Tall Chimneys: A British Family Saga Spanning 100 Years

by Allie Cresswell

  In the hoary dawn, Kenneth materialised in the chair opposite mine. His sandy hair was the colour of silver-gilt, his face milk-pale in the surrounding dimness, his hazel eyes shadowed, yet I knew they were riveted to my face. He sat perfectly still, his elbows on his knees, his chin on the steeple of his fingers, and I knew he had sat thus, without moving, for the duration of my story, his eyes fixed on mine even through the darkness.

  ‘Yesterday,’ I said, dredging the last malodorous bucket of silt and slime from the cesspool, ‘Ratton told Awan that John was not her father - you know this, she has told you - and that the man who is her father, Giles Percy, is discredited, in prison. I had hoped by sending her to school at Giles’ expense I could keep Awan from Ratton’s controlling influence, but he has made it clear that he will save or ruin us both.’

  Kenneth sat on, and said nothing. I tried to fathom his response to all I had said. Shock? Surprise? But his body language suggested neither. Indeed it suggested to me that all I had told him he had already known. I concluded that he, like me, could see no escape for me other than as the wife of Sylvester Ratton. The thought strengthened me. If Kenneth, who, all my life, had fixed and made good and directed all his strength and skill to restoring all that was broken for me, if he could see no alternative solution, then there wasn’t one.

  When he did move it was to fetch water and a towel from the kitchen. He knelt on the rug and bathed my feet, which were crusted with dried blood and dirt. He worked in silence, and by then I was all out of words. All the while the dawn crept in upon us, squeezing past the shutters with insistent beams, sliding itself beneath the door. The silver air warmed to palest rose, the blurred shadow of furniture became solid wood and in the ivy outside the window, a sparrow began to trill. Kenneth went to the window and pulled back the shutter. A sticky mat of cobweb stretched and tore; he wiped it away with his hand. The sun poured into the room illuminating the gathered dust and ancient grime, but banishing all the ghosts.

  ‘Now,’ he said, turning to face me. ‘Listen to me. Awan can go to this boarding school if she likes. I will take you both and you can look it over. But you won’t be marrying Sylvester Ratton.’

  ‘But Kenneth,’ I protested. ‘How will I live? I haven’t a job. I haven’t any money. I can’t even afford to pay Patricia for the room at the Plough.’

  ‘You can have a job, if you want one,’ he said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Mother needs help in the shop. She wants to retire. You’d know this, if you’d come to visit.’

  I felt as though I’d been slapped. ‘I didn’t think you wanted me to come,’ I said, petulantly. ‘I thought I reminded you of Rose too much.’

  He rolled his eyes in vexation. ‘How could any remembrance of her be too much? And we wanted you to visit, for yourself.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I stammered.

  He waved this away. ‘You should sleep now,’ he said, motioning upwards with his eyes, indicating I should do so at the gatehouse, and not back at the Plough. ‘Then come and see Mother and she’ll show you the ropes.’

  He began to cross the room, making for the door.

  ‘But Kenneth,’ I said, twisting in my chair. ‘My situation can’t be solved that easily. Haven’t you been listening? I have nowhere to live.’

  ‘Everything in good time, Evelyn,’ he replied.

  I got to my feet. They were painful. Standing on their lacerated soles made me wince. But I couldn’t let him go off with the idea he could fix this as easily as if it was a shed door or a leaking pipe. ‘You don’t understand,’ I cried, ‘you don’t understand at all.’

  He stopped in his tracks and swivelled to face me. His face, despite being in the full sun now, was dark with anger. ‘Don’t understand?’ he croaked. ‘I understand enough. All this…’ he swept his hand at arm’s length to indicate the room, not the room itself but all it contained, all I had deposited there through the dark watches of the night; my tears and dilemmas and inadequacies, my mistakes and compromises, my failures and bitter recriminations - all that I had poured out. ‘All this, I could have spared you, I would have spared you, if I had only been given the chance.’

  ‘The chance?’ I was stunned. What did he mean?

  He made an impatient movement. ‘Time, fate, circumstance, class. They all stood in my way.’

  ‘Stood in your…’ I echoed, stupidly.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Do you understand, at last?’

  He turned and disappeared through the low door.

  ‘Kenneth?’ I shouted. ‘Kenneth!’ And then, in wonderment, ‘you never said.’

  I heard the crunch of his feet on the gravel fading to distance, and out of the morning air, as fresh and good as she had been herself, Rose’s voice came to me. ‘He says plenty, but not with his voice,’ she had said. ‘You don’t know him well enough, or perhaps you’re not looking.’ I realised she had been right, I had never really looked at Kenneth, only seen him at a distance or from the corner of my eye, tinkering with this, hammering that, digging, pruning, his feet sticking out from underneath a motorcar. He had been at one and the same time a peripheral addendum to my life and the absolute mainstay of it. Always ready to step in but willing, also, to hold back. What had they been telling me, all those years, those skilful hands, those capable arms, that strong back? What message had been written in that diffident, watching brief I had so signally failed to decipher?

  All at once I was overcome with tiredness, and almost dragged myself upstairs to where Awan was curled up on the old divan. I snuggled in next to her and she pressed herself to me, and wrapped her arms around my neck, and we held each other like that for many hours.

  In the morning, when we descended the stair, someone - Kenneth, I presumed - had been there. The fire was lit and the kettle hung over it, steaming. On the table were a tea pot with tea-leaves, milk, bread rolls and butter and two hard boiled eggs - untold luxury in those ration-straitened times. Placed on the two chairs before the fire were the things from our abandoned bundles: our clothes and bedding, Awan’s dolls and trinkets. They had been washed and dried and carefully folded. We fell upon them as though they were old friends thought to be lost but now restored. Putting our own clothes on felt like finding ourselves again.

  I managed to avoid Sylvester Ratton for two weeks. He looked for me, I know, but some village conspiracy kept him away from me. When he called at The Plough Patricia told him I had ‘gone to town’, or ‘had gone to visit a friend.’ Other enquiries he made around the place were met with head-scratching bewilderment as though Evelyn Talbot had never been heard of in that parish. Awan and I moved to a less salubrious but much more discreet room at the top of the building where our light at night could not be spied from the road. We came and went through the back door, always on the look-out for the sleek, predatory outline of his motorcar. Meanwhile I worked at Mrs Greene’s shop, a place Ratton would never have dreamed of entering. She showed me how to arrange the shelves and deal with the ration books. She initiated me into her very efficient ordering system, explained stock control and bookkeeping. She shook her head over my efforts at baking, though; my scones were declared inedible and my pastry only fit for the pig. ‘I’ll continue to provide the baked goods,’ she declared. ‘You concern yourself with the shop.’

  It was a bargain I was happy to comply with.

  It seemed a sort of dream, the antidote to the nightmare I had been living within for the past weeks. The shop was busy and I was on my feet all day. The boxes of tins and packets were heavy and my back hurt, sometimes, from lifting them. But the parade of folks coming and going, the little snippets of chat, the genuine sympathy I received for my loss was so affirming it compensated for the physical hardships. I felt supported and encouraged and sincerely liked. I felt like part of the community. I felt happy. It was an emotion that had been a stranger to me for so long it took me a while to recognise it. In identifying it, my regret for the confining walls of Tall Chimneys grew less acute. In
the evenings Awan and I had our meal with Mrs Greene and the boys. Kenneth was always absent, off on some urgent building job, I was told. It was merry, sitting around the table with Bobby, Brian and Anthony, eating the good fare provided by Mrs Greene. I enjoyed the company. My recollection of our solitary meals at the too-large table in the cavernous old kitchen became less rosy.

  I did not know what the future held, where I would live, if my wages could support us. But I had taken the first step, thanks to Kenneth and his mother. It was the narrowest foothold on an almost vertical slope, but it was a beginning and, with the support of my friends, I did not feel that I had to climb alone. The question of Awan’s schooling lay in abeyance. We had agreed we would make no decisions, but let the aftershock of the fire and Ratton’s inflammatory meddling subside. The Grammar school term could start without Awan. Casterton did not commence lessons for another fortnight.

  Of course Ratton found me in the end. He burst into the shop, setting the little bell above it jangling in alarm. He looked flushed, broiled in a three piece suit far too hot for the weather, which remained glorious. A film of sweat beaded his bald head and upper lip. ‘Here you are,’ he declared, laughing, but his laughter was hard-edged with annoyance. ‘Have you been avoiding me? A very coy bride, you are! I wouldn’t have expected it, in the circumstances.’

  Of course I had always known that this moment would have to be faced, but I had not bargained on doing so unsupported. ‘In what circumstances?’ I asked, fighting the tremor in my voice, wiping my sweating hands on my apron.

  He glanced around the little shop and peered through the door into the rear kitchen. ‘Well,’ he said, confidentially, shooting the bolt closed across the shop door and stepping up to the counter, ‘you’re not quite the blushing virgin, are you?’

  I felt the blood drain from my face. I gripped the edge of the counter with both hands. ‘That’s not very chivalrous,’ I said.

  He smiled, self-deprecatingly. ‘I’m not exactly the shining knight, either. We know each other, you and I, don’t we? No need to pretend.’

  I made no response to this assertion, and presently he went on, ‘What are you doing here? Helping out for the day?’

  ‘Mrs Greene will be back any moment,’ I stammered. ‘She has only stepped out for a minute.’

  ‘She is gossiping with the coven of women at the far end of the street,’ he sneered. ‘She won’t be back for a good while. So! I have the attentions of the pretty lady shop-keeper to myself, which is just how I like it. I am not averse to playing games.’ His inference was as revolting and unsavoury as possible, the salacious glint in his eye made me want to retch.

  ‘I am playing at nothing,’ I told him, drawing myself up. ‘I am working here. Earning a living. To support myself.’

  His colour deepened, the flesh of his jowls becoming mottled and purple. ‘What?’ he hissed. ‘What are you trying to do? You will put me to shame! My wife has no need to work! Look at your hands!’

  I did so. They were indeed dirty as I had been decanting potatoes from a sack into a display basket. ‘There is no shame in honest work,’ I said.

  ‘Evelyn,’ he snapped. ‘You must stop this charade immediately, and come away with me. It isn’t seemly. I have made all the arrangements for the wedding, as you required. There are clothes to be purchased and decisions to be made about furniture.’

  ‘The furniture from Tall Chimneys?’

  He made a dismissive gesture. ‘No, of course not. New furniture, for our house. I have made arrangements for you to stay in a suite at The Grand in Leeds. You will marry from there. It is to be at the Registry office, as you wished, although it’s a grim enough building. And afterwards, we will go away.’

  ‘What about Awan?’ I was prevaricating, hoping against hope that someone would come to my aid.

  He made a grimace of irritation and distaste. ‘She will be at school by then, as you required. I have arranged it all as you wished. You try my patience, Evelyn, you really do. Come now. Come away with me.’ He lifted the flap at the end of the counter and stepped through it. He held out his fat, bejewelled hand. ‘Come along.’

  I took a step backwards. ‘I can’t leave the shop,’ I said, ‘and anyway… and in any case…’

  ‘Yes? What?’ he barked.

  I looked at him, my mouth flapping uselessly. Now that it came to it, I didn’t know how I would speak the words. His reaction - emotional breakdown or violent explosion - would be terrible.

  While I hesitated, whatever restraint he had been exerting on himself gave way. He lunged towards me. I was pushed against the shelves at the back of the shop. A hook where we hung paper bags gouged into my back. His hands roamed over my breasts and down between my legs, he mouthed my face, his breathing fast and hot. He was everywhere, it was impossible to fend him off. ‘Stop, it! Stop!’ I cried, writhing to free myself, but the space behind the counter was small and he blocked off escape via the kitchen.

  ‘You try my patience,’ he hissed again, pressing himself against me with his shoulder, wrestling the while with the fastenings of his trousers. ‘You’re a prick-tease, giving me such a little taste when I want it all, I want you all.’ He caught my hand and forced it down to his groin. ‘Feel that?’ he grunted, ‘this is what you do to me. But I’ll bring you to heel, woman. I’ll break you like a dog. Now open yourself, before I explode.’

  I cried out, nothing articulate, just an anguished sob. My nightmare was back. I was amongst the trees in the darkness. His hand was under my skirt and pushing aside my under-clothes. I reached with my teeth for his ear again but he landed me a swift slap which made my head ring. ‘Oh no, lady, you don’t get me that way twice,’ he snarled. His fingers were pushing. I could feel the scratch of his ring on my soft parts.

  ‘Oh God, no!’ I cried out, shrinking away from him. He forced himself between my thighs. But then the back door of the kitchen slammed open, heavy boots took four or five steps across the room and Kenneth burst into the confined space behind the counter. He grabbed Ratton by the scruff of his jacket and hauled him off me. The force of his action was so powerful Ratton was lifted from his feet and sent rolling across the counter top scattering six or seven dozen eggs from the display onto the floor of the shop. His trousers and under-clothes were round his ankles, larded with raw egg and dirt from the floor. He struggled to right himself, to stand up, dragging his trousers back to his waist. Kenneth vaulted over the counter in an easy leap and picked Ratton up bodily, one hand grasping the collar of his shirt, the other the loose waistband of the still-unfastened trousers. Then Ratton was hurtling through the plate glass of the shop window. He arrived on the pavement in a flurry of glass shards and egg shell and exposed privates.

  Kenneth stood within the shop, breathing heavily, his hands on his hips. ‘Evelyn won’t be marrying you,’ he stated. ‘Leave her alone.’

  ‘Oh! Ratton crowed, staggering to his feet and pulling his trousers up once more. ‘The love-sick swain has found his manhood, has he? Have you been ploughing her too? I suppose you know all her dirty little secrets?’

  ‘There’s nothing about her I don’t know,’ Kenneth said, quietly, ‘and none of it is dirty.’

  The women at the far end of the street, alerted by the sound of breaking glass, were hurrying to see what was happening. A few had rallied their husbands along the way. Bobby, who, I guessed, had gone to fetch Kenneth as soon as he had seen the black car parked on the road, was standing across from the shop with the other teenaged boys of his gang and Awan. He had his arm around her shoulders. I gave her an encouraging smile, through the shattered shop window and decimated window display.

  ‘Well,’ blustered Ratton, seeing he was out-numbered. ‘She’ll be sorry, that’s all I can say.’

  ‘She will not,’ Kenneth replied.

  Ratton took in the approaching crowd of villagers, the gaggle of youngsters on the far side of the street. He looked past Kenneth at me. His eyes bored into mine. His expression was pure mali
ce and wounded pride, his voice bitter with recrimination. ‘Your precious house is empty,’ he crowed in a voice calculated to carry to everyone in the vicinity, ‘every stick of furniture has been sold. Everything I could salvage has gone, sold to the highest bidder. That includes the pitiful daubings of the man you called your husband although,’ he raised his voice still further to ensure the crowd on the street could hear him clearly, and even turned to them to include them in his tirade, ‘the world and his wife knows you were only his whore. Tall Chimneys will be a derelict hull until hell freezes over. How the mighty are fallen!’

  Kenneth stepped coolly through the gaping window frame and took Ratton’s arm roughly. He began to frog-march him towards his car.

  But Ratton had not had his pound of flesh. ‘Oh! I forgot to mention,’ he cried, theatrically, over his shoulder. ‘The gatehouse is sold. That precious place of your deflowering - Colonel Beverage has bought it for his deranged sister in law. Little did these good people here know it was your couch of vice and depravity! Well, it will house a lunatic now - how do you like that?’

  I flinched in the shadowed recess of the shop. The gathered crowd gaped at his words. Kenneth bundled Ratton unceremoniously into his car and leaned in through the window to say something I could not hear. Then the engine started. But still Ratton was not done with me. As he drove past the shop he wound his window down to shout, ‘And as for Giles Percy, your bastard’s father, I’ll see he is convicted of every unnatural and bestial act, and everyone shall know who his daughter is.’ He waited to watch the effect of his words, a thin smile on his lips.