A Sovereign for a Song

by Annie Wilkinson

  Helen Vine was waiting for her, still in her dressing gown. ‘You’re late, and there are fires to lay and hearths to sweep and polish, so get on with it. Then set the table for three.’

  The cook, an ageing coalfield widow who took whatever work she could to make ends meet, stood by the range stirring porridge and keeping well out of the argument. As soon as Mrs Vine had turned her stately back, Ginny pulled such a gargoyle of a face at it the cook almost dropped the pan she was lifting off the stove.

  ‘By God,’ she whispered, ‘it’s to be hoped the wind never changes when you’ve got your face twisted like that. It wad scare the shite out of Old Nick.’

  Ginny tied on a hessian apron, then rattled about in the cupboard for the bucket and shovel and set to with a will, thinking of her mother as she raked the ashes, the anger she felt increasing her strength and speed. She had just finished and changed her rough apron for a frilly white one when Charlie sauntered downstairs.

  ‘What ho, Ginny!’ he greeted her. ‘You’re quite a little hinny, all spruced up in your little frilly pinny.’

  Her cheeks still flushed and her mind still fixed on her father, she gave him an unseeing stare and carried the heavy tray of crockery into the dining room, where she rapidly set the table. Charlie lounged against the door frame watching her. He caught her apron strings as she walked past him on her way back to the kitchen and held on until the bow was undone and the strings trailing. By the time she got there, the apron was hanging off her.

  ‘I know what I’d like to do with that one!’ she said to Mrs Ridley, the cook, tying it tightly again, nipping in her trim waist.

  ‘I’ve an idea he knows what he’d like to do with you an’ all,’ was Mrs Ridley’s sardonic rejoinder.

  ‘And I know what I’d like to do with him an’ all – I’d like to black both his eyes.’

  The cook opened her mouth to make another jocular remark but the expression on Ginny’s face as she lifted the breakfast tray strangled it in her throat. She returned five minutes later with the tray empty and her apron strings trailing.

  ‘I don’t know why that bugger’s sister doesn’t keep him under control,’ she said. ‘I would, if he were anything to do wi’ me.’

  ‘I’ve done you a bacon sandwich, lass,’ was the only comment Mrs Ridley ventured to make.

  Charlie was in the drawing room seated at the piano when she passed, playing some jaunty new tune. Helen stood by him, turning the sheet music.

  ‘Come in here, Ginny. You like to sing. Listen to this one.’ Not letting her face slip, she looked at his sister and moved towards the dining room.

  ‘No, stop her, Helen. She’s a fellow artiste. I want her to hear it.’ Helen gave her a curt nod, so Ginny went in and listened.

  ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t play it, really. Perhaps it’s too naughty.’ Charlie wavered, giving an impression of a man torn by indecision. Finally he said, ‘Never mind. I don’t think it’ll do any harm. It’s a new song called “Dimples”, and this is how it goes.’ He played a couple of bars, then sang a song about a barmaid with a twinkle in her eye, ending:

  There’s something about that girl.

  Could it be the naughty twinkle in her eye?

  The bar’s always full and the takings never down

  Since that pert, pretty barmaid started at the Crown.

  Is it her face, or might it be her figure?

  The landlord’s happy, trade’s getting bigger.

  What a treasure he’s found.

  The swells come from miles around.

  You can hear them say that girl’s so gay,

  Dimples in her cheeks, what a jolly little tease,

  And some say she’s got dimples in her knees.

  ‘What’s so bad about that?’ asked Ginny, face dour. ‘I can’t see anything wrong with it.’

  Charlie laughed. ‘Neither can I, Ginny. Except for the singing, of course. I’m a poor singer, as you can hear. But your singing and my piano playing might do.’ He smiled brightly at her, and then his face assumed a serious expression. ‘But you see, in London slang, a gay woman is a prostitute.’ He paused, then shrugged and added, ‘Although some people might not think there’s anything wrong with that either. Wouldn’t you agree, Helen?’

  Ginny gave him a blank, uncomprehending stare, and Helen said, ‘Thank you, Ginny. You can get about your business now. There’s plenty to keep you busy. And you, Charlie,’ she landed him a glancing blow on his head with the flat of her fingers, ‘can play something more suited to the season, and to the type of people we’ll be entertaining. They’ll be the local yeomanry, a different class to your low London connections.’

  ‘Oh, very good people, very worthy, I’m sure. Very proper, and very tea-drinking.’ He broke into a slow rendition of ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’, and made it sound like a dirge.

  ‘What’s a prostitute?’ Ginny asked, once the kitchen door was shut behind her.

  The cook sat down in shock. ‘It’s what you’ll end up as if you take much to do with you Charlie Parkinson. You’d better ask your mother. I can’t tell you.’

  Helen Vine had invited a couple of prosperous farming families from Old Annsdale for the evening. Ginny and the cook spent all day preparing dishes, and all evening dispensing food and drink and clearing up the debris after the gorging and general merry-making. Ginny enjoyed the noise and bustle, and the bonhomie. She laughed to see the blunt farmer from Manor Farm cast an appraising eye over Charlie as he presented his daughter, and she caught the look of rich amusement on Charlie’s face as he bowed and kissed the daughter’s hand. She saw him smile as he took the hand of the daughter of the neighbouring farm. She heard the wives of the two stockmen in whispered conversation about what Charlie might be worth, and then heard Helen and Charlie casting up the farmers’ accounts in conspiratorial murmurs.

  ‘It’s hard work for these buggers who’ve got money to think about. They can’t just take any lass or lad they fancy. Those two are trading their daughters like a pair of heifers,’ she remarked to the cook.

  ‘Aye, well, they have to make sure they’re getting as much as they’re giving, if they can. That’s business. Yon Charlie’s on good form, though. He’s got them all eating out of his hand by the sound of it.’

  He was very entertaining. He had the party in gales of laughter from start to finish. The two daughters were immensely taken with him and their rivalry for his attention drew a wry smile from Ginny. She watched him flatter and charm them, seeming to favour the girl from the Manor at one turn, her neighbour at another. His fears of a teetotal evening were not realized. Both farmers became very well oiled as the evening progressed, and their wives weren’t averse to a tipple.

  Ginny hummed along to the lively music and revelled in the conversation and the intrigue, if only at second hand. As it grew late, she stood by the kitchen sink, polishing glasses that the cook was lifting out of sudsy water, when she felt another tug on her apron strings and whirled round to see Charlie, sprig of mistletoe in one hand and champagne bottle in the other. He leaned forward to kiss her and quick as lightning she sidestepped him. His lips puckered at empty air. He pulled a face and shrugged, and both he and the cook laughed.

  ‘Next time. Well, if you won’t have a kiss, have a glass of champagne, and a Merry Christmas.’ His soft, gentleman’s hand took hold of Ginny’s housework-roughened one, still holding the glass she’d been polishing. He filled it with golden, sparkling liquid, then took another and filled it for the cook. ‘If you like it, have another.’ He smiled and put the half bottle down on the kitchen table, blew a kiss and, with an ‘au revoir, mesdames’, returned to the drawing room.

  They sniffed the liquid and sipped cautiously.

  ‘He’s a smooth one that, but you’ve got to laugh at him. By, this is lovely,’ exclaimed the cook. ‘I doubt his sister knows he’s given us this. I’m fifty-odd year old, and this is the first time I’ve ever tasted champagne.’

  ‘And I’m fifteen, and thi
s is the first time I have an’ all. Let’s finish it off before she realizes we’ve got it.’ Ginny quickly finished her glass, and poured herself another. ‘Come on, you’re lagging.’

  ‘Steady on, lass. Have you never heard the song, “He filled her up with gin just to make her sin?” You want to be on your guard when men start giving you booze. Not that I’m complaining like. This is lovely, and I don’t somehow think it’s me he wants to sin with.’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’ Ginny smiled, feeling happiness oozing through her stomach into her whole body. ‘I’d make mincemeat of him if he tried anything with me.’ She poured another glass and the pair sat down and sipped, savouring the drink on their tongues before swallowing.

  ‘This is the life,’ said the cook. ‘I’d like to make a habit of this. Pity we can’t have a bottle every Christmas.’

  ‘Hear hear,’ said Ginny, raising her glass with a laugh. ‘I’ll drink to that. I think I’d drink this to anything. The only fault with it is we should be in the drawing room with the rest of them.’

  The opening bars of the barmaid song she’d heard earlier in the day accompanied the cook’s giggle. ‘That’ll be the day,’ she said, ‘when the likes of them let the likes of us into their drawing rooms.’

  ‘The likes of them might have to wait for an invitation into mine before I’ve done,’ said Ginny, with a tilt of her chin.

  Just then, the two farmers’ daughters appeared, shuffling against each other in the doorway. After a bit of nudging and giggling, the boldest one spoke up. ‘Miss Jane Wilde, you’re wanted in the drawing room.’

  Ginny raised her eyebrows and rose to her feet. ‘Hear that? And I get me full title.’ Walking very steadily and chin up, she followed the two sniggering girls out of the kitchen.

  Charlie was seated at the piano, hands clasped, looking solemn. ‘I want you to help me to keep a promise I made to the ladies and gentlemen, Ginny. I promised them that you would sing much better than me, which is true. Then I promised them I’d get you to do it, which I hope is true.’ He leaned forward and said confidentially, in a voice that could be heard by everybody, ‘I’ll reward you.’

  ‘How?’ She looked him straight in the eye.

  ‘A guinea.’

  ‘I don’t know the words.’

  ‘You can read them.’

  ‘A whole guinea?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All right then. But I’ll have the guinea before I start.’

  Charlie threw back his head and shook with laughter, joined by the rest of the company. As the mirth subsided, he reached into his pocket and tossed her a coin.

  ‘You’ve got a natural there,’ commented one of the farmers, wiping his eyes. Charlie nodded and handed her the sheet music. ‘It’s all right, you’ve got the tune. I’ll play a couple of bars, and then you’re in, got it? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you this brilliant artiste, brought to you at enormous expense – Miss Jane Wilde.’

  She nodded and quickly read the words, then scanned the grinning faces of the audience. Sensing some conspiracy against her, she stared back at them, thinking that the devil may care and take them all to hell with him for all it mattered to her. She’d got the easiest guinea she’d ever earned. She wondered at her own composure as she listened to the opening bars, then launched herself into an imitation of Charlie’s rendition of the song without a second thought, copying glad eye and innuendo she hardly understood. She finished with an exaggerated, leering wink that set the men and girls laughing and clapping, the mature women looking askance at each other.

  ‘Like I said, she’s a natural. She could turn professional,’ repeated the farmer.

  Helen gave an acid smile. ‘I agree, although I’m not sure which profession you’re referring to.’

  ‘Shut up, Helen.’ The manager looked at Ginny with sympathetic, bloodshot eyes.

  ‘I don’t believe we can better Ginny’s turn tonight,’ said Charlie, closing the piano lid, ‘and so here endeth the Christmas concert, ladies and gentlemen.’

  Much later, at home, the sight of Charlie and his sister playing a duet, their two red heads bent over the piano, and two sets of pale blue eyes glancing up from time to time to read the music stuck vividly in her mind as she put the candle down on the washstand and undressed for bed. She hummed the catchy air she’d sung at the manager’s under her breath.

  ‘Shut up, will you, I’m trying to get to sleep,’ came a peevish little voice from under the covers.

  ‘Hello, Em. Hey, Em, you’re the scholar. What’s a prostitute?’

  Emma sat bolt upright in bed. ‘A what?’

  ‘A prostitute.’

  ‘Ask me mam. Anyway, I’m no scholar. Thanks to me dad, I’m the skivvy at the Cock Inn and that’s all I’m ever likely to be now. My life’s going to be a long round of cleaning filthy spittoons, and sweeping up filthy sawdust, and cleaning filthy netties, and having to call every beery moronic bugger that walks into the pub Mister, when I could run rings round them all for brains.’ Her face looked pinched and sour.

  ‘What’s happened to you? Me mam’ll be washing your mouth out with soap if you go on. You never used to swear.’

  ‘Aye, well, teachers don’t swear, and skivvies do, and I’m a skivvy. So I don’t care what I do or what I say now. You know, me father never drinks at the Cock because it’s more deputies and overmen who go there, but he came in today apurpose to show me up. He sat at the bar and shouted right across the pub, “De the bugger clean, and mek sure you get right in the corners,” and all the men were looking at me as if I was something that crawled out from under a stone. It’s not enough for him to ill-use us at home, he’s got to lower us when we’re out as well. I’d have got some respect as a teacher, but he’s not going to let that happen. I could kill him. I hope the bloody pit roof falls in and flattens him, buries him alive.’

  ‘Steady on. I don’t think even he’s bad enough to deserve that. Besides, it might flatten a lot of other people an’ all.’

  Emma slid down in bed and turned over. ‘I’m going to sleep. I want to get a few hours in before I jump out of bed to see what Father Christmas put in me stocking.’

  Ginny glanced towards the end of the bed. There was no stocking. She crawled under the covers and closed her eyes, and the sights and sounds of the party whirled round inside her head – Charlie and his sister playing their duets, the lasses making eyes at him, their mothers whispering about what he might be worth, their fathers laughing and the manager sitting apart and drinking heavily, looking at her with his sad, brown, bloodshot eyes. She fell asleep as the pit roof fell in, burying them all.

  Chapter 7

  Ginny rubbed away the frost on the bedroom window-pane to see the dawning of a bright chill Christmas day. A fire was crackling in the hearth when she got down to the kitchen.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Ginny.’ Her mother pushed a newspaper-wrapped parcel into her hands. A blue swelling disfigured the left side of her lip and made her smile crooked. Ginny’s jaw clenched.

  ‘How’d you get that – as if I didn’t know?’ Her mother shrugged. ‘Aye, he’s given us a grand start to Christmas. That’ll be lovely for the bairns to sit and look at.’

  ‘Open your present.’

  Ginny tore the paper. Inside was a beautifully crafted piece of cream quilting about the size of a cushion. Her face relaxed as she admired the intricate pattern worked in impossibly neat little stitches.

  ‘By, that’s bonny. But what is it?’

  Her mother gave a lopsided grin. ‘It’s a nightdress case,’ she said. ‘It’ll look all right on your pillow. I did one for you and one for Emma. When you leave home to get married, or for a living in job, you can take it with you, to keep your nightie in. Remind you of the mother that made it.’

  Ginny smiled. ‘I don’t think I’ll be getting any living in jobs. And as for getting married, I don’t know who’d have me.’ She put her hand in her pocket and felt her hard, round guinea, wanting to boast ‘look what I got ye
sterday’, but something stopped her. She withdrew her hand and let her guinea lie.

  ‘Everything’s done. The vicar’ll be keeping them safe until eleven o’clock at least, and I hope she comes back a better Christian than she went.’ Ginny sprawled on a kitchen chair watching the cook divide hot milk between two beakers and add fragrant pitch-black liquid from the spluttering percolator.

  ‘You’re a bugger, you are. You get no better for keeping.’ Mrs Ridley’s rich, fat laugh matched her ruddy face and round figure.

  ‘That smells lovely. Pass us the cake tin then.’

  ‘I wonder you never get any fatter,’ the cook commented as Ginny helped herself to a couple of sugar-encrusted pies.

  ‘Burn it all off, with plenty of hard work,’ said Ginny, cramming her mouth and stirring two teaspoons of sugar into her beaker. She put her feet up on the kitchen stool. ‘This is the life. I wouldn’t mind a dollop of this every day.’

  ‘So make the most of it while you can,’ advised the cook, opening the oven door to baste the meat. ‘I’ll just do this, then I’ll put my feet up an’ all. Two can play at that game.’

  The Manor Farm party arrived just half an hour before the meal, and Ginny was kept hopping in and out of the dining room with glasses, sherry and beer, watching in wonderment as Charlie became utterly absorbed in farm talk and lent his ear to tales of mastitis and swine fever with as much apparent concern as if his own fortunes depended on them. The manager tried to feign an interest, but with the conversation so far adrift from his own métier, he looked as comfortable as a fish out of water. Helen sat sipping sherry with the farmer’s wife, conversing graciously and casting occasional sharp glances at her husband, glances that Ginny supposed were intended to spur him on to greater efforts to cultivate his guests. With downcast eyes, the farmer’s daughter smiled a shy response to Charlie’s encouraging smiles whilst moving ever closer to her mother until she was almost sitting in her lap.