Poor Law (The James Blakiston Series Book 2)

by R J Lynch

  ‘Calm down? Them two treat us like dirt under their feet and I’ve to calm down?’

  ‘They’re gentry, man. They’ve been treating you like that all the days of your life. Did you think being constable would change things?’

  ‘Divven’t call Maggie Laws Maggie, for isn’t she better than you?’

  Jackson laughed. ‘There’s a few round here called her sweeter names than that. We might have, too, if we’d been a bit younger.’

  ‘And I haven’t to say that Susannah Ward is a young woman, or a show-off. Or that she might scream if she saw a murdered woman.’

  ‘Jeffrey, man. Drink your tea and shut up.’

  ‘And nor is it right for the likes of me to have a watch.’

  ‘Well, I manage without one.’

  ‘I saved a year for this watch.’ He took it from his pocket and gazed fondly at it. ‘And I’ll tell you something else. That overseer is sweet on young Kate Greener.’

  ‘She’s a bonny lass.’

  ‘Kate Greener this and Kate Greener that. The man cannot stop saying her name.’

  ‘Has he done her, do you think?’

  ‘A man doesn’t keep going on about a lass after he’s had a ride of her. Dreaming, man. He’s dreaming about doing her.’

  ‘You cannot blame him for that. By God, there’s something about that one.’

  ‘There is an’ all. If I was twenty year younger...’

  ‘You’d still be too old. And so is Blakiston, the dirty bugger.’

  ‘Get away, man. There’s no more than seven or eight year between them. Thomas Urwin was nigh on fifty when he wed Isabella Boosty, and her not turned eighteen. He was a mucky devil, mind. And she only married him so he wouldn’t have her father put away for debt. She’ll have thought he’d be dead in a year.’

  ‘Six month. She was a canny lass, Isabella.’

  ‘And look what happened. Another twenty year he lived, and a smile on his face every day of it. She bore him six children. No, man. Blakiston is not too old for Kate Greener. He’s too well born, but. That’ll be what holds him back. He’ll be one of them thinks you have to marry a girl to enjoy her and his family won’t let him. And now he wants me to search New Hope Farm to see if Maggie Laws’s killer left any traces. I said Susannah Ward would have cleaned the place too well and he said did I think she was covering her own tracks? The man’s not right in the head.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘This is good tea.’

  ‘It is good tea. And all the better for not having a penny paid on it to the Revenue. It came by sea from the Low Countries to the smugglers in Robin Hoods Bay, and from there to here. Has Job King talked to you?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘He has not, then. We should have done what he did twenty year ago and gone to America. We could be as rich as he is.’

  ‘If we were, I’d not have come back and rented Gaskell Lodge. What does he want here? He has no family left.’

  ‘To show people what he’s made of himself; that’s what he wants. He had no more than us when he left Ryton and now he’s hired me to work in his fields. He needs another man and I told him to ask you. He said he would.’

  ‘Ay, well, mebbes he tried. I’ve been all over the place with this killing.’

  ‘He’s paying me more than I ever earned. From anyone. He’ll pay you the same.’

  At Chopwell Garth, Florrie brought the family together to discuss the disaster that had struck the Laws family. Tom said Joseph was free to stay as long as he liked.

  ‘I’m a farmer,’ said Joseph. ‘I have to be on my farm, and in my fields. You know that. I should be there now. Who will look after my cattle? Susannah Ward? And we are half way through August and the men are due in a few days for the wheat harvest.’

  ‘Ned is there,’ said Tom. ‘Your beasts are as safe as they would be if you were looking after them yourself.’

  ‘Mebbes. Still, I must return.’

  ‘Joseph,’ said Florrie. ‘You have suffered the most terrible shock. To come home and find your wife...you must take more time to recover.’

  ‘Give me a dish of tea and a bite to eat, Florrie, and I’ll be off. You’ll be needing Ned here yourself, and I must be where I belong.’

  ‘You’ll leave Samuel with us, at least?’

  ‘No, man. The poor bairn has lost his mother. Is he to lose his father, too?’

  Lizzie said, ‘If you won’t leave the child here, Kate must come with you to look after him.’

  Kate stepped forward from her place by the wall. ‘Me?’

  ‘Who else? Would you leave your brother-in-law to be a mother as well as a father?’

  ‘He has Susannah Ward.’

  ‘She’s not family. And she’ll be off some day soon, to marry Jemmy Rayne and have his bairns.’

  Joseph said, ‘You can help me choose papers for the hall and the back parlour, Kate. Margaret had them sent from James Wheeley in London, but she never got the chance...’ He broke off, as though choked with emotion.

  The room fell silent. Four pairs of eyes stared at Joseph. Then Kate said, ‘Choosing papers is a wife’s job. I’m not coming to New Hope to be your wife, Joseph Laws.’

  ‘Of course not. I did not mean...I meant only...’

  ‘It is a woman’s place to choose wallpaper,’ said Florrie. ‘Everyone knows that. We’d live in a strange looking world if we let men decide what to put on the walls.’

  Kate stepped forward, close to Joseph. ‘I’ll come for two weeks,’ she said. ‘Four at the most. While you make other arrangements. But don’t think I’m coming to take Margaret’s place, because I’m not. And don’t think I’ll stay, because I won’t. And you’d better make sure there’s a lock on my bedroom door, and that I have the only key.’

  Those words cast a coldness that would not lift, and Joseph made haste to finish his tea and leave. When he had gone, he left behind four subdued people.

  ‘His wife is dead,’ said Lizzie, ‘and he wants to talk about wallpaper. You have a strange brother, Tom.’

  ‘He’s deranged, man,’ said Florrie. ‘Grief has turned his head.’

  ‘It’s turned a long way if he thinks he’s marrying me,’ said Kate.

  Tom said, ‘Wallpaper! Was that his idea, do you think?’

  ‘Nay, man,’ said Lizzie. ‘Margaret will have said what’s wanted. Paper will be a good idea in that farmhouse. It has that many dark passages and little rooms where the sun never shines. Like this one.’

  ‘Eh? You’re not thinking of paper in Chopwell Garth?’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ said Lizzie. ‘I am now. But I’ll give you a while to get used to the idea before we discuss it again.’

  Chapter 6

  That evening, Tom had business at Holy Cross Church and it was business that he hated. The Poor Law was administered for the benefit of the well-off who contributed the money that kept the poor afloat, but it was farmers – men of the middling sort who also contributed to the upkeep of paupers – who did the work. And Tom was now a farmer, and elected as an overseer of the poor.

  The overseers met in the vestry every fourth Saturday with the rector in the chair and keeping the minutes. There was a reason for that; the rector would always be a man who could write and most of the farmers lacked that skill. It also gave the Reverend Claverley the chance to adjust decisions that failed to accord with the wishes of the Bishop of Durham, one of the three largest landowners. The most pressing business of the evening concerned a young woman on whom the rector fixed a cold eye. ‘Ann Foreman. You have no husband, and yet you are pregnant.’

  The young woman said nothing. Tom felt sympathy that he knew was out of place in an overseer of the poor. He was here to represent the moneyed classes, and not to sympathise with those who came before the overseers. He had no doubt that people who thought themselves his betters would see in Ann Foreman a threat to the very existence of ordered society. What he saw was a sad young woman in rags.

  He knew how this was likely to end. She would bear a
bastard child, and the death rate among bastards was high especially when – as in this case – the mother had no family to fall back on who might give her and her child a place to live. What the overseers were required to do was to find a man who could be forced to pay for the child’s upkeep. If no such man could be identified, Ann Foreman would have to rely on the generosity of the parish. A generosity that did not stretch very far. He leaned forward. Gently, he said, ‘Ann. You were walking out with James Golightly, were you not?’

  The rector said, ‘James Golightly is no use to us. The man is dead. Killed in a brawl in a Newcastle alehouse. For which no one has been arrested or is likely to be.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ said Tom, ‘if he is the father… Is that what happened, Ann? Are you pregnant by James Golightly? Did he promise to marry you before some Newcastle lout kicked him to death?’

  As she nodded, the young woman before them burst into tears. ‘He said he loved me. He said we would be together the rest of our lives.’

  The rector’s expression became even darker. ‘Pah! Where would we be if every young woman in the land raised her skirts for every young man who said he loved her?’ He leaned forward, glaring at Ann. ‘Bankrupt. That’s where we would be. You have behaved like a common harlot, and like a common harlot is how you will be treated.‘

  Tom’s discomfort intensified. Rector Claverley had been in the crowd when Mary Stone had swung from the gibbet for the murder of her illegitimate child, conceived as part of her life as a prostitute – but Mary had only turned to prostitution when she was seduced by a man of the Blackett family while working in their Matfen Hall home as a maid and then turned out to fend for herself. Had the rector forgotten that? And had he forgotten also that it was the rector’s previous curate, Martin Wale, who had been one of Mary Stone’s most frequent customers? What did anyone imagine would happen to Ann Foreman now?

  His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. It opened to reveal the man Tom knew to be Job King’s steward. The rector raised his eyebrows in a mute question as to why the meeting was being interrupted.

  ‘Sirs,’ said the steward. He lowered his head the minimum possible amount in the rector’s direction. ‘Reverend. Mr King has sent me here. It is about the matter of the young woman there.’ He inclined his head in the direction of Ann Foreman.

  ‘Ann Foreman? Surely, Job King is not acknowledging…’

  ‘No, Reverend Claverley, Mr King is not the father of the young woman’s child. But he has heard the story, he knows no aid can come from the child’s father, and he wishes to help her.’

  ‘He will have to do that in any case,’ said the rector. ‘Those of sufficient standing in the parish bear the costs of bastards when no father appears who can be made to take his responsibility. And Job King is a landowner and one of those of sufficient standing.’

  ‘Yes, Rector, but Mr King knows the extent of parish generosity. He knows how often it ends in the death of the child. He does not want that to happen to Ann Foreman’s child, because Ann Foreman’s father and he were boyhood friends before Mr King went to the colonies.’

  Tom felt a great warmth enter his heart. The young woman and her child were to be rescued. Even the rector’s countenance looked lighter as he asked, ‘And what does Mr King propose?’

  ‘He offers Ann Foreman employment as a maid. She will be paid the same as Mr King’s other maids, and Mr King will bear the costs of her lying in and of the raising of her child and its education. All he asks of her in return is that she lies with no man in the future unless she has previously married him.’

  Tom looked at the young woman. He thought she might be about to cry, but the tears would be tears of great happiness and not of grief. She had been saved when she could not have expected it. Tom had never spoken to Job King, but clearly he was a very good man.

  Ann Foreman said, ‘I accept! I promise!’

  The rector turned his disapproving eyes on her. ‘It is not for you to accept or decline. We shall accept or decline on your behalf.’ He looked around at the other overseers as he said, ‘And we do accept, do we not, gentlemen?’

  Every face smiled and every head nodded. ‘We do.’

  Claverley turned again to the steward. ‘We will expect Mr King to sign a bond committing himself to these promises until the child shall reach the age of twelve years.’

  The steward nodded. ‘Mr King understands that. He asked me to tell you that he would sign such a bond as soon as it is presented to him. ‘

  ‘You may thank Mr King on behalf of the parish, and tell him that I shall draw up the bond myself. If he would care to call on me at the rectory between the hours of two and three tomorrow afternoon, I shall have it ready for his signature.’ Then he turned back to Ann Foreman, his glance already darkening. ‘You, young woman, are far luckier than you had any right to expect. You may go, and I suggest that on your way out you stop in the church and thank God from the depths of your sinful soul for the kindness with which He has dealt with you.’

  The meeting ended soon afterwards, and Tom set out to walk home. It was a pleasant evening and he was buoyed by Job King’s generosity. If only everyone in the parish who could afford to act with such kindness would do so.

  When he got home, he told the others what had happened. Lizzie said, ‘What a good man! I wonder what made him do it?’

  Florrie said, ‘He knows from his own experience what can happen to children who are thrown on the parish. And to their mothers, if it come to that.’

  ‘I know nothing about him,’ said Tom. ‘Only that he once lived here and has now returned from the colonies, a rich man.’

  ‘I remember him leaving. I must have been twelve years old, because it was later that year that I went into service at the Mill. Job King was the same age. I know that, because Job and I were baptised in the same week and we were baptised in a hurry because there was a heating sickness. It was killing people, and it killed children most of all. They did not want Job and me to die without baptism, but nor did they want us in the church and so the rector of the time came to our cottages. They thought Job and I would die, but we both lived – it was Job’s mother and father who died.’

  ‘Did the parish pay to send him to the colonies?’ asked Lizzie.

  ‘Not they. The overseers put him and his older brothers and sisters into the family of a farmer. My memory is not what it was and I cannot now remember which farmer.’

  ‘In this parish, though?’

  ‘Yes, in this parish, because this is where his father was settled – the King family had been here for at least three generations from what my father told me when Job left – but not in this chapelry, which will be why I can’t remember the farmer’s name. The parish paid them, of course, but it will not have been much – it is never much – and they will often have been hungry.’

  Tom smiled to think that his mother-in-law had travelled so little that she could not call to mind someone in her own parish but another chapelry.

  ‘I see you grinning, Tom Laws. Not all of us are so fortunate that we can be away hobnobbing with people from the other side of the parish. For some of us, just the business of staying alive has meant being stuck in one place the whole of our lives.’

  ‘I meant no offence, Florrie Greener. In any case, Job King did us overseers a very generous good deed.’

  ‘Aye, he’s a good man, right enough.’

  ‘So how did he afford the journey?’

  ‘I don’t believe he did. I think he did what Kate and Lizzie’s brother Joseph would have done had you not paid his fare to the Americas – he went as a bonded man, tied to work for another for his first five years there. Half of those who make that journey don’t survive those first five years. Job King must have had God on his side.’

  Job King went to the rectory at the appointed time to sign his bond. It might have occurred to him – indeed, it did occur to him – that, as a landowner and one who was doing an expensive favour for the parish, he might have ex
pected that the rector would come to him. But what did it matter? He knew the rector to be someone likely to value his own status as an educated man and the second son of an aristocrat over that of someone, however rich, who had left this parish a pauper. Things like that mattered to the rector; Job cared nothing about them.

  And for all that, Claverley’s welcome was cordial enough. ‘Mr King. Welcome. This is a generous act.’

  ‘God has been good to me, Rector. It is my duty to pass on to others what I have received.’

  Thomas shifted a little uneasily. Quoting one’s duty to God was his job, and one he usually reserved only for his Sunday sermon in church. Nevertheless, there was no arguing with what the man had said. ‘I have prepared the bond exactly as your butler indicated. But tell me: is it really appropriate to provide for the education of the bastard child of Ann Foreman and the late James Golightly?’

  Job struggled not to laugh. His years in the colonies had accustomed him to religious feelings and statements that were, for the most part, genuine; his return had reacquainted him with English hypocrisy in matters of the church but he could not yet say that he was used to it. ‘An educated man is less likely to become a charge on the parish when his own time comes.’

  ‘I see your point. By paying now, you may save money later.’

  The rector seemed impervious to the smile playing about Job’s lips. ‘In any case, here is the bond. And here is a pen. If you would like…’ He stopped speaking, his face reddening. Job King’s smile became broader.

  ‘To make my mark? In fact, Rector, I learned to read and to write while I was in Virginia. Write well enough to sign my own name, at least.’

  ‘My dear fellow, I did not mean…’

  ‘Content yourself, Rector. I was a pauper here. Paupers could neither read nor write. As I have said, that is why I would like Ann Foreman’s child to learn those skills. So that it – unlike me – will never be a pauper.’

  ‘Commendable. But, tell me: Will you still hold that view if the child is a girl?’

  ‘Even more so, for I have the highest regard for the intelligence of women and far too often I see it held back. Do you tell me that you are not educating your own daughter?’