The Girl from the Tanner's Yard

by Diane Allen

  ‘No, there’s no rush, sir. But Lucy has shown a liking for a date in late September or early October, and I’m in agreement with that. Only because she is growing chrysanthemums in the garden and would like them in her bouquet. However, we’d like it to be held on a Saturday, if possible,’ Adam said.

  ‘I’d be happy if you could wait just a little while longer, Adam.’ The parson flicked through his diary, struggling to read the appointments, as he looked at the weeks that had events next to them. ‘I have the twenty-fifth of October free, and that would give you ample time for the banns to be read, and for you to prepare yourselves for this change in your lives.’

  Adam looked at Lucy, who seemed a little disappointed at the date being later than expected, but she nodded her head in agreement.

  ‘Yes, that will be acceptable. The twenty-fifth of October. At what time?’ Adam asked.

  ‘We usually hold weddings at two o’clock – is that acceptable?’ The parson looked at them both as they nodded their heads. ‘Then I will see that Arthur reads out your banns in both churches, and I will fill in the relevant forms. It is a joyous day, Adam. I’m glad you have found happiness once again. And you, young lady, have got yourself a good, kind man. He’s strong-willed but dependable, and I know you will have a good life together.’

  ‘I know. He means everything to me.’ Lucy linked her arm into Adam’s and smiled up at him.

  ‘Those chrysanthemums will have to be protected from the frost, if you are to use them in your bouquet. We have several cloches in the garden and you are welcome to place a plant or two within them, if the weather does get frosty, to protect them for your day.’ The parson examined the young girl, who was obviously deeply in love with Adam.

  ‘Thank you, sir. I might just do that. I had set my heart on using them, as my mother had the same flowers on her wedding day.’ Lucy smiled.

  ‘Well, the offer is there. And for now, that is my part done. Unless you wish to speak to me each week to make sure that neither of you has any reservations about the marriage, and to explain to you what marriage entails? However, I think Adam already knows about commitment, and I can see that you love him without reserve.’ The parson patted Lucy’s hand and looked up at Adam.

  ‘Thank you, sir, but we will have no regrets about our decision. We are both looking forward to a happy life together and – who knows – perhaps children?’ Adam looked lovingly at Lucy.

  ‘Not yet, Adam, else the Reverend will think we are in a rush to wed,’ Lucy chastised.

  ‘Oh no, not just yet. I wasn’t thinking.’ Adam backtracked on his words.

  The parson smiled. ‘Children will be an extra blessing, whenever they arrive. Now go and prepare, and look after each other. And I will pray that the weather keeps warm and kind to us until then.’ He watched the happy couple leave his study and shook his head as he looked at the date in his diary. Adam Brooksbank had found love once more; he was a lucky man. And she was a lucky young woman.

  27

  The weeks till the wedding had flown by so quickly. The whole of the Bancroft family had flitted from Providence Row and were now living happily at High Ground. Dorothy loved her new home; the boys had a bedroom each, and Susie – once Lucy was married – would soon also have a bedroom of her own. But the most noticeable thing was that the air was fresh and clear every morning, and the drinking water from the well outside was clean and pure every day, not discoloured on some days, as at Providence Row.

  ‘I can’t believe you get married this Saturday. It doesn’t seem five minutes since Adam and you sat across the kitchen table from us at Providence Row.’ Dorothy looked at Lucy, who was busy stitching buttons onto her wedding dress in front of the fire.

  ‘Time does seem to have flown, but it’s because we have all been so busy. Adam has been putting his stamp on his new land here, and you have been making this place your home. Perhaps we should have waited until spring to get married, with one thing and another. And just look at the weather this morning – when will it ever stop?’ Lucy looked up from her delicate lace dress and watched the rain pouring down outside. It had rained hard for the last four days, and the land was saturated and the rivers were swollen. Adam had told her to stay at High Ground until the weather improved, and she was missing him deeply, as well as worrying about the bad weather continuing until her wedding day.

  ‘Aye, your father’s not suited; he’s getting sodden each day at the flay-pits and he says the river is rising and flooding into the terrace. It’s a good job we all found new homes. He said the kitchen was a-swimming, and the water was running around the end terrace that Thomas Farrington lived in. He’s never known it to flood like that before; he said even the rats were having to swim for it.’ Dorothy sighed and looked at her daughter. ‘We’ve a lot to thank your fella for.’

  ‘Well, I only hope Adam’s remembered to dig up my chrysanthemums and put them in plant pots inside the barn. Else they will be battered to death and not fit to use on Saturday, and then I’ll have no bouquet. It isn’t frost that I’ve had to worry about, it’s this bloody rain.’ Lucy twisted the cotton that she was using around her finger and broke it off beneath the beautiful small silk-covered button that would fasten the high collar on her wedding dress. ‘There – all done; that’s my dress sorted anyway, if nothing else.’ She held it up in front of her and inspected her needlework. Every stitch on the tight bodice and long, flowing white skirt she had sewn and decorated with lace and embroidery, and now it was finished and she looked at it with a critical eye. ‘What do you think: should I have had a lower neckline? I like these high-standing collars, but do you think it makes me look as if I’ve got a double-chin?’

  ‘You’ve not got a double-chin at your age! It’s perfect, and so is Susie’s bridesmaid dress. I’m going to have all on not to cry. My precious girls looking so beautiful, and I’m to lose you – I don’t know how I’m going to cope.’ Dorothy’s eyes filled with tears. Her eldest was getting married and she would miss Lucy so much.

  ‘Mother, I’m only just over the moor. You live in Adam’s house, and I’ll never be away really.’ Lucy scowled. She herself couldn’t wait to leave home and start her new life with Adam, and Saturday could not come fast enough. She even disliked staying away from Black Moss while the rain poured down. It was only the knowledge that after Saturday it would be her permanent home, and that she would no longer be simply the maid, that made her stay at home and feel partly satisfied with her lot.

  Bill looked around him. He was drenched to the skin and the flay-pits were overflowing with water, which swirled around his feet and those of his workers, who looked miserable and disheartened.

  ‘Bugger this for a lark! You wouldn’t send a dog out to work in this,’ he shouted, as even the men scraping the hides in the shelter of the shed looked dejected with the wet weather. ‘Get yourselves home. I’ll pay you for the rest of the day and we will see what tomorrow brings.’ He shook his head as his workers put down their tools and thanked him, then made their way back to the warmth and dryness of their own homes. They were sodden and frozen and knew that, come winter, their working conditions would be even worse when it froze outside, but the rain today made work impossible.

  Bill looked across at his old home. He missed living there, as he’d been able to go and get a warm-up and a quick brew, if he’d been cold. But now he used it just to hide from the rain, and to scan the empty house and recall his childhood and that of his own family when they were young. High Ground was alright, Dorothy liked it, but it would never be home, he thought, as he glanced at the row of desolate, near-derelict houses in the grey of the autumn afternoon. The waters from the river had swollen and burst its bank, along with the excess water from the flay-pits, and they were now lapping at his old home’s door as well as at three other houses along the terrace. If he had still been living here, the cosy kitchen they had lived in would have been flooded, and he could imagine the chaos that a flood in his old home would have entailed. It was a g
ood job the row was empty now, although what to do with the houses, he didn’t know. They were only really fit for workshops, although even then he wondered if they would be safe.

  ‘I’m off now, Mr Bancroft. I’ll come tomorrow if the weather is decent. Otherwise it’ll be Monday before you see me. Although I’ll be at Lucy’s wedding on Saturday,’ Archie Robinson said, disturbing Bill from his thoughts as he gazed across the yard at his old home.

  ‘Listen – can you hear that noise?’ Bill held Archie back and pulled off his cap to listen to the noise that was building in volume, from the row of houses. It was a low, rumbling noise, and Bill and Archie stood still as it grew louder and louder.

  ‘Bloody hell, the houses are collapsing! That chimney’s on the wobble, and look at the end house, which used to be Farrington’s: the wall’s collapsing. Let’s get back, else we will be buried in all the debris.’ Archie pulled on Bill’s jacket, dragging him to the back of the yard and putting the flay-pits before them, as the whole terrace started to lose slates and chimneys, and the walls buckled like wet paper. It deafened the two of them, as they watched the devastation unfold before their eyes. Both were covered with dust and rubble from the collapse of the row into a gaping sinkhole that opened up in the ground before them, taking the once-loved homes into its depths.

  ‘My houses – they’ve gone, there’s nowt left! My home has been washed away. Another minute, if you hadn’t talked to me, and I’d have been inside it. I was just thinking to stay there for another hour, to see if the weather faired.’ Bill looked dumbstruck and ashen-faced as he turned to Archie. ‘God help us, if my family had still been living there, or the lads working here – I’d have had their deaths on my hands. Thank God everybody had moved out.’ He walked gingerly towards the gaping sinkhole and the remnants of Providence Row, with Archie following him. They both looked at the one piece of red-brick gable end that stood teetering on the edge of the hole. The inside walls were still covered with a bright-yellow wallpaper, reminding them both that up till several months ago it had been home to the flay-pit worker Thomas Farrington. The rest of the house was now deep down in the cavern that had once been the underground workings.

  ‘Well, I don’t think you’ll be moving back in there in a hurry,’ Archie said. ‘But at least there’s no damage done to the pits. You’ve still got them and the yard. Things could have been worse.’

  ‘I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. But aye, lad, you are right: things could be a lot worse. I could be buried down there with the house, and nobody would know. At least that saves me from pulling the bloody things down.’ Bill looked out from under his dripping wet, dust-filled hair. ‘Now I’ve just got to tell the wife and put a brave face on it all, because there’s nowt we could have done to stop it. Now get yourself home, and I’ll see you when I see you. If it’s stopped raining in the morning, we will have to have a tidy-up and make the most of what Mother Nature has left us with. That wall will have to be knocked down, else it’ll fall on somebody’s head. I don’t know about you, but my legs feel shaky. I’ve never seen anything like that before.’

  Bill drew his fingers through his hair and stood and looked around him. His past life had disappeared before his eyes, and he knew it could so easily have been him along with it. He watched as Archie, with his bait box under his arm, picked his way around the rubble on his way home, leaving Bill to think how lucky he was not to have been in the house when it collapsed. He was hesitant to leave the pits as they were, but it would soon be dark, and he needed to get home to change out of his sodden clothes and tell Dorothy of the disaster that had taken place. It was the end of their home at Providence Row. It was just as well they had all settled into their new home, and that Adam had been kind enough to let them stay there.

  ‘Oh, Bill, you could have been killed! And is there nothing left of all of the houses?’ Dorothy and Lucy looked at Bill, as he shed his sodden clothes in front of the fire and stood in his undergarments, shivering and shaken by the day’s events, while Lucy put some dry clothes in front of him and Dorothy made him a hot, sweet drink of tea.

  ‘No, only a wall end, and I bet that collapses into the same hole by the morning. I only hope it doesn’t take any of the flay-pits with it. I’ve never seen the rivers rise as quick, and for there to be so much water on the land. The bridge over the river at Four Lane Ends is near to flooding. It’s got to stop raining soon.’ Bill’s hands shook as he took hold of his warm mug of tea and looked at his wife and daughter. He’d lost his home and nearly his livelihood, but at least he was still alive.

  ‘I hope it stops raining for Saturday, although that’s of little concern, compared to what you’ve been through today, Father.’ Lucy looked at her shaken father and knew that losing Providence Row would be hurting him. ‘You’ll have to rebuild,’ she said quickly.

  ‘No brass, lass. And anyway the land’s not fit to build on, and who’d want to live next to the flay-pits again? We were glad to leave it all behind. No, we’ve got to let it go and make the best of what we’ve got. At least we will have got you off our hands, come Saturday, and we know that you’ll be looked after and cared for. It’s up to me to make sure the rest of the family are looked after and get decent jobs. I don’t want my three lads working in the pits; they deserve something better. It’s a mucky, hard job and it doesn’t pay that well. Let me be the last generation to work there.’ Bill looked at his family and silently thanked the Lord that he was still with them and had survived the afternoon’s events.

  By the following morning the rain had eased and the sun was trying hard to break through.

  ‘There’s enough blue sky to make a sailor a pair of trousers,’ Lucy said as she opened the front door of High Ground and looked out on the sodden moorland, with abundant white-watered springs gushing down the hillside. ‘I’ll go and rescue my chrysanthemums from Adam. They’ll keep now, if I pick them for Saturday. But I’ll walk to the flay-pits with you first, Father – not that I’ll relish seeing the devastation the storm has brought.’

  ‘Well, you both take care. I’ll not be coming with you, as it’ll break my heart. It was our first home, and I know it wasn’t the most glamorous of places, but it hurts to think there’s nothing left of it now.’ Dorothy sighed. ‘I bet folk will come to look at it from far and wide – there’s nothing they like more than revelling in somebody else’s misfortune.’

  ‘Aye, I know. That’s why we’ve got to be away. It’ll be a shock for the workers that left early yesterday – they’ll not know what’s happened.’ Bill pulled on his jerkin and donned his cap as he made for the door. ‘Your skirts will be sodden by the time you get to Black Moss, there’s that much water on the ground.’ He looked at Lucy, thinking she must be more desperate to see Adam than the flowers, if she was to accompany him to work and then go on to Black Moss.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, it’s only water. If I don’t go today, I’ll never get there, as it’s the eve of my wedding tomorrow and we will all be too busy. Adam’s got Ivy and her husband visiting, although they are staying at the Brown Cow in Keighley. And I want my last day of being single to be with my mother at home.’ Lucy pulled her shawl around her shoulders and waited for her father.

  ‘Very well then, but you’ll be upset by what you see.’ Bill looked at Dorothy and shook his head. There was no convincing Lucy to stay at home, despite the mud and rain that would ruin her skirts.

  Bill was right. There was a crowd gathered around the sinkhole and what remained of Providence Row when they arrived at the flay-pits. The gable end, which had been upright when Bill left, had now also fallen into the abyss and, along with it, a small part of the yard. Bill felt his stomach churn and his head go light as he realized it was the lime pit that held their secret that had slipped into the chasm. He looked down into the depths of the hole and hoped that nothing of their deeds was visible. People around him shook their heads and patted him on the back, muttering words of consolation, before talking amongst themselves and looki
ng at Bill and his daughter.

  ‘Well, there’s not much left, is there?’ Lucy looked around her at the destruction. ‘Looks like it’s taken the lime pit as well,’ she said, not adding any other comment, but knowing that her father knew full well what she was thinking.

  ‘Aye, happen for the best, lass. Things always happen for a reason. Perhaps it was time to move on. The old place knew it had been abandoned, and so nature reclaimed it.’ Bill paused. ‘At least I still have my living, and that’s the main thing. Time to get these gawping workers of mine back to work, else they’ll look down that hole all day. They can do that when they help me fill it in, with the rubble and soil from up above the flay-pits. Time to bury the past and move on. What’s done is done, and there’s no going back. You go and see that fella of yours and enjoy your life, because it will be over all too soon, and there will be things that come and challenge you both in your life that you can do nothing about.’ Completely out of character, Bill gave Lucy a swift hug and then pushed her on her way to the man who had replaced him in her heart. She had all her life in front of her, and he was sure it would be a better one than he could ever offer her, if Lucy stayed at home.

  ‘I’ve missed you.’ Lucy held Adam close. ‘I know it’s only been a few days, but I’ve counted the minutes, even the seconds,’ she whispered as he kissed her and looked into her eyes.

  ‘And I have missed you. The place doesn’t feel the same nowadays if you are not here,’ Adam whispered. ‘Not long now, and you’ll be here permanently as my wife.’

  ‘I’m not staying, as we both have so much to organize and do. We have had a disaster down at Providence Row – or should I say what used to be Providence Row. It got washed away when the ground collapsed from underneath it yesterday evening, and my father’s there now, trying to make sense of it. You do realize that we owe you our lives. If it hadn’t been for your offer of a new home for my family, we would still have been living there. Just another thing that I have to love you for.’ Lucy kissed Adam again and watched as he in took the news.