by Alan Tansley
Bold, Brash and Brave
Alan Tansley
Text copyright © Alan Tansley 2014
Cover artwork copyright © *** 2014
All rights reserved.
Alan Tansley has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First published 2014
By Rowanvale Books Ltd
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBNs:
e-Pub: 978-1-909902-54-1
Mobi: 978-1-909902-55-8
PDF: 978-1-909902-56-5
Chapter 1
In the early summer of nineteen hundred and twelve, three brothers happily toiled in a sun-drenched southern Yorkshire valley, stripped to the waist as they meticulously fluffed hay with their pitchforks. Later in the day, when the hay had dried more, or the moisture content felt just right, they would gather it together and stack it ready for collection. On the next day, if the weather held, they would return with a horse-drawn cart, load the hay, then return to the farm and store it as winter feed for their animals.
Timothy, at twenty, was the eldest and the most studious of the brothers, with his nose in whatever books he could lay his hands on. Even at school he unfortunately treated his fellow classmates with a ‘better than you’, attitude, so coupled with a driving determination to succeed at whatever cost, this left him with few friends other than his immediate family.
George was a year younger and the daredevil. He was the wittiest, the joker of the three, and always had an eye for the girls. This attitude had recently changed rather suddenly, however; at this moment, he was seriously courting Florence Webster, also nineteen, who hailed from a village just over a mile away.
The youngest brother Henry, aged seventeen, was slightly smaller than his brothers, and the weakest of them, having had poor health throughout his childhood. He seemed to catch every ailment under the sun, but his family always made sure that he was well looked after.
All three boys had the look of their father, who was striking and muscular in build. Their mother, Mahala, always maintained a trim and neat figure. With all the work she had to do in the house looking after them, she always plaited then rolled up her hair, pinning it up out of the way.
Joseph and Mahala Cotton owned the farm, which was situated south of the old West Riding of Yorkshire, twenty miles from Sheffield, bordering a small mining village and close to the Lincolnshire boundary. It was inherited from Joseph’s father, Edward, when he died. He was shortly followed by his mother, as if she lost the will to carry on without him.
It was Joseph’s grandfather, William, who ingeniously created the farm after winning a wager from the local squire, who because of his family’s military background was destined for the sixth Xhosa war. He built the family’s present house in his late twenties and married a young widow whose husband was killed while working in a nearby stone quarry. Ten years later, when William’s only aunt died, he inherited her smallholding after she had lost her husband, and her two sons killed in the second Anglo‒Sikh war. With good management and luck, five years later when destitute families began to drift north to find work, William bought nearby land which now made the farm nearly two hundred acres. After William’s death, his only son Edward took over. Having been taught well by his father, he improved the farm enormously. Soon after Edward was married, however, his health deteriorated, so when Joseph was born it seemed a Godsend as the family struggled on with occasional outside help.
Joseph and Mahala were never awash with money, and if any was left at the end of the year it was always banked. Providing food was their main concern. The rest of the population had the same problem. If your land was poor or did not have the constitution to grow certain crops, you bartered using eggs, chickens and fuel, poached, or even volunteered your labour. If nothing was available, you did without.
The nearby village of Lower Rodley was mainly populated by families working at the colliery for someone they never saw ‒ the Lord of the Manor, living fifty miles away, nearer the coast and in much cleaner air. The colliers and their families toiled in dangerous conditions to extract the coal and bring it to the surface, where it was bought then sold by an agent to fuel foundries in Sheffield.
As the railway network expanded, it was rumoured a spur had been planned for the village, making many pleased as most grew or sold anything to supplement their income. Everyone had something to sell, and as George had been a visitor to some of their daughters, he knew most were straightforward and honest folk.
At the farm, aptly named The Cottons, there was a fifteen-acre plantation of trees, which was treated like any other crop. Seedlings were planted, and mature trees felled when required. They were never for sale, but to maintain the farm buildings, with quality timber used for furniture or shaped into planks. The poorest timber went for fence posts, and nothing was wasted, as the remainder was used as firewood for the house. In time, their single-storey Yorkshire stone home had an extension on each side, both of which were turned into bedrooms. The kitchen at the rear of the house was updated to include a copper boiler with a wood burning stove underneath. The outbuildings extended south from either side of the house and were also built using Yorkshire stone. They housed animals and crops, including four large, valuable shire horses, which provided the power to work the land and were treated like kings. Their main crop was barley, essentially for the brewers in Sheffield, but they also grew a few acres of oats as winter feed for their twelve dairy cows. Ten acres of wheat were grown every year for their own consumption, and what was left over sold to a local baker. Five Landrace sows, one boar and their offspring, provided pork for food and for sale. Facing north at the rear of the kitchen was a low square stone annex known as the cold room. Hanging from stout iron hooks burned through the ash roof joists, you would always find at least two sides of pigs, the odd brace of pheasants and rabbits, and on a large stone slab there was always a bowlful of fresh eggs.
For the Cotton family, good food was always in supply, and the work to provide it became easier when Joseph decided to trust in mechanisation. Shire horses were still common and their value high, but after making his mind up after listening to stories about the power and ease of steam, Joseph bought a small second-hand steam engine. After they dug a large pit in the fold yard, a small steam engine was delivered by a steam tractor; it was then secured on sunken timber struts, the tank filled with water and the boiler fired up. Using a twelve foot lo
ng, six inch wide canvas belt joined by rivets, when lined up and tensioned it powered with ease the mill stone to grind corn.
In the past, the lads had grudgingly hand cranked the machine in turn, even changing blades to chop turnips or sugar beet to feed the animals. They were now grinding corn with ease; it was all so easy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t big enough to drive the threshing machine, so at the start of every new year Joseph would place an order with a local steam engine owner. After setting up, he would begin to thresh their wheat, and seeing as it was in the middle of winter, Joseph knew he would get the best price from the brewers.
Recently, two new families, reportedly surveying the site of the new proposed railway line, had now moved permanently to live in the village. However, not reported was the fact that when their work was finished in about three months’ time, they could be permanently employed to keep the line free of straying animals. If business developed more, it might be possible they would create a stationary point, so the main topic of conversation in the village was the possibility of travelling to faraway towns and cities, which few people from the village had ever done. These were difficult times; later, their hardship would be veiled by nostalgia for the ‘good old days’, and the fact that children died young, malnutrition was common, and tuberculosis, rickets and measles were rife was often forgotten. And yet, most people didn’t grumble because they didn’t know any better.
All the family ate around a well-used large oak table and grace was always said before meals, no matter how little there were to eat. Mopping up your gravy with a piece of dry bread was custom, not bad manners as it was classed decades later, and a way of following the old saying ‘leave not, want not’. Religion in the area was predominantly Church of England; Sunday school and church services were always attended, but many men, including the vicar, would head straight into the local alehouse as soon as the church doors had closed. After the service, Joseph and Mahala usually called in and had one drink before they continued home. Even though the lads were old enough to go inside, they usually waited, chatting to local girls. George would arrange with Florence to meet her after his tea, which made her smile lovingly, knowing he must think a lot about her when he had to travel on foot through all kinds of bad weather to do so.
As he usually ran most of the way to Florence’s house, George didn’t really mind the weather, especially when taking short-cuts over his parents’ land. There were lots of advantages to this, such as seeing the wildlife. He always took note of how many rabbits, pheasants and wood pigeons there were. He also kept an eye out for poachers, and smiled, knowing full well that his dad wouldn’t do anything about them anyway. Of course, being brought up to work the land, George also noted the condition of their crops and would later report to his dad.
Everything seemed to be going well for the Cottons, but the newspapers, always a week old when they reached the countryside, portrayed a very different story. Nearly every edition told of arguments not only between different countries, but internal political problems as well. The strategic reporting of movement of foreign troops caused the most bewilderment at this moment in time. Military life was portrayed as a great adventure in the newspapers, which published encouragements to the younger generation to join up and serve their King and Country. They would receive a free uniform and see the world, without realising the propaganda behind the exciting words.
‘Do you think there will be a war?’ asked Mahala, while she washed dishes after their tea.
‘Oh yes,’ replied Joseph, as he leaned forward to rest his pipe on a battered old pewter-lid in the hearth. He sat up and rested back in his chair, eyeing her as she put the dishes away, and trying to choose the right moment.
‘I must say this to you, my love; whether it be for good or for bad, you know our three buggers will join up.’
Mahala gasped and spun around. ‘Over my dead body,’ she snapped, staring at him in horror.
Joseph rested his head back, and then smirked, knowing that he was tormenting her. ‘Give over, woman. They are at the right age, and also bloody headstrong. Mind you, our George needs a kick up the arse before he gets one of them lasses in town pregnant.’
Mahala noticed his eyes half closing, and realising that he jested with her, half-smiled. ‘I don’t know; he seems more settled with Florence. I’ll have a quiet word with him tonight when he comes home.’
Work on the farm was shared out amongst the men, and rotated to avoid monotony. Although Mahala’s domain was the house, Joseph always gave her a hand. For health reasons, Joseph always refrained from using water from a nearby stream heading down into the valley as he didn’t know the source. So he always used water from a well which was opened up by his granddad from a natural spring filtering through the Yorkshire stone. There were no sewers, so their toilet was a suitable sized hole in a plank of wood with droppings falling into an ash-midden, situated inside a small extension to one of the barns. Every month, the contents were mixed with animal manure and deposited on the land during the winter.
Everything was flowing along as usual. After an average summer, the crops were harvested and put away, and the livestock were made comfortable indoors. In the late autumn, Joseph and the boys went looking for stone blasted out by the railway company labourers when they had to cut into the side of the valley to lay the track. Using a horse and cart, the lads toiled hard to transport some to the farm. Joseph taught them how to dress the stone, and then they laid it in the house, making a stone floor out of what had been packed soil.
The stone proved to be much cooler, so Mahala began to pester Joseph to make her a wooden rug frame. Eventually, Joseph bought some hessian in Sheffield during a rare visit to deposit money in the bank; as soon as he returned home, Mahala fit it into the frame and began to cut up old clothes into ribbons. A week later, she was sitting pegging out a new rug, occasionally smiling with pride at the thought that Timothy was studying in the lads’ bedroom. George was over at Florence’s house, and she could hear Henry laughing while playing cards with Joseph, well aware that one of them was cheating.
While Mahala tried to maintain a cosy and loving atmosphere in her own home for her own family, she was starting to think beyond her own welfare, very aware that she was luckier than most. Mahala was trying to encourage a mothers’ circle in the village. The object was to get the womenfolk to meet monthly, share opinions, stimulate ideas, and try to make everyone more community-conscious, and thereby raise their living standards. She had found the idea in a week-old newspaper left by a brewery agent. An article described a mothers’ circle in the Norwich area, which had within twelve months raised standards of living in the area, including the children’s education and overall health. The biggest obstacle for most people living in the countryside was illiteracy. With everyone recognising that life was a matter of survival, all they knew and wanted to know was their bit of world. Everyone dealt in facts and hard cash. ‘You help me and I’ll help you, other than that, keep away’ was a common sentiment.
Chapter 2
There was not much snow during the winter of 1913, which was followed by an early spring. Work on the land continued its usual time-worn routine. The weather didn’t break, and after the hay was stored in late June, the cows were released into the pastures. It was time to return a Friesian bull to a neighbour after having had him on loan for three weeks—they hoped he had done his work as he had serviced four cows. However, late one Wednesday evening, the bull was still in a spritely mood; it took all three lads using rods clipped to his nose ring to walk him home.
On their return journey, through prior arrangement, the brothers met their mother outside the church and joined her for the walk home. Mahala was looking delighted by the response from most of the women who had attended her fourth mothers’ meeting, and could not help smiling at George as she noticed him looking around, as if for Florence.
‘Your Florence is at home, washing.’
‘Oh,’ sighed George, disappointed.
Flor
ence’s mother had attended the meeting, which gave Mahala the chance to chat about their offspring. Mahala’s concern was a potential child out of wedlock; in such a small, tightly-knit community, such events could cause shame and ostracism. She had heard of unmarried pregnant girls being shunned, even banished, from their town; and she didn’t want the same to happen to Florence.
Mahala had repeatedly warned George of the consequences. However, he would jest with her and mischievously kiss her on the cheek, before innocently saying, ‘I don’t know what you are talking about, mother.’ He would then casually wave before leaving the house.
‘Yes you do, and you had better be careful, my lad,’ she had shouted, but she could not help being amused by his cavalier attitude.
With the weather being better than average, everyone was already busy with the harvest in the late summer. The farm had made a very good profit that year. One evening, dinner was interrupted when an early and uninvited brewery agent carrying a small case loudly knocked on the door. Joseph opened the door, waited politely as the agent gave instructions to his coachman, saying he would not be long, and then welcomed him inside the house.
The lads knew their conversation would be business for the next hour or so, and not being particularly interested, soon finished their meal then disappeared into the kitchen.
Mahala quickly followed, asking them to wash up.
‘Do we have to?’ moaned George, who was really hoping to get out of it.
‘Yes,’ she snapped, spun around, and quickly returned to the living room.
The agent’s main business was to confirm the purchase of barley for brewing, and when Joseph agreed to the price, the agent, now looking very pleased, opened his case and began to search through it. Smiling, he brought out a few newspapers, handed them to Joseph, and then quickly returned to his rummage. However, when he took out a large pouch of tobacco, he winked before slowly placing it on the table. Now smiling craftily, as if knowing what it was for, he peered inside his case, reached inside, and took out a small roll of fine lace about a foot wide. He looked around before he handed it to Mahala, as if to gauge the effect of his gift. She took it quickly and gave her thanks. Seemingly embarrassed by the gift, aware that the agent knew that the lace was for her underwear, she stood up and continued into the kitchen. George was inside, drying his hands while he strolled towards the door. Coming to a sudden stop, he raised his eyebrows and nodded in the direction of the back door. Mahala smiled, giving her approval, and watched him set off, knowing he was going to visit Florence.
