by Janet Tanner
Unable to bear the delay a moment longer Sarah let go of Billy’s hand.
‘You’ll be all right now, won’t you? Look – we’re almost home.’
‘Yes, we’ll be all right, Sarah,’ Phyllis said. ‘You go on.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yes, sure. Come out later and play five-stones or hopscotch.’
‘I will.’ But there was no comfort in the illusion of normality.
She began to run down the hill towards the cottages. The ribbon bow tying up her curls came loose; she pulled it out and thrust it in the pocket of her pinafore without stopping, and her booted legs almost ran away with her on the last steep slope. The impetus kept her going as she turned into the cinder track and down the short path that led across the square of flower garden to her front door.
Often on afternoons such as this the door would be open to let the fresh air and sunshine in and the heat of the fire – kept burning whatever the weather for cooking and boiling a kettle – out. Today however the door was closed. Sarah’s foreboding deepened. She lifted the latch and went in.
The door opened directly into the small living-room with its low ceiling and flagstoned floor. It was empty. Worse, the fire had gone out and nothing appeared to have been done since Sarah had left for school this morning. The breakfast was still laid, the neat checked cloth covering the scrubbed wood table, the loaf of bread on the blue china bread plate, the mug of tea Sarah had not had time to drink with the milk congealed on the top in a creamy skin.
Sarah ran to the door that concealed the staircase and opened it.
‘Mum!’ she called. ‘Mum – are you all right?’
No reply.
‘Mum!’
She started up the stairs, her boots clattering on the bare narrow boards. The door at the top of the stairs was ajar, letting out some light; behind it lay Sarah’s bedroom and beyond that, her mother’s.
Sarah loved her little room with its freshly starched curtains and bright rag rugs which she had helped to make with remnants of material from her mother’s ‘piece box’. Most children she knew had to share their room with several brothers and sisters, some even had to sleep with their parents, but because Dad had died in India when she was just a baby she was an only child and this room was hers and hers alone. Today however she sped through it without so much as a second glance, her heart beating hard in her thin chest.
‘Mum!’
She had drawn back the curtains before going to school and the light, streaming in at the window, glared harshly upon the narrow bed and the woman who lay there. Rachel Thomas was twenty-eight years old but now she looked twice her age, her skin waxy and shining with a faint film of moisture, her thick brown curls tangled and lacklustre against the vomit-stained pillow. Pain had etched great dark circles under her eyes so that they looked sunken and even her cheeks seemed to have hollowed beneath the high and delicate cheekbones.
Sarah caught her breath in a small frightened gasp. This haunted spectre did not look like Mum at all – Mum was pretty, her eyes were bright and sparkling, if a little strained, and she laughed a lot, even when she was tired. Only last week she and Sarah had gone for a walk in the woods behind the house; in the cool of the evening Mum had caught Sarah’s hand and they had skipped together along the path, more like sisters than mother and daughter, until the pink colour had been whipped up in Mum’s cheeks and she had leaned against the stile to catch her breath, tossing her head back and laughing with the lovely creamy skin stretched taut on her throat and her teeth showing even and pearly between red parted lips. Only her hands were less than beautiful, the once slim fingers calloused from the hours when she worked with her needle and a little puffy from the hard menial work of caring for a home and a child. But Sarah was not looking at her hands. She saw only full breasts beneath a striped cotton blouse, a narrow waist, hips lending flare to a flowing serge skirt and rich brown curls escaping from their pins, and thought: when I grow up I want to look just like Mum.
Now she gripped the doorpost, gazing with huge frightened eyes at the parody of all that life and beauty, and the almost nameless anxiety that had been growing inside her all day suddenly crystallised and gathered into a hard knot beneath her breastbone.
‘Mum!’ she whispered fearfully.
Rachel’s head moved restlessly on the pillow.
‘Sarah – is that you?’ Her voice sounded oddly strangled.
Sarah took a half step into the room. ‘Yes, Mum.’
‘Sarah – come here – try to help me up – I can’t … breathe.’
Reluctantly Sarah approached the bed, trying not to gag at the smell of vomit.
‘Does your tummy still hurt, Mum?’ she whispered.
‘Yes – no – everything hurts …’ Rachel choked. ‘Help me up …’
She tried to lever herself up as Sarah put her arms around her shoulders, heaving, but the minute her head was raised she fell forward, dizzy and fainting, and in panic Sarah pushed her back onto the pillows.
‘Mum – Mum, whatever is the matter with you? Shall I get the doctor, Mum?’
She had asked the same question this morning before she had left for school and been given an emphatic ‘ No’. Then, in spite of her pain, Rachel had thought of the bills a doctor’s visit would bring – bills she could ill afford to meet. ‘It’s only a stomach upset, it will pass,’ she had said and at the time, before the terrible foreboding had begun creeping up on her, Sarah had believed her. Mum knew best. If she said there was no need for a doctor then that was the end of the matter. She was a grown-up and she was always right. Now …
Sarah looked at her mother and knew with a horrible certainty that this time she had not been right.
Oh why didn’t I tell someone? Sarah wondered fearfully. Even Miss Keevil … But Miss Keevil would not have done anything. Miss Keevil never helped anyone and certainly not Sarah or Sarah’s mother. Miss Keevil seemed to reserve a special dislike for her, Sarah had noticed, and thought it probably had something to do with the fact that while Rachel was so pretty and full of life, Miss Keevil really was so dreadfully plain.
‘Mum, shall I fetch the doctor?’ she asked again.
Rachel’s head moved feebly against the pillow and she whispered something unintelligible. Sarah leaned closer, struggling to understand.
‘What is it, Mum? What do you want me to do?’
With a tremendous effort Rachel gathered her remaining strength. Her hand, cold and clammy, found Sarah’s arm and closed around it in a convulsive grip.
‘Tell Mr Morse,’ she managed breathlessly. ‘Do you understand? Tell Mr Morse.’
Sarah managed to nod but she was puzzled.
She knew Mr Morse, of course – Mr Gilbert Morse of Chewton Leigh House whose family had owned the whole valley for generations and who had factories in Bristol besides. Everyone in Chewton Leigh knew Mr Morse though Sarah felt with a slight sense of superiority that perhaps she knew him better than most for her mother was seamstress to his second wife, Blanche. In fact before that she had also been seamstress to his first wife, Rose, except that in those days she had been not so much seamstress as assistant seamstress for she had been apprenticed to Madame Dupont who had a dressmaker’s shop in Bristol and a list of clients with impressive sounding names and even titles amongst them. Sarah never tired of hearing about those days and though she had begged the story so often that she could relate every detail by heart she still pestered her mother to tell her yet again of how she had first come to Chewton Leigh House as a girl of seventeen, charged along with Madame Dupont with making a new season’s wardrobe for Mrs Rose Morse. Sarah loved to hear about the elegant dresses with their leg-of-mutton and puff sleeves and taffeta linings which rustled when they moved and which Mum and the exotic-sounding Madame Dupont had created together, making copies from the two or three models Mrs Morse had ordered from the Paris couturiers and staying in the big house for several weeks until the work was done. Sometimes when Mum was relating the stories
she would delve into the treasure chest she called a ‘ piece box’ and fish out odd-shaped remnants of the very fabrics they had used – the velveteens and satins, the silks and cashmeres and tulles, all in vivid shades of scarlet, magenta and electric blue.
There were more up-to-date scraps in the box too, of course, but they were in the quiet tasteful colours which were now in vogue and it seemed to Sarah there was less romance in them. Mrs Rose Morse was dead now and the second Mrs Morse – a widow with a son of her own – was not nearly as pleasant to work for as the first one had been, or so Mum said, for she was picky and complaining, forever changing her mind about this alteration and that, and keeping Mum working at the house long after she should have been at home with Sarah. Mum did not sleep at Chewton Leigh House now, of course. Since she lived in a cottage on the estate there was no need for that. And Madame Dupont had long since retired, her sight ruined from the years of close work. ‘It will happen to me one day, Sarah,’ Mum had said and the thought filled Sarah with dread.
‘Why do you do it then?’ she had asked and Mum had laughed.
‘How do you think we would live if I didn’t?’ she had asked. ‘Anyway it’s better than washing clothes and ruining my hands or scrubbing floors and getting fat knees.’
Sarah had been doubtful. Eyesight seemed far more precious to her than either of those things.
‘I’m lucky to have the job,’ Mum had gone on. ‘It’s thanks to Mr Gilbert Morse, I’m sure. She would never have employed me if it had been left to her. She would have brought in another seamstress from Bristol with a fancy French-sounding name – though I’ve proved I can sew every bit as well as the best of them. But I’d never have been given the chance if it hadn’t been for Mr Morse. He’s been very good to us.’
‘That’s because my dad died in India in the service of his country I expect,’ Sarah had said and Rachel’s eyes had gone far away as they always did when Sarah talked about the soldier father she had never known.
‘It’s because Mr Morse is a gentleman – and a very kind one too,’ she had said. ‘There are those who hold grudges just because he owns most of the valley and nearly every man hereabouts depends on him for their living. But that’s no more than common jealousy. Mr Gilbert Morse is a good man, Sarah, and don’t you let anyone tell you different.’
Now, as she sat beside her mother’s bed looking fearfully at the ashen face beaded with cold sweat Sarah remembered her words. Mr Morse was good and kind and Mum thought he could help. But for the life of her Sarah could not see how …
‘Rachel! Rachel – are you up there?’ a voice called from the foot of the stairs.
Sarah jumped up, relieved, freeing her hand from her mother’s clammy grasp, and ran to the bedroom door.
‘Mrs Stickland!’ she called and heard the footsteps clattering up the stairs.
‘Are you all right, Rachel? Our Phyll just told me Sarah said you weren’t well …’ She broke off abruptly as she reached the doorway and caught her first glimpse of the figure on the bed. ‘Oh my lord, Rachel, whatever is the matter with you?’
‘She’s sick,’ Sarah said in a small voice.
‘I can see that! Why ever didn’t you tell me? Has she been here on her own all day like this?’
Sarah could not reply. Dolly Stickland crossed to the bed, straightening the rumpled covers and brushing Rachel’s tangled hair away from her grey face and Sarah’s eyes filled with tears of relief that she was no longer alone.
‘Why in the world didn’t you get the doctor?’ Dolly demanded. ‘Lord help us, Sarah, look at her!’
Sarah looked, scrubbing the tears out of her eyes with her fists. Her mother’s head had lolled to one side and her eyes were closed. For one terrible moment Sarah thought that she was dead.
Dolly Stickland brushed another wisp of Rachel’s hair away from her face, as if by tidying her she could somehow work a miracle.
‘She’s gone unconscious,’ she said. ‘ I won’t answer for what will happen if she don’t have the doctor to her quick sharp. She’s been left too long already.’
‘She said she didn’t want …’ Sarah began, unwilling to be blamed for her mother’s neglect.
‘Never mind what she wants or don’t want,’ Dolly interrupted roughly. ‘You run down to the village and get the doctor now. Tell him to come quick. Tell him I said.’ She bustled across the room, a big buxom woman with a comfortable manner, taking Sarah by the arms and bundling her towards the door. ‘ Go on with you now – and run all the way. Do you hear me?’
Sarah nodded. In the doorway she turned, looking back at her mother. The stillness was even more frightening than the restlessness had been.
‘Go on!’ Dolly ordered harshly.
Sarah fled, clattering down the stairs where her boots caught on the treads and through the kitchen and it was as if the momentum of her legs was echoed by the quickening beat of her heart. Phyllis and Billy were seated on the low stone wall outside their house, staring curiously at the door of the Thomas home but when Sarah came flying out she passed them without a word.
The lane climbed steeply in the direction of the village but she ran until her heart seemed to be bursting within her and her legs were trembling lumps of jelly. Then as she eased to a walk she seemed to move so slowly she could not bear it and somehow, sobbing with the effort, she was running again. By the time she reached the first straggle of houses she was gasping raggedly and when the lane sloped down again past the Plume of Feathers public house, the Chapel and Perry’s little General Store a stitch was jabbing painfully at her side and her legs were running away with her.
The doctor’s house was at the far end of the village, a pretty yet substantial house set back a little from the road and half hidden by a privet hedge. Sarah ran up the path and jangled the bell-pull set in the ivy around the front door. When there was no immediate answer she jangled it again and this time it was opened by the doctor’s maid wearing her starched white afternoon cap and frilled apron. Sarah recognised her as one of the ‘ big girls’ who had left school the previous summer to take up employment.
‘Please, I want the doctor,’ she managed with the little breath she had left.
Edie the maid sniffed. ‘Sorry, but he’s hout.’
The sense of nightmare began to spiral in Sarah once more.
‘I’ve got to see him! It’s my Mum – she’s been took bad – really bad. Mrs Stickland said I was to fetch him right away.’
‘I told you – he’s hout.’ Her voice was supercilious; she was enjoying her little bit of power. The door slammed shut.
For a moment Sarah stared at it in disbelief and a sense of utter helplessness added to her panic. Dare she ring the bell again? But if the doctor wasn’t there he wasn’t there. She pressed her knuckles against her teeth in an agony of indecision. And then she found herself forgetting Dolly Stickland’s instructions and remembering only Mum’s.
‘Tell Mr Morse,’ Rachel had said.
Of course! Mr Morse was power; Mr Morse could do anything. And he was good and kind, Mum said, not a bit the way people expected gentry who owned them body and soul to be. If only she had done what Mum had said and gone to Mr Morse in the first place! That stuck-up Edie would never have dared to slam the door in his face!
Sarah turned and ran down the path of the doctor’s house as if all the demons in hell were after her. Edie, peeping through the curtains and wondering if she had exceeded her duty in sending Sarah away without a list of the houses where Dr Haley might be contacted saw her go through the gate in a flurry of petticoats and wondered what on earth had caused such a wild flight. But at least it salved her conscience a little.
‘She came here for a dare, I bet!’ Edie thought primly. ‘And now she’s hopping it quick before she gets caught!’
Unaware that Edie was watching her Sarah ran through the gate, leaving it swinging on its hinges, and started down the road.
Chewton Leigh House was more than a mile outside the village but th
e distance did not daunt her. She had walked it sometimes with Mum and she knew every step of the way. No, it was the need for haste that frightened her, bubbling inside her with more and more urgency like a kettle coming to the boil. She ran until she was breathless, her legs aching, her feet in their tight-fitting boots hot and sweating, and all the while the lane undulated, up, down a little, up again, a slow yet remorseless climb.
At last she reached the crest of the hill and the chimneys of Chewton Leigh House came into view, an impressive forest above the grey slate of the roof. The road wound down round this bend and that, the direct route lay across the fields. Sarah hesitated for a moment. The fields were part of the Chewton Leigh Home Farm and in summer there was always a herd of heifers in one or the other of them and sometimes a bull too. Though she was country born and bred Sarah was a little afraid of heifers, who tended to chase anyone entering their field like a pack of hounds after a fox, and she was utterly terrified of the big old black bull. But today she was prepared to risk anything to get help for her mother. She stopped at the gate and peered over. The heifers were in a far corner of the field, grazing and flipping their tails at the flies in the sunshine. Of the bull there was no sign. Sarah scooped up her skirts and clambered over the gate. She ran as fast as her aching legs would carry her, almost tripping over on the uneven turfs, afraid to look back in case she should see the heifers galloping in pursuit. When she reached the gate at the far end of the field she climbed it quickly and jumped down into the lane almost opposite the gates of Chewton Leigh House, landing with a soft thud on the grass verge and stumbling forward onto hands and knees.
‘Hoi! Where do you think you’ve bin to?’ The voice was gruff; Sarah jerked round to see a man working at the hedge where it had sprouted out to overhang the road. He was in shirt sleeves, the cuffs rolled back to the elbows to reveal thick forearms tanned nut brown by the sun, his trousers were fastened round the waist with a length of thick twine and an ancient hat was jammed on his head to shade his leathery face. The look of him could have been every bit as daunting as that gruff voice but Sarah felt only a rush of relief as she recognised him.
