by Diane Allen
‘Mr Bancroft sends his regards, sir. I’ve put the two bags of lime, sir, in your outhouse. Mr Bancroft says to take care with it. It can burn your skin if you splash it on yourself and don’t wash it off quickly.’ Archie stood in the doorway as Lucy stood behind him, composing herself for the man her father had told her to respect. Archie turned and decided he’d better introduce Lucy. ‘This is Miss Bancroft.’ He nearly shoved Lucy in front of Adam and stepped back.
‘Thank you, lad. I appreciate you delivering the lime so fast.’ Adam looked at the pretty blonde girl, who could hardly keep her face straight as the lad she’d been flirting with announced her presence. ‘Now, Lucy, you’d better come with me and let him get back to work. We wouldn’t want him to get in any bother with your father, now would we?’
‘No, sir. My father will be timing him. He knows how long it takes to come here and back. He’s walked here and back plenty of times in the past – here and The Fleece down the road. My mother says he might as well live here.’ Lucy smiled and looked back at her muse as Archie made good his escape.
‘Now, Lucy, let me tell you what I want done, and you tell me if you are up to it.’ Adam held back a smile, before setting out his stall concerning what he expected from the flirtatious young woman. ‘I’ll expect you to clean and cook, and make sure my house is tidy at all times, and do what there is to do when I ask it of you. In return, you’ll find that I’m not an unreasonable soul. I won’t ask too much, I will keep you fed, and I will praise you when I think praise is deserved. On the other hand, step out of line and you’ll soon find out that I can be scathing with my words and actions. Do you think you could cope with that?’
‘I’m a hard worker, sir, I’ll not let you down.’ Lucy looked straight at her new master. ‘My mother says I should feel lucky that I’ve been given this chance so near home. And besides, we need the money because my mother’s carrying another baby. Not that my father knows yet, let alone me knowing it for sure. I’ve just seen her being sick in a morning and she’s been crying of late – a sure sign another baby is on the way. My father will go mad when she tells him, as he doesn’t want another baby in the house.’
‘Well, perhaps we should keep that to ourselves for the moment, Lucy. At least until your mother tells your father. I’m sure we are going to get along fine. Now, how about I pay you two shillings a week? You can start straight away by making me a sandwich, and then while I start to whitewash these walls with the lime your father’s so kindly sent me, you can go and scrub the kitchen floor. All you need is in the back kitchen, and there’s some water heating in the copper boiler in the outhouse.’ Adam watched as Lucy’s eyes widened at the thought of two shillings to call her own. He’d make sure she earned it; she seemed an empty-headed girl, who was rather open with her views, but at least she wasn’t a sullen bit of a thing; and she’d be company for him, without any commitment on his behalf.
‘Yes, sir, that would be wonderful. Thank you very much, sir.’ Lucy found her way to the kitchen and then came back quickly, her face aglow with embarrassment. ‘I’d like to make you a sandwich, sir, but there’s only a loaf of bread in the kitchen. So I’ve nothing to put in it.’
‘My fault, as I’ve not unpacked properly yet. Here, there’s a crate of basic food, which I should have put away this morning when I made my breakfast. It needs placing into the larder, and then later this week I’ll make my way down into Keighley to stock us up.’ Adam walked over to his unplaced pile of items and pulled out a wooden crate filled with flour, sugar, butter, cheese and other essential items, which he had bought before his journey from Keighley. ‘You’ll find some cheese in there, Lucy – that will do just grand.’
Adam carried the crate into the low-set kitchen that was at the back of the house, with the larder leading off from the main room. ‘The range in the front room is best for cooking on at present. This kitchen is going to have to be made my priority. There’s no water in the whole of the place; it is outside the back door in a trough and runs straight down from the moor, but I aim to pipe it into the house. It should have been done years ago. You’ll have to make do and mend until I get things in order, but the main thing to do first is get the old place clean and habitable for now.’ Adam smiled and looked at Lucy as she stared up at the kitchen ceiling, which was near collapse. ‘I’ll soon get the place straight, don’t you worry. It’ll be a different place in six months’ time, if I have my way.’
He left her to open the crate and make him a sandwich as he gazed out of the window and questioned the foolishness of his decision to take on the old homestead. In the distance he could hear the Flappit Quarry men at work, hewing out the York stone that was in demand for all the buildings being erected by busy industrialists in West Yorkshire. The ring of hammers echoed around the hills and moors. At least he wasn’t going to be beholden to someone telling him what to do, all day every day, and so he would just have to be content with his lot in his life. He’d nowhere else to go and, apart from Ivy Thwaite in Kendal, nobody cared whether he lived or died; but Adam had not even heard from Ivy in a while. He breathed in deeply; he’d eat his sandwich and then at least mix the whitewash for the one room that was habitable, before asking Lucy for her help in rearranging throughout the house what possessions he had. His old home needed time and patience spent on it – a bit like himself, he thought, as Lucy entered with the best-looking sandwich he’d eaten for a long time.
‘That’ll do grand, Lucy. Thank you.’
‘Pleasure, sir.’ Lucy smiled. She was going to enjoy working for Adam Brooksbank. He might be a slightly older man, but he was good-looking, with charm. Her father had been right: he was a man with money and manners, and she could do far worse.
4
Adam stared up at his bedroom ceiling and yawned. His body was aching all over from placing his belongings into their allotted place in the old house; his right arm and his injured leg were giving him the most gyp, after whitewashing the main living room. He roused himself. Lucy would be making her way up from Providence Row and would be knocking on his door, if he didn’t move. She’d been good company, for a lass so young, and she’d worked just as hard as himself, so he’d no complaints so far. He dressed in an old pair of trousers and a striped twill shirt. Today was not a day for finery, as he was about to tackle the hole in the back kitchen roof, if he could find some spare slates to fit the job. No sooner had he reached the bottom of the stairs, which creaked and groaned with every board trodden on, than there was a quiet knock on the door and Lucy walked in.
‘Morning, sir. I’ve collected some sticks for kindling from out of the hedgerow. They are good and dry, and they will soon get a fire going in the hearth. It may be early March, but the wind still cuts through to the bone up here.’ Lucy gave him a quick glance up and down, noticing that he hadn’t bothered to shave yet and was not dressed as finely this morning, before she took off her cloak and set about cleaning out the previous day’s embers from the still-warm fire, placing the twigs that she had gathered from the hedgerow into the fire’s grate.
‘I could have done that. Lighting the fire is no hardship.’ Adam smiled at the lass as she raked the ashes away and soon had the fire blazing.
‘Now, it’s no good having a dog and barking yourself – that’s what my mother would say. I’ll see to it every morning. Besides, it gets me away and out early, before my siblings are awake. I swear the noise the youngest two make, shrieking and crying, is enough to waken the dead. Lord knows what home will be like when there’s another mouth to feed.’ Lucy went over to her cloak and produced two newly laid eggs from its pocket. ‘I picked these up on my way here. Old Moffat has a field full of hens, just next to the crossroads; he’s not going to miss two eggs, so I brought them for your breakfast, seeing that your pantry is not full to bursting.’ She grinned as she went out into the yard with a pan and the kettle to fill with water, then placed both on the fire to boil.
‘Now, you mind what you are doing – no more stealing
of eggs. You could go to prison for that.’ Adam looked concerned, but could not chastise her too much as Lucy had been kind enough to think of breakfast for him. ‘Like I said, I’ll go down into Keighley, probably tomorrow, and stock up the pantry. But today I’ll try and fix that kitchen roof and put slate on it at the front. You can see the stars through the ceiling in the spare room, I noticed, when I made my way to bed last night.’
‘I don’t know what possessed you to come and live here, sir. It’s been unlived in for such a long time, and it’s so out of the way and right on the moor’s top – it gets so wild up here in winter.’ Lucy dropped the eggs into the pan to boil and placed a plate and mug on the table, which had found a home in the main room of the house.
‘It was my family home, Lucy. I was born here and lived here as a boy with my parents, right up to getting married and leaving them for what I thought would be a better life in Keighley.’ Adam looked at his new maid as she sliced him some bread and buttered it for him to eat with his eggs.
‘Oh, I thought you were from off. I didn’t know you were born here. So where’s your wife at, sir? Did she not want to join you?’ Lucy asked inquisitively.
‘She died a long time ago, and I’ve been on my own ever since. Now enough of me. Tell me who’s who in the area: who should I get to know, and who should I keep at arm’s length? I’m out of touch with some of the folk who have moved in while I’ve been away. However, I’m sure a bright girl like you knows everybody around here.’
‘The biggest family around here is the Fosters; they live at Whiteshaw in Denholme and own the cotton mill in Denholme. Then there’s the Bucks at Godmansend; they own a lot of the land around here, and Mrs Buck was one of the Dawson family that have woollen mills in Bradford. They have a second home in Wales, so they are only here part of the year. And then there’s . . .’ Lucy reeled off the names of all the relevant families in the area while Adam listened and watched, as she spooned his boiled eggs out of the boiling water onto his plate. ‘I’m sorry you’ve no eggcup – I never thought,’ Lucy apologized as she watched him juggle and peel the hot hard-boiled eggs.
‘It’s not for you to apologize. The eggs are fine as they are. Now then, you are a mine of information. You should have been working with me over in the Crimea – with your intelligence, we’d have won in the first year.’ Adam laughed.
‘I earwig what my mother and father say, and I talk to all the men in the yard; they tell me everything. Everybody, that is, except Thomas Farrington. I give him a wide berth as he frightens me, and lately he just stares at me and says nothing. I think he’s got a bit missing.’ Lucy fell quiet.
‘Who’s Thomas Farrington and where does he live?’ Adam pricked up his ears, concerned that this man was worrying his hard-working maid.
‘He’s my father’s foreman, and he lives at the other end of our row. Father says he’s a good worker, but I don’t care – I don’t like him.’ Lucy’s face clouded over.
‘If he bothers you, you let me know,’ Adam said to her.
‘No, you are better off not crossing him, he’s a nasty piece of work. He’s too handy with his fists. He’s always fighting with someone or other, especially when he’s drunk too much at The Fleece. You said you were in the Crimea – is that where you got your limp?’
‘Aye, it was. I didn’t move fast enough to get out of the way of a hussar and his sword; the bastard ran me through, and that was the end of my time serving in Her Majesty’s army. Good thing and all, too, else I’d have frozen to death, like thousands of others who were left to rot in the Balkans. Men would have fought to have eaten the eggs you’ve just fed me, we had so little food. Now, while I make a start on mending the roof, you make a list of what we need in the house and I’ll see that I buy it in the morning.’
‘I will, and I’ll make some bread, if that oven is to be trusted, once I’ve given it a good clean and worked out how to regulate it.’ Lucy motioned to the oven range, which on the first night of his arrival had burned Adam’s pie.
‘I wish you well with that. I only fell asleep for a brief minute or two and my supper was ruined. I’m more at home mending the roof, mind. I leave the women to cook for me.’ Adam grinned.
‘Are you sure you’ll be alright going up and down the ladder – won’t it cause you pain?’ Lucy looked at Adam as she cleared his breakfast table and watched as he put on a leather jerkin to keep him warm.
‘Well, there’s nobody else going to do it for me. So the sooner I make a start on it, the better. It’s a good job I brought all my tools with me from Leeds Barracks, because I’m going to need them to get this old place in order. But once it’s done, Black Moss will be back to the home it used to be. I’ll have some hens of my own, and sheep and a milking cow, once I’ve finished with the house and seen to the walls and fences.’ Adam stood in the doorway and looked back at Lucy. He found her easy to talk to – too easy, for he had to get on with his work around the house. However, he noticed the look of concern on her face.
‘But your leg, won’t you struggle with the job in hand?’ Lucy protested.
‘I’ll be fine, I can’t let a thing like that stop me. Men with a lot worse left the fields of the Crimea and they’ve still to make a living. But thank you for your concern.’ Adam smiled to himself as he closed the door behind him and left Lucy to tidy the breakfast table and go about her baking. She was proving to be a good lass, and he was glad he had stumbled across her. Despite her saying what she thought, there was no harm in talking straight; in fact it was a good trait of the Yorkshire man to say what he thought, Adam mused as he struggled with each rung of the ladder, balancing nails, slates and hammer as he gingerly made it onto the kitchen roof. She was right, he thought, when he caught his breath and stopped himself from shaking with effort as he sat upon the ridge tiles of the farmhouse. The climb had taken more out of him than he’d realized, and he looked around him as he rubbed his painful leg. How he’d missed his true home, he thought, breathing in the dank, peaty smell of the moors that lay around him. There was no smell like it, and no view like it on a good day. He was glad to be home; it was where he belonged.
Lucy organized herself in the kitchen. She had soon made the dough for the bread and then placed it next to the fire to rise, before looking around her for the next job that needed doing. She’d make a list of items required, as the bread baked in the temperamental oven. She sighed; she was going to enjoy her work here. It was no way as hard as working for her mother, and she could run the house as she saw fit. The pile of furniture that had been delivered the previous day had now found a home in each room, and she decided to give the oak furniture a polish while waiting for the bread to rise.
Black Moss was beginning to look like more of a home now, she thought, as she tried to regain a shine on the ancient Welsh dresser that had made its home in the main room of the house, rubbing it with beeswax and then buffing it up with a polishing rag. Then she unpacked and placed the blue-and-white willow-pattern plates on the tall plate rack, and that immediately made the cold, newly whitewashed room into a home. She stood back with her hands on her hips and smiled. The old place would look nice if it was given some love and care, and she was going to take some pride in helping Adam Brooksbank get it into shape.
The hammering of nails being put into the slates to secure the roof could be heard from above, and Lucy listened as she heard Adam stop and start again as he balanced himself precariously on the roof. Then she heard him swear and curse, as something had dropped out of his hands and had slid down the roof, bouncing and clattering the full length and ending up on the ground below. Knowing what a struggle it must have been for him to get up on the roof in the first place, Lucy ran out of the house and went round to the back, where the ladder was positioned against the wall, with Adam still cursing on the roof.
‘Sir, are you alright? I don’t think you should be up there,’ Lucy yelled.
‘I’ve dropped my bloody hammer, and I need another of those two slates.�
�� Adam wobbled and tried to straighten his leg in order to come back down the roof to get what he needed.
‘Stay there. I’ll bring them up to you and then I’ll see you down,’ Lucy shouted up to him and grabbed both hammer and slates, tucking them under her arm as she gathered her long skirts up and climbed, rung by rung, up the ladder.
‘Mind you don’t break your neck. Your father would hang me if you fell, because it would be all my fault.’ Adam looked at the determined young lass as she balanced what he needed under her arm and appeared at the edge of the roof, with flushed cheeks.
‘You are more likely to break your neck than me. I told you it wasn’t a fit job for you to do, with that dicky leg.’ Lucy caught her breath and looked up at Adam, forgetting who she was talking to as she passed him the slates. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ve always been a tomboy – I could climb any tree better than my brothers, if it wasn’t for these skirts that us women have to wear.’ She grinned as Adam took the slates and placed the tiling nails securely between his lips, unable to argue with her, as she waited for him to finish the job in hand. ‘It’s a grand view up here. You feel like you are on top of the world.’ Lucy gazed around her as Adam hammered the nails down, securing the slates into position and making the roof dry.
‘I’ll just be glad to get back down – never mind the view.’ Adam cautiously edged his way back to the ladder, after throwing the hammer down onto the grassy bank at the back of the house. ‘Mind out. I’m coming, and my leg feels dead with cramp, so if I don’t fall on you, you’ll be lucky.’ He waited for a second, watching Lucy, who quickly climbed down the ladder out of his way, then stood and watched attentively as he reached for each rung of the ladder with his good leg first, and then his bad one. Eventually he reached the ground, his legs shaking with the effort, and brushed himself down and looked at Lucy. ‘Thank you. I don’t think I could have done that without your help.’