly.
‘Pity she ain’t a feller,’ said Winnie. ‘We could do with a few blokes to ’ave a dance with.’
‘There’s plenty of lads over by the beer barrels if that’s what yer want,’ said Rose, nodding towards the end of the barn.
A group of wary-looking young men stood by the bar which had been rigged up from planks and hay bales.
‘Them! They’re carrot crunchers,’ said Win, spraying cake crumbs over Rose in horror. ‘’Oo’d wanna dance with them?’
‘Mabel, for one,’ said Florrie fondly. ‘Just look at ’er.’ Mabel was indeed dancing with one of the locals – a large, robust farm worker who towered over the skinny little Londoner.‘She’s ’aving a right old time an’ all, bless ’er. An’ she deserves it, with what she’s been through.’
‘Blimey, yer in a good mood, Florrie,’ said Elsie, obviously impressed by her friend’s extraordinary frame of mind. ‘Must be all that cider, ’Ere, gel, get another one down yer.’
‘Thank yer, Elsie, I don’t mind if I do.’
Winnie stifled a laugh. ‘Don’t get me mum too tiddly, Elsie. There’s pickin’ to do in the mornin’.’
‘Sod the pickin’,’ yelled Florrie. With that, she took up the hem of her skirts in her hands and spun off round the floor in a solo polka, scattering any dancing couples who dared stray into her path.
‘She’s better drunk,’ observed Elsie seriously.
* * *
‘It seems to be going very well, George,’ said Leonore, clapping her elegantly lace-gloved hands to the stirring rhythms of the fiddle music. She was sitting with her family and Julia Markington at a table which had been set out for them at a safe distance from the very popular beer platfrom. ‘Boys, why don’t you dance? It looks such fun.’
Paul seized the opportunity, and his brother’s fiancee. ‘Julia. May I?’
Giggling like an adolescent, Robert’s betrothed allowed Paul to guide her on to the floor and around the room in a whirl of skipping steps and leaps.
‘And how about you, Robert?’ asked his mother. ‘Won’t you dance?’
‘Leave the boy alone,’ said Sir George, pouring himself another large glass of port from one of the bottles he had had brought over for himself from his cellars. ‘It’s bad enough we had to come tonight.’
‘No, Father,’ said Robert graciously, ‘Mother is right. We must all do our bit for good relations with the workers.’
George Worlington did not notice his wife wince as Robert made directly for the tall, auburn beauty, one of the Fairleighs, who was twirling around the dance floor with a rather plain, plump girl with untidy hair. Neither did he notice his wife shake her head sorrowfully, as she predicted that yet another poor young woman was about to become the target of a Worlington male.
‘Is this an excuse me? May I?’ enquired Robert respectfully, tapping Lil on the shoulder.
‘Ma
y yer what?’
‘Take over with your partner?’
‘Suit yerself, mate. I could do with a drink any’ow, I’m sweatin’ like a pig.’ Puffing noisily, Lil slouched off the dance floor towards the beer.
‘Yer might ’ave asked me, Lil,’ called Jess to her departing friend, but the music drowned her reply.
‘Why? Don’t you want me to take you in my arms again, Jess? Like before?’ Robert asked.
‘I told yer, it weren’t right kissin’ me like that.’
‘You say no to kissing after what we’ve done together?’
She stopped dancing and pulled away from him, confused. ‘What’re yer talkin’ about?’
‘We’d better keep dancing, Jess,’ he said, drawing her towards him again. ‘People will wonder.’
‘They’re all lookin’ at us anyway.’
‘No, not at us, Jess. They’re looking at you. And why shouldn’t they? You are the most beautiful woman in the room.’ He held her at arm’s-length, appraising her unashamedly.
‘Please. Don’t, they’ll ’ear yer. Let’s dance.’
‘Wouldn’t you like to come outside with me, Jess?’ he breathed into her ear. ‘We could do it again, like we did in the stables.’
Jess felt heat rising from her throat until her face blushed scarlet. ‘I dunno what yer talkin’ about, but I don’t like it.’
‘Don’t be a tease, Jess. That’s not what you said when I looked after you. When I stroked your body all over, when we…’
‘I ain’t got a clue what yer talkin’ about. I think yer’d better tell me what yer mean.’ Jess’s mouth was dry. She could hardly say the words.
We can’t talk here,’ he said. ‘Let’s go where it’s quiet. To the stable block. And I can show you what I mean.’
* * *
Like most of the other hoppers, Rose had succumbed to the festival atmosphere. In fact, it was because she was too busy keeping in time with the steps of Gerald Audley, the farm bailiff, as they took a turn together round the floor, that she failed to notice her daughter slip quietly away. The floor was so crowded with laughing, prancing couples that not even Florrie realised that Jess and Robert were missing from the barn for well over an hour. And even the local women didn’t notice the developments between the young master and the cockney girl, since they were more concerned with keeping a watchful eye over their own menfolk, making sure that they didn’t succumb to the obvious temptations put in their way by this ridiculous idea of Lady Worlington’s.
The Cockney Girl Page 17