But it was thoughts of Olwen, pressed against him, laughing up at him, sharing his moment of happiness as they rode across the sands of Longland that filled his mind as he drifted into sleep that night. In his dreams they rode together while Spider and Mary nodded their approval, and he was transported out of the shabby, damp room to the cliffs where the sun shone and everyone laughed with them and wished them well.
Chapter Six
Pitcher began drawing plans of the alterations as soon as he knew clearly what would be required by the licence office. The walls to come down were marked and lines drawn where new ones would rise.
‘The yard and wall at the side of the stables must stay, I think,’ Barrass said as Pitcher stared at it wondering about an extension. ‘The boys use it for playing “Fives” and I think they would move to another drinking house if we deprived them of it.’
‘I agree,’ Pitcher smiled, ‘and damn me for not thinking of it myself!’
The wall was fronted by a flat piece of ground that had once been the floor of a store. It made an excellent court on which to play the game, which involved hitting the ball against the wall with a hand, which was usually protected by a glove or with material wound around it. For youngsters of less than three up to grown men, the wall was a popular and busy place. Barrass was right, the participants who collapsed with exhaustion and had to be revived by drink from Pitcher’s cellars would move somewhere else, and that would be a loss of good will as well as good money.
‘I did think to include a shovel board in the plans, Barrass,’ Pitcher mused, ‘but have decided that the space could be better used. Some, they say, are longer than three feet by thirty, though that I doubt.’
‘The smaller penny boards are popular now in London, or so the travellers tell us. Why not add one of those, they take up only a smallish table?’
‘Perhaps we’ll ask someone travelling to London or Bristol to buy one for us.’
‘The stables will need a lot of changing,’ Barrass said, looking at the narrow opening that required the wagoners to reverse in before returning to town. ‘We’ll have to make more room and widen the entrance so they can drive in and turn in the yard.’
‘It’s all in my plans,’ Pitcher assured him. ‘Storage under a low roof for temporary callers as well as flat carts; hay barns and warm stalls; the visitors will have the best, Barrass, the best.’
* * *
Sitting at the window of her parlour looking down at the two men below, Emma sighed. Only just clear of the dust and rubble of the recent building of the parlour, she had now to face weeks of it again. Dust and mess threatening her precious new furnishings, and the noise which made it extremely difficult to entertain. She patted her wig and tucked in a few stray ends and went down to join them.
‘I want you to promise that it will be completed before the summer ends, Pitcher,’ she pleaded. ‘There’s no point in getting it done then finding the travellers you hope to attract are all ensconced in their own home for the winter.’
‘Before summer’s end, Emma, I promise you that,’ he smiled. ‘Just so long as you don’t dawdle about the choice of furnishings for the rooms we will be letting.’
‘Ivor Baker has already been given the order to make chests of drawers and small tables for the rooms. It isn’t me who’s slow, Mr Palmer!’ she added with an offended tilt of her head.
Emma and Pitcher’s twins were not only unmarried; they had not even followers to boast of. Daisy was popular, seeming to receive plenty of invitations which she sometimes refused to attend unless her sister, Pansy, were invited too, but Pansy seemed reluctant to go to the parties and musical evenings that friends arranged. She seemed content to sit at her sewing, or take a gentle stroll along the shore, and even – horror of horrors – sit with the parlour door open listening to the activity in the bar-room below.
The recently built parlour was intended to improve things. With a decent room to withdraw to after a meal, Emma hoped that the increase in social gatherings she could now arrange would bring a selection of suitable young men for the girls to meet. Now, the fresh building work with its inconveniences had put a stop to it all for weeks, perhaps months.
It was only the strong possibility of better trade once the work was completed that stopped her from screaming in frustration. The grand carriages were bound to stop and spill respectable and eligible gentlemen at their door. Better than the assorted carts and wagons that stopped at present. She smiled as she imagined the scene, a double wedding with the twins dressed identically in gowns bought from London with the money the alehouse would earn.
Pitcher, seeing the tranquil expression on his wife’s face, smiled back at her and was startled to receive a scowl and a warning to ‘hurry yourself!’
It had become a habit that the alehouse encouraged entertainment of a higher quality on several evenings of each week. Dan, Olwen’s brother, had a fine tenor voice and he was paid with food and drink to sing for the people who gathered to hear him. Occasionally, Oak-tree Thomas played the fiddle and sometimes danced around crossed swords in a parody of the delicate and nimble footwork of the experts.
So it was with interest that Pitcher listened to the stranger who came to him and offered to play, dance and sing for his supper.
‘My name is Cadwalader,’ the small, dark-haired man introduced himself. ‘I play the harp exceedingly well and dance a little. My voice is not unpleasant and I have a repertoire of some length.’
‘Come at seven, we shall soon see if you boast untruthfully,’ Pitcher smiled. ‘The complaints fly faster than compliments with my regulars!’
Cadwalader left the bundle which included his Welsh harp at the alehouse and went to sit on the beach watching the sun setting in a red blaze over the horizon. The glow settled around him as he sat hugging his legs, his black clothes set afire by its brightness, the white streak in his black hair strikingly clear. Dan found him there, and recognized him from the day of his wedding party.
‘You are passing through, again?’ Dan asked curiously.
‘I have been no further than the town of Swansea,’ Cadwalader said, his hand reaching out in greeting. ‘This place called me back although I have no business here. Except,’ he added with a smile, ‘except the promise to entertain at the alehouse of Pitcher Palmer this evening.’
‘You sing?’ Dan asked, interested. When the man nodded, he said, ‘Perhaps we can exchange a few songs?’
‘How is your voice, high or low?’ Cadwalader asked and together they sang a few of their favourites and began rehearsing to sing a duet, Dan’s tenor swelling and rising above the sound of the waves accompanied by the deeper tones of Cadwalader.
Pitcher, standing at the door of the alehouse with Barrass, nodded approval.
‘Seems we have a new asset to our evenings,’ he said.
‘But who is he and where does he come from?’
‘Who cares as long as people come-along-a my place and listen to him?’
Pitcher told everyone he met to spread the word of a new talent that would be performing on the following Thursday night. He knew that above all, except perhaps the excellence of his ale, the local people enjoyed a singer. Dan had increased his trade and perhaps Cadwalader would do the same. Thursday would be a busy night and well worth the food that was all Cadwalader asked for in return for his songs.
* * *
With the pony to make his journey easier, Barrass still stayed overnight on his thrice-weekly journey around Gower, but on the second day of each round of visits, he finished early. On Thursdays, this did not suit Kenneth.
‘If you don’t keep your promise, boy,’ Kenneth whispered angrily as the letters were being sorted by Ceinwen, ‘I shall have to think again about letting you do the work!’
‘Who would do it for the money you pay me?’ Barrass said, although his heart was pounding with the dread that Kenneth would do as he threatened and give the job to someone else. ‘I cost you very little, with Pitcher feeding me more often
than not. And I’m sure you can come to some other arrangement for meeting Betson-the-flowers.’
‘Hush, boy! Got ears that are a cross between a buck rabbit and an excise man, Ceinwen has!’
‘So change the subject in case she heard what I’m saying,’ Barrass warned and smiled inwardly to see the man glance nervously towards the door.
‘All right, but only for this week. With the summer coming on you can surely find a way of losing a few hours of an afternoon once a week!’ The words were spat angrily out of a barely opened mouth. ‘Think about it, boy.’
Barrass had thought about it and knew that the time he wasted could be used helping Pitcher with the new building work. With the aid of occasional labour, they had already made good progress. The walls were built of rocks brought from the nearby quarry, rolled down with little effort into the back of Pitcher’s yard. Even small children helped with this for no fee except an occasional cake from Emma’s kitchen, treating it as a game, chasing the stones after setting them free at the top of the slope, and shouting with glee.
* * *
At Ddole House there was tension. Annie Evans, who was to replace Florrie as housekeeper when that lady left to marry Daniels, was gradually persuading the other servants to take instructions from herself rather than Florrie. Florrie, who was still unwilling to give a date for her marriage to the Keeper of the Peace, relinquished her authority reluctantly and there was constant friction.
Olwen always seemed to be in the middle of it all. Seranne told her to fill the water buckets as the boy was not to be found, but she was stopped before she could get to the pump by Annie insisting she brought coal instead. Then as she struggled up the stairs with coal, Florrie stopped her and told her it was not her job to carry coal when she was paid to work in the kitchen and deal with food, and sent her to Edwin Prince with a note from William Ddole.
‘It’s enough to drive me into the ground, twisting and twirling one way then another,’ she muttered to Bethan as she took off her coarse apron and gathered her cloak around her small form. ‘How d’you manage to stay clear of their silent arguments?’
‘I’m so slow that Annie Evans has given up on me.’ Bethan smiled her slow smile and Olwen wondered how much of the girl’s slowness was genuine and how much a way of avoiding too much work. Then she saw Bethan struggle to gather up the dried peas that had fallen on the floor and decided that the slowness made extra work and was indeed natural.
Both girls would have been worried if they had been able to listen to the conversation in William’s study close by.
‘But it’s so unfair to you, sir,’ Annie was saying softly. ‘You having to pay the wage of two housekeepers. I know enough of the way you like things done now to manage very well without the advice of Florrie. If she is to marry, then wouldn’t it be kinder of you to tell her she is no longer needed here and she can go with a happy heart?’
‘I suppose I hate change and there have been so many in my life of late,’ William said.
‘You won’t notice anything, except perhaps a few pounds left over at the end of every week from the money you allow,’ Annie said.
‘You think Florrie is extravagant? My wife did not find her so?’
‘Not extravagant, your comfort and the good food you enjoy are not to be criticized, but there is an unnecessary excess of people here. For one man to be taken care of takes only a few dedicated and devoted people, sir.’
‘I do not wish any of the servants to be without work.’
‘Work would be found for them, sir. But Bethan does very little for the money you pay her, and she has her keep which, in this house, means she is well fed and comfortable. I think she should go.’
‘Bethan? She has been here since she was nine or ten!’
‘And does no more work than she did then, sir. The little she does manage can easily be accomplished by Olwen.’
‘No, Annie. I do not wish you to make changes, not yet.’ William stood up from his desk and walked to look out of the window. ‘I want to settle and feel that the stream of my life is flowing gently once more, not battering the rocks in a fierce waterfall, startling me constantly with its unexpected change of direction. Let things be.’ He turned and she was standing close to him, her small eyes strangely attractive, her thick brows combed upwards in strong, furry lunettes. She smiled as he sharply turned away.
‘I’ll tell Seranne there are five for dinner, sir,’ she said as she glided quietly out of the room.
She met Florrie as she stepped out into the passageway and beckoned to the woman to follow her. They went into the dining room, where the fire was laid but not yet set alight.
‘Master Ddole is becoming concerned about the expense of your staying,‘ she said in an undertone, as if confiding in a friend. ‘He will say nothing, yet, but I thought that, as you have been so helpful to me I should warn you. Have you and Daniels arranged a day for your wedding?’
‘No, we haven’t, and Master Ddole gave me to understand there was no hurry,’ Florrie said. She was flustered. The wedding was something she had not yet become convinced about and every step towards it added to her consternation. But perhaps she was being unfair, taking a wage for the work she now only partly did. ‘Perhaps I should have a word…’ she said.
Annie shook her head.
‘I think he finds it hard to involve himself in the running of a household, which is after all work for a woman. Every query reminds him of the loss of his wife, and the absence of his daughter. Best we don’t add to his distress.’ She smiled, and put an arm around Florrie. ‘We can sort this out without upsetting him, I’m sure.’
* * *
Olwen went through the fields towards the enlarged Long House where Edwin Prince lived with Violet and their baby daughter, Gabriella. Olwen did not like calling at the house. Gabriella was not Edwin Prince’s child. Violet had not hidden the fact that the baby had been fathered by Barrass. Seeing the child and knowing it was proof of Barrass’s love for Violet, was like the reopening of a tender wound.
To Olwen’s dismay, the baby was outside in the mild air, swinging in a cradle that Ivor Baker had made for her, under a beech tree not far from the back door of the house. She could not resist a glance at the sleeping child.
Gabriella was wrapped in layers of clothing and under several blankets and embroidered covers. Her tiny head peeped out of a cotton bonnet, which was embroidered with pink and yellow flowers. Olwen searched the round face for recognition of the features of Barrass but could find none.
‘What do you want with the baby, Olwen-the-fish?’ a voice called and she saw Mistress Rees shaking a mat near the bank of the stream which ran near the garden’s edge. The mat was thrown over a bush and Mistress Rees joined her in admiration of the child.
‘There’s a beautiful grandchild for Emma and Pitcher,’ the woman cooed. ‘So proud of her they must be.’
‘It’s Barrass’s child!’ Olwen said defiantly.
‘But Violet Palmer it the mother. There’s no doubting the mother now is there? But show me the baby that can prove who fathered it!’ she laughed.
‘And how is your daughter and her baby?’ Olwen asked, hands on hips, half expecting to receive a swipe for her impertinence. But Mistress Rees smiled wider and said, ‘Lovely she is, and none the worse for not being able to claim a father. I brought up Carrie without a man to help me and I’ll help Carrie bring up little Maude too.’
Olwen handed her the note for Edwin Prince and walked slowly back to Ddole House. Seeing Barrass’s baby and hearing news of another of his love-children, Maude Rees, had saddened her. How could she keep Barrass with so many girls willing to love him?
To her further dismay, she met Blodwen Baker as she reached the drive leading to the house. Blodwen was carrying sticks she had gathered in the wood nearby and with her, held firmly and closely to her was her baby, Beryl. Another child who, it was claimed, had been fathered by Barrass.
Olwen remembered helping Barrass to hide from Ivor B
aker’s wrath when he had been told of his daughter’s condition. Having seen baby Gabriella Prince and heard news of Baby Maude Rees, she could not face seeing Blodwen’s baby Beryl. She turned and ran up the drive and closed the kitchen door behind her as if she had been chased.
The kitchen was empty apart from Annie Evans.
‘Don’t pretend with me, Olwen,’ Annie surprised her by saying. ‘I saw you dawdling as if you had no work to finish, then run to appear breathless at the door as if you had run every inch of the way!’
‘But I didn’t – I wasn’t trying to trick you, I—’ a sharp cuff under the ear that sent her flying across the room cut off the words.
‘Don’t think you’ll be able to cheat on your work with me like you can with Florrie.’ Annie’s small eyes glittered, yet, to anyone watching, she still appeared to be smiling. Olwen threw off her cloak and forcing herself to hold back tears, went to the sink where a pile of dishes waited to be washed.
‘The dishes are Bethan’s job,’ Annie said in a soft, gentle voice, ‘you must fetch the coal.’
It was very late when Olwen had finished her day’s work to the satisfaction of Annie Evans. Florrie had been given time off to spend with Daniels and his family, and Annie had found more and more work for both Olwen and Bethan. Tears were close as she walked into the small overfull room where her mother waited for her, a bowl of hot food prepared. She did not talk about her unhappy day, but ate the food, and then prepared to go to bed.
A sound outside made her listen attentively. Then her shoulders drooped. Whoever the visitor was, it would not be Barrass and there was no one else who would cheer her. Aware gradually of a stillness in the room, she looked up and saw that her father and mother were smiling, staring at her expectantly.
The Posthorn Inn Page 10
