Lily's Journey

by Tania Crosse

  ‘Yes, of course I do, you stupid child.’

  ‘And was he very strict?’

  ‘He’d certainly make you go to chapel decently dressed.’

  ‘I don’t think he would, make me go to chapel, I mean.’

  ‘I suppose that woman brought you up as a heathen, then, did she?’

  I was seething. If he might have been able to persuade me to go with him, I certainly wasn’t going now! Not after hearing him speak of my mother like that. Again! ‘No, she didn’t. She was Chapel, just like you. Only she didn’t ram her religion down my throat.’

  ‘So you’re not coming, then?’

  ‘No.’

  We stared at each other, horns locked, for all of ten seconds before Sidney went out, slamming the door behind him, and I breathed a sigh of relief. So his father had been a Methodist preacher. Well, that perhaps explained Sidney’s religious verve. I wondered what his mother had been like. A mouse, dominated by her husband, or – dare I say it – more like me?

  I had bought a cheap hand and spring joint with our coupons and it would take all morning to roast. I actually found keeping an eye on the range quite satisfying. Not only had I mastered the thing when Sidney had doubted I could, but there was a strange sense that I was living as the occupants of the cottage had done a hundred years before. As Artie Mayhew’s mother would have done. I wondered if I would ever see him again.

  Sidney returned in a better mood and actually commented on the delicious meal, which was encouraging. By the time we had finished and cleared away, it was so late that if I’d walked into Princetown to see my new friends, I’d just about have time to say hello before I’d have to set out for home if I was to get back before dark. And then I remembered my odd encounter on the bus, and decided to go and take a quick look at the Merrivale stone row which should be easy to find being not so far from the main road.

  The sky was low with a canopy of dense, white cloud, and as I stood on that wild, exposed spot on that first Sunday afternoon just into December, I could understand why ancient man could find some sacred significance in such surroundings. I could somehow imagine some strange ritual being conducted there by a mythical figure in a long robe with a grizzled, ancient face and grey hair blowing in the wind.

  I shook my head, mystified by the fanciful vision that had drawn itself in my brain. I stayed there for a few minutes, allowing the atmosphere to soak into my soul, and it made me feel close to Ellen, as if her shadow had brushed against my shoulder. Then I shivered, and as I turned for home, the first snowflakes began to fall.

  I reckon it must have snowed all night. When I drew my curtains at half past six the next morning, whiteness glowed at me through the darkness and heavy flakes were driving against the window pane. I shivered. Just what I needed on my first morning at work! I prayed the snow wouldn’t make me arrive late.

  I decided to pull my new thick socks on over my nylons, wear my Wellingtons and carry my shoes. Thank goodness I did. The snow was so deep as I battled my way through a near blizzard that it came over the top of my boots several times as I trudged through the white sea no one else had trod before. It was only just light, and with icy needles lashing into my face, I was worried I wouldn’t find my way in the unfamiliar landscape. But there was the faithful little train chugging through the pearly blanket that covered the moor, and as it reached the halt, Kate opened the door to wave to me.

  My cheeks puffed out with a ponderous sigh as I sank onto the seat next to her. ‘Oh, gosh, I didn’t know if I’d make it! The snow’s so deep.’

  Sally grinned back. ‘Oh, you’ll get used to it. We have snow every winter. This is nothing. I remember that winter, forty-six to seven, wasn’t it? We had drifts as high as houses. The train really got stuck then, and they had to call in the Navy from Plymouth to dig it out.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I remember that winter,’ I chimed in. It was good to have my new friends to chat with as it stopped me from thinking about my new job. I wasn’t exactly nervous, but I wondered what the people would be like that I’d be working with. ‘I must have been nine,’ I went on. ‘London ground to a halt and we didn’t have to go to school for—’ I broke off as we juddered to a halt, and I glanced fearfully at my new friends as Kate stuck her head out of the window.

  ‘Oh, just a drift,’ she announced cheerfully. ‘Mr Gough will get us through.’

  The train reversed. Oh, no, we weren’t going back to the station? But then we suddenly raced forward again at full pelt, faltered slightly and then ploughed onward with snow spraying up past the windows.

  ‘There we are. Told you so. Nothing to worry about. Train always gets through. Not like on the roads. Dangerous, they’ll be.’

  I could well imagine! And I was so grateful for the little moorland railway that was going to play such a part in my life. As I chatted to Kate and Sally, and their friend Peter who for once didn’t have his nose in a book, and thought of my new future here on Dartmoor, I wondered what Jeannie would think if she could see me.

  30th March, 1953

  Dear Jeannie,

  I haven’t heard from you since Christmas, so I hope you are all right. I know you’re not a great writer, but I’d love to hear from you. I think of you such a lot. I imagined the jolly Christmas you’d have had with your family. Mine was so dull.

  Huh! That was a bit of an understatement! The highlight had been going to chapel with Sidney on Christmas morning. I’d quite enjoyed it, actually, singing carols and with everyone in happy mood. I’d even seen Kate to wave to. But back at the cottage, the mood had been sombre. We had a normal dinner, nothing special at all, no crackers, no jokes or silly hats. I wanted to cry as I recalled the happy day I should have been spending with my mum. But I forced the memories aside. That was then, and this was now. Surely I should take advantage of it somehow. Our daily life was normally so busy that I had never felt the atmosphere was right to approach Sidney with the questions I was burning to ask. But when darkness closed in at five o’clock on Christmas Day, and with nothing else to distract us, I dared to consider the time had come.

  We had been sitting in silence reading. I was delving into Rumer Godden’s Black Narcissus, one of my favourite books that transported me to the exotic climes of the Himalayas. At least, it did usually, but now I found it difficult to concentrate as I summoned up my courage. A hot slick of sweat broke over my skin as I ventured, ‘You… you never speak about my mother. What was she like?’

  The room sizzled with tension. Sidney lifted his head, his eyes scorching into me so that I recoiled against the back of the chair. I’d clearly made a mistake.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about her,’ my father barked, dropping his gaze back to his Bible. That was it. Subject dismissed.

  I sucked in my lips. I felt half scared of him, but why should I be? My heart was pumping as I faltered, ‘I know it must be painful for you, but don’t you think I have a right? I don’t know anything about her.’

  His roar broke the general quiet so suddenly that I jerked on my seat. ‘Your mother was a conniving strumpet. Now is that good enough for you?’

  Ice ran through my veins, freezing solid somewhere below my ribs. I must have heard wrong. But I hadn’t. I was shocked to the core. I had imagined all along that Sidney had never mentioned my mother out of grief, not anger, and now… It was unbearable. My bottom lip was quivering. I felt let down, enraged, bitter, but above all deprived. Would I ever dare to ask him again? It had been Christmas Day, and yet I was in a pit of despair. Tears misted my vision, blurring the words as I had tried in vain to return to my book. I had felt lost. Ashamed almost, so that I couldn’t even tell Jeannie about it, so I continued the letter on an entirely different tack.

  The people I work with are all very nice, but we don’t have the fun you and I did. I get on very well with our supervisor, too. I have Wednesday afternoons off, of course, and sometimes I go to the pictures in Tavistock. I saw Cry the Beloved Country and Rebecca recently. Have you seen them? Then I
catch the same train home as my friends at the school. The weather here’s been quite spring-like the last few days, so at lunchtimes, I’ve had my sandwiches sitting by the old canal in the park and feeding the ducks. I keep hoping I’ll meet that handsome young man who nearly knocked me down in his car. I’m sure you remember me telling you about it. Wasn’t his fault, and he was gorgeous, but I haven’t seen him since.

  The other thing that’s happened with the better weather is a tradition on the train. I wondered what was going on! As I got on at the halt the other day, a couple of the schoolboys got off and began to run down a grassy track. Apparently they race the train! The railway has to make a great loop around King Tor because of the gradient and then comes right the way back on itself, nearly two miles altogether, whereas the grassy track that cuts across is only about a quarter of a mile. If the train wins, Mr Gough, the driver, waits for them to catch up! I was a bit late getting to the halt one morning and I was worried because there’s no other way to get to work, but bless Mr Gough, the train was waiting for me! Imagine that in London?

  And I must tell you this. The other day, Mr Gough was leaning out of the cab window as the driver does, and he had such a huge sneeze that his false teeth flew out of his mouth and landed somewhere in the grass. Well, he stopped the train and we all got out to look for them. It was just so funny! And then someone found them and gave them back to Mr Gough and off we went again!

  I paused, giggling at the memory and imagining Jeannie laughing as she read the letter. Oh, how I’d love Jeannie to be here to share all these new experiences with me. I liked Kate and Sally, but it wasn’t quite the same. My heart clenched with regret, but there was something I could do about it.

  Oh, Jeannie, I’d love you to see all this, and the moor. You can’t imagine how wild and enormous it is. I go exploring whenever I can. Wouldn’t you like to come and stay with me for a week in the summer? We’d have such a laugh! Do write soon and say yes! And tell me all about what’s going on in London.

  With lots of love,

  Lily.

  I read through the letter before I folded it and put it into the envelope. It made me sound so happy, which in some ways I was. But I couldn’t tell Jeannie how my father remained like a closed book, and that I had discovered nothing from him about my family. My brothers had been called Eric and David was all I had dragged out of him. When he had told me, I could see the pain on his face. I hadn’t intruded further.

  Chapter Five

  Apart from Sundays when I tried to spend a few hours with Kate and Sally, my favourite time was Wednesday afternoon, the one day in the week I arrived home before Sidney rather than after half past seven. As the evenings lengthened, I used that extra daylight to explore, mainly the quarry whose colossal dimensions never ceased to enthral me. Wednesday was also the only occasion when I was the first to see any post, which, as with many outlying addresses, was delivered later in the day, the isolated cottage being more easily reached on horseback.

  It was on one such afternoon in mid-April that I eagerly picked up a letter from the mat, hoping it might be a reply from Jeannie. It wasn’t. Instead, I found a brown, official-looking envelope, addressed to my father. I frowned. I had noticed that he had received several such letters of late, but to my knowledge, they had ended up in the range firebox. I was beginning to wonder what it was all about, and a niggling doubt took seed in my mind. My eyes kept being drawn back to the envelope as it sat on the table, as if it was one of those giant house-spiders. I expected it at any moment to raise itself up on eight hairy legs and scamper across towards me. It was somehow equally as menacing, and I eyed it warily.

  Up until then, it had been too cold to be in my room for very long, but that afternoon I went upstairs to listen to some music to keep my mind off the letter.

  ‘Would you mind if I got a gramophone?’ I had dared to ask one evening, trying to sound lighthearted about it. ‘I’d only play it in my room, of course, and not loudly.’

  Sidney glared at me, his eyes like flaming coals. ‘Ungodly, sinful things!’ he snarled. ‘So, no, you may not have one.’

  The hope plummeted to my feet, but surely it was a reasonable request. ‘Oh, please!’ I cajoled. ‘What harm is there in enjoying a little music? You sing hymns, don’t you? I promise I wouldn’t play anything noisy. Except the ‘Eighteen Twelve Overture’, perhaps. You know. Tchaikovsky. With the canons.’

  I could see the incomprehension on his face. I had learnt that he liked to think he was better educated than he was, and refused to admit to ignorance in any way. I thought everyone knew the ‘Eighteen Twelve’, but I supposed many people of my father’s generation had probably never had access to such things. Knowing what pleasure recorded music had always brought me, I felt a twinge of pity.

  ‘You’d probably like it,’ I said quickly, taking advantage of his momentary retreat before he came back to snap at me again. ‘I like classical music best, with nice melodies. I promise I wouldn’t play anything you disapproved of.’

  I didn’t add that there were some modern records I liked, such as Frankie Laine singing ‘I Believe’, but even that was a ballad. I waited, holding my breath. Sidney raised his chin, inhaling deeply through his nostrils to emphasise that he was in charge.

  ‘All right. But I don’t expect to hear it playing every hour of the day and night.’

  ‘You won’t, I promise. And thank you.’

  And so, on that afternoon when the letter lurked on the kitchen table, I wound up the gramophone handle and let my mind drift away with the few seventy-eights I possessed. I gazed out of the window, the dulcet tones of some philharmonic orchestra or other enhancing the spectacular views over the moor. Then I lay on my sagging bed with my eyes closed as I contemplated my life as it now was. I wished things weren’t as they were with Sidney. Nothing would have pleased me more than to talk to him about the family I had never known, but whenever I broached the subject, I was vehemently rebuffed. But I lived in hope that one day, he would open up.

  When it was time he was due home, I went downstairs to have a cup of tea waiting for him. For dinner, we were just having spam fritters with leftovers made into bubble and squeak, so there wasn’t much preparation to do. I had some ironing, though, which I always put off as long as possible. Using a flat iron heated on the range was the one thing I struggled with.

  ‘There’s a letter for you,’ I announced, nodding my head towards the table, and for some reason, my heart began to beat nervously.

  Sidney put on his spectacles and his eyes narrowed as he tore open the envelope. I pretended to busy myself at the range but I was watching him furtively. I was appalled as his face turned the colour of ripe mulberries, his cheeks bloating so that he resembled some unnatural gargoyle. For a few seconds, I was frightened as he looked as if he was about to have a fit and, indeed, he staggered sideways. But then he pushed past me, crumpling the letter into a ball and throwing it into the range firebox before storming outside.

  Quick as a flash, I grabbed the oven-gloves to turn the handle. The paper was just beginning to catch and I hooked it out, stamping the tiny flames with the back of the gloves until they were extinguished. The edges were curled and scorched, but the main text was still readable. And although I think it was the only really dishonest thing I had done in my life, I somehow felt compelled to read someone else’s correspondence. As it happened, I would have found out sooner or later, so I suppose it didn’t matter.

  At the time, though, I was so shocked that my heart flipped over in my chest. Sidney had, apparently, been ignoring letters to quit the property. The cottages had been condemned as unfit for habitation and demolition was due to start at the beginning of next month.

  It was my turn to feel weak at the knees and I lowered myself unsteadily into a chair. I had been flabbergasted at the lack of facilities at the cottage when I had arrived, but life there had provided a challenge and had been quite an adventure. But it had never really struck me that my new home could
have been deemed uninhabitable. I had seen people struggling in appalling, overcrowded conditions in London as a result of the Blitz destroying so many thousands of homes, and our cottage seemed somewhat peaceful after that. Quarrymen and their families had lived at Foggintor for a hundred years, and it struck me like a flash of lightning that I had enjoyed living here. And now it was to end. From the letter, Sidney had first been told about it six months before, so why had he ignored the eviction notices? Not for my sake, I was sure. But whatever the truth of the matter, it seemed I was now to be homeless again.

  The peace of the moor, feeling part of it with all my new friends in my daily life, had been healing my grief over Ellen, but now all the suppressed emotion flooded back. I knew that I had coped with my loss by convincing myself that Ellen’s death was merely part of the eternal plan of timelessness that Dartmoor inspired in me. But knowing that, once again, I had nowhere to live, brought the misery crashing down around me.

  I took a deep, calming breath and shook my head as I threw out the self-pity. This really wouldn’t do. Ellen had coped with the tragic death of her daughter and two grandchildren and, in later years, her dear husband. And here was I, crying because I could no longer live in a damp, crumbling, condemned hovel in the middle of nowhere.

  I got to my feet, pursing my lips defiantly as I prepared myself to face Sidney and marched outside to the garden. My heart was battering against my ribs as I waved the letter in the air and strode up to Sidney, planting myself before him.

  ‘Why have you been ignoring these letters?’ I demanded, bracing my shoulders.

  Sidney stopped what he was doing and thrust the garden spade hard into the earth. He glared at me, his face wild with anger, and I reared up my head to challenge his gaze.

  ‘How dare you read my post!’ he yelled. I’m sure they must have heard him down in Tavistock.