A Mother's Choice

by Val Wood

  ‘Would you like to go inside the church?’ his mother was asking.

  ‘No thank you,’ he answered. ‘Can we go back to the market and watch what’s happening?’

  The town was getting busier and bartering was taking place; they saw some of the young lads who had been taken on strutting about, safe in the knowledge that they had a year’s work ahead of them with bed and board provided, and a shilling in their pockets now to spend on whatever they wished for. Most were heading towards one of the inns to dispose of it.

  ‘I’m getting hungry again,’ Jack said as an aroma of food from one of the market stalls wafted their way, and he saw a look of anxiety cross his mother’s face. ‘Well,’ he hedged. ‘A bit peckish.’

  ‘We haven’t much money,’ she said. ‘I’ll be honest with you. But we could afford a slice of bread and beef, how would that be?’

  He nodded. ‘That would be all right. If you’re sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, sounding positive. ‘We’ll go into the Sun Inn. It always had a good reputation and a warm fire if I remember right.’

  The Sun Inn was a long narrow red-brick double-fronted building with bow windows and an arched entrance big enough for a coach and horses to drive through. Before they went inside, Jack noticed that at the other side of the entrance were stables and horse boxes. It was a bigger place than he had expected and he went off to explore some of the rooms whilst his mother ordered a portion of bread and beef from the bar, which had a large kitchen behind it. There were a lot of customers in there already, and there was a strong smell of tobacco. In another room was a glowing fire and big tables suitable for large families or groups of friends; just by the door was a small table with two chairs and he sat down on one of the seats and put his cap and scarf on the other to claim it. It was a perfect place to watch from, he decided as he settled himself comfortably.

  ‘There you are,’ his mother said over his shoulder. ‘Why have you come in here?’ She put down a tray holding a plate of beef, bread and a dollop of mustard, and moved his cap and scarf to sit down next to him.

  ‘Cos there are people,’ he said, observing those at the long table nearest the fire. A plump and comely woman who was either the mother or the grandmother of several children was divesting herself of numerous woollen scarves, though keeping on her bonnet which covered thick reddish hair; a younger woman with sharp features was chastising a slight, brown-haired girl; an older man with a short grey-streaked beard was looking towards a red-haired man who was ordering food and drink from a serving maid. Around them the children milled about and argued over who was sitting where and next to whom. At the table next to them were more people; both groups obviously all knew one another and even looked alike.

  Jack turned to his mother to say something but her eyes were fixed on the man who was ordering food. She had shrunk back into the shadow of the wall as if she didn’t want to be seen.

  ‘Mother,’ he whispered.

  ‘What?’ She gave him a quick glance and then looked again in the direction of the family. She pushed the plate towards him and got up. ‘I’m going to the privy,’ she mumbled. ‘Eat up. Won’t be long.’

  He put some of the beef between two slices of bread and took a bite. The little brown-haired girl who had been scolded had wandered off and now came towards him. ‘Hello,’ she said shyly. ‘Who are you? I don’t know you. I thought I knew all of ’bairns round here.’

  ‘Erm, no, we’ve just arrived.’ He swallowed a large piece of beef and gave a choking cough. ‘Come for the hiring fair, you know.’

  She gazed at him, her lips apart. ‘Aren’t you too young? How old are you? I’m ten.’

  ‘I’m ten as well,’ he said. ‘When’s your birthday? Mine was last week.’

  ‘Mine was in October,’ she pronounced gleefully, ‘so I’m older ’n you.’

  ‘You don’t look older,’ he said defiantly. ‘You’re only a little girl.’

  ‘I know,’ she answered. ‘Are you on your own? Do you go to school here?’ and before he could reply, she added, ‘We’ve got ’day off school cos it’s Hiring Day.’ She giggled. ‘None of ’bairns would turn up anyway, so we all get ’day off. You can come to our table if you like. We’re having meat pie. There’ll be plenty. Da allus orders too much, and we can start ours straight away. Gran allus lets us when we’re here, so that it doesn’t get cold.’

  He thought of the meat pie they’d had last night at the inn and was tempted; he left the beef and bread on the plate, left his cap and scarf on the chair and followed her across to the table where she was sitting, taking the end seat next to her. None of the grown-ups who were busy chatting or giving a child a telling-off seemed to notice him. A plate of meat pie was put in front of him and with only a fraction of hesitation, before the little girl nudged him as her food was served too, he began to eat.

  Delia slipped back into the room and saw him sitting at another table talking to a little girl next to him. There was a hum of conversation as plates of food were handed round there and she licked her lips. Money no object, then. She cast her eyes to the sharp-faced young woman and saw that she was pregnant. Delia’s mouth trembled, and glancing towards the red-haired man she took a bitter breath and muttered an appropriate expletive for the one who had taken a young girl’s innocence without so much as a word of love. She turned up her coat collar and buried her face in her woollen shawl. A quick scan round the table saw a clutch of girls; the only boy was her own son. She gave a cynical smile.

  But she was frightened. As frightened and desperate now as she had been ten years ago with a decision to make. Her heart hammered, and she felt a pulse drumming in her throat and ears. With trembling fingers she picked up the remains of the bread and beef, sandwiching them together and wrapping them in a serviette, and turned to leave the room. She turned again to look back from the doorway and saw her son tucking in to the hot dinner. Her eyes filled. How her boy loved his food. She put her hand to her mouth and breathed a silent kiss. Goodbye, Jack.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The older woman, Peggy Robinson, took off her coat and loosened the warm shawl at her neck. Their table was close enough to the fire to feel the heat on her back. She glanced about her; all the usual regulars were there, the farmers and the smallholders, and some of the estate managers, who didn’t sit at the tables like the rest of them but propped up the bar counter with a pint of mild or bitter in their hands. From her position she could see through the open doorway into the main bar, which was packed with customers. There were more people here for the hiring fair than there would be on a normal market day.

  She saw people she knew and a few she didn’t, and one of those was the back of a young woman in a coat fit for town and not for country, with a flurry of scarves floating behind her and a felt hat on her dark hair, trying to push her way out through the throng. Peggy looked along her family’s table. Next to her, her husband Aaron was chatting over his shoulder to an acquaintance; Jack, their red-haired son, was standing at the end of the table, chewing the cud with a mate, his arms folded across his chest. Next to Aaron was their daughter-in-law Susan, with her usual scowl; was she ever happy, Peggy wondered? She persistently spoke with a sharp tongue and a rejoinder to cut anyone down to size; except for me, Peggy thought shrewdly. She had taught Jack’s wife a long time ago that she wouldn’t stand any nonsense from her.

  At the table next to theirs were Peggy’s older brothers and sisters and their kin. Her sisters, who had married out of farming, with their sons; her farm worker brothers with their daughters, and their grandchildren a mixture of each. She gave a little grin. All the men had longed for sons to carry on in farming after them but it hadn’t happened. She alone of the sisters had been the one to turn a fisherman into a farmer and give him a son, but now Jack couldn’t produce a male child either. Serves him right, she thought grimly. He shouldn’t have got caught and married that harridan. She had always had her suspicions, and the sweet child Louisa looked nothing like either
of them.

  Her daughter Jenny wasn’t here; she’d escaped from the country as soon as she was old enough, became a teacher and taught and lived in Hull; at twenty-eight she had never married, nor intended to unless she found a man who would treat her as an equal. She said that other people’s children were enough for her.

  The serving girl was coming with another stack of plates filled with food. The children had been served and now it was the turn of the adults.

  ‘Sit down, Jack,’ Susan called harshly. ‘Food’s coming!’

  ‘I can see that.’ His answer was equally abrupt. ‘I’ve got eyes in my head.’ He turned to his friend and muttered something and the other man grinned.

  Peggy’s eyes glinted and then roamed along the other side of the table where Jack’s girls sat. Rosie, the youngest, was bright and sparky with flaming red hair and freckles, and at six could hold her own with her older sisters. Next to her was golden-haired Emma, a year older and as argumentative as her mother. Then Molly, placid and dreamy, but known to stamp her feet if she couldn’t have her own way, living in her own eight-year-old world, which would for ever remain the same. They all had the Robinson appearance with shades of red to gold hair and pale skin that burned and freckled; all except Louisa, the eldest at ten, the quiet one, with nut-brown shiny straight hair and cocoa-brown eyes flecked with gold. But who—

  Her gaze was momentarily blocked by the servant girl’s arm as she reached over her with a plate of meat pie, mash and sprouts, and then a jug of gravy.

  ‘Is that everybody?’ the girl asked. ‘Do you need owt else? Salt? Pepper?’

  ‘No, that’s everything, thanks,’ Peggy answered for them all. ‘Let’s tuck in,’ she said pointedly, because Susan had already started hers, not waiting for the others to be served. Peggy was annoyed; she had taught her own son and daughter good table manners when they were young.

  She looked again towards the end of the table and wondered who the boy was. He was wiping his mouth on a serviette, listening to Louisa and nodding his head with a grown-up air, which amused Peggy. Who had invited him to eat with them? Not that it mattered, there was plenty, but she was surprised that she didn’t recognize him. But children grow so fast, she thought, and he might have changed since I last saw him; perhaps he was one of theirs after all, belonging to one of her sisters. His colouring was certainly similar to her own and theirs, although a darker shade of auburn. That’ll be it, she decided. I bet he’s our Janet’s grandson. He looks like a bright lad; he’ll be like his father, who’s doing so well for himself. And she turned to the matter in hand: enjoying someone else’s cooking for a pleasant change, instead of her own.

  The boy glanced over his shoulder from time to time and eventually he murmured something to Louisa, who pointed to the doorway and then sharp left to indicate the yard. He murmured an excuse and went in search of the privy, where his mother had said she was going. Outside in the yard, a rich aroma of hay and straw rose from the stabling at the bottom of the paved area, and he heard the jingle of harness and men talking. He visited the privy and then wandered down to ask the stable lads if they’d seen his mother. They didn’t seem to understand him, nor could he make out what they said when they answered, so he murmured his thanks and went back inside. He picked up his hat and scarf from the table by the door and went again to sit beside Louisa, who had ordered a dish of steamed treacle pudding and custard for him.

  ‘I hope you like it,’ she said anxiously. ‘It was that or apple pie.’

  ‘Oh, I like both,’ he said exuberantly. ‘Thank you.’ As he spooned it into his mouth, he contemplated his situation. Sometimes his mother did disappear; she would perhaps go off to an unexpected rehearsal, or see someone she knew and shoot off to gather information on who was looking for performers, or whom to avoid at all costs. Then she would turn up again at the place where she had left him.

  Theatre and music hall people were a peripatetic kind, she had once told him. He liked the word; it sounded more important than roaming or travelling, which was what his mother said it meant, and he liked the way it rolled off his tongue. He separated it out into peri-pat-etic so that he would always remember it. That’s what she’s done, he thought, she’s gone peri-pat-eticking and will come back eventually.

  But what should I do now, he wondered as he scraped the dish clean. Should I just wait? Will the landlord let me stay or will he turn me out at closing time if she hasn’t come back? Mrs Andrews wouldn’t have allowed me to wait in her house; she didn’t like children. He looked around the table. The adults were still eating but one of the girls had asked if they might leave the table and go outside and now they were putting on their scarves and bonnets. The children at the next table were doing the same; they all seemed to know each other, so he too got up and put on his scarf and cap. Maybe, he thought, his mother would be waiting outside the inn, or perhaps she had been watching him having a good dinner and didn’t want to disturb him or, he thought with a sudden flash of concern, be asked to pay for it.

  They played hopscotch because he happened to have a piece of chalk in his pocket and no one asked where he had come from or who he was. He was preparing for that, for when someone did ask his name. Which they were sure to do. That was for certain. He knew all of theirs because they’d shouted out to each other, and Louisa had told him hers and pointed out her father Jack and her grandparents Peggy and Aaron.

  Then they played tig, and just as they were deciding what to play next Louisa’s father came outside and whistled to them and beckoned. ‘Come on, you lot,’ he shouted. ‘Look sharp, we’re ready for off.’

  Louisa tugged at Jack’s arm. ‘Are you coming with us?’

  He hesitated for a second, then: ‘Yes, all right, I can do.’

  Some of the boys and girls from the other table ran off, but once out in the Market Place at the front of the inn the rest separated and climbed into various wagons and drays and an old brougham. He followed Louisa and her sisters and climbed into one of the bigger wagons. Two of the other girls climbed out of their drays and called to their mothers that they were going with Louisa and would be dropped off, and then another, older boy did so too and sat on a sack of straw next to the little girl called Molly, putting his arm round her and shuffling up close, making her giggle.

  Before they set off out of the Market Place he looked back towards the inn, but there was no sign of his mother. They took a wider road out of Hedon than the one he and she had taken yesterday towards the Hedon Arms, and continued in a different direction.

  ‘Will you drop me and Alice off in Thorn, Uncle Jack?’ one of the girls called.

  ‘Aye. What about you, Ben? Do you want dropping off in ’village?’

  ‘Aye, please,’ the other boy said. ‘I can walk up ’lane. You’d not get ’wagon up there anyway.’

  ‘I wasn’t offering to tek you to ’door,’ Louisa’s father muttered. ‘You’ve got a good pair o’ legs, haven’t you?’

  All the children raised their eyebrows and some snorted behind their hands when Ben said cheekily, ‘Well, I had a fine pair last time I looked.’

  The wagon was drawn to a halt by a road sign marked Thorngumbald and the three children jumped down.

  ‘See ’lasses safe home, young Ben, and go straight home yoursen,’ their driver called after the lad, who lifted his arm in answer and ran off, with the two girls trailing behind him.

  ‘Are you all cousins?’ Jack whispered to Louisa. ‘Or friends?’ He thought it would be wonderful to have either. He didn’t know any children of his own age; he never attended one school for long enough to make friends. I might like to stay here, he thought, when Louisa nodded.

  They took a right turn out of the village and trundled down a very long rutted road. ‘Where are we going now?’ he whispered again.

  ‘Home,’ Louisa whispered back, and then asked, ‘Why are we whispering?’

  He bit on the side of his thumb where a loose piece of skin dangled. ‘Will they let me stay?’r />
  Louisa’s lips parted. She clearly hadn’t given it any thought. She shook her head. ‘Don’t know,’ she breathed. ‘Gran might. Ma won’t like it.’

  ‘I’m a very useful boy,’ he murmured.

  She nodded. ‘We’ll tell them that.’

  ‘Where do you live? Is it far?’

  ‘Not far now. We live near Paull. On a farm.’

  His heart sank. That’s where we went last night; to my mother’s parents’ house. What if it was the same house? What if Louisa’s gran was the woman who had turned them away? He hadn’t seen her well enough to be sure, but he thought she couldn’t be the same person as the woman who had sat opposite him at the table. The woman last night didn’t like children or she would have let them in, and the woman sitting opposite had seemed very jolly and smiley with everyone.

  The road was different too, he thought; the fields and hedges looked well kept to a city boy unused to the country. There was a lowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep, and as the road dipped up and down he saw low shelters over the hedges and heard the grunting of pigs. He was pleased that he could once again smell salt water; the sky was beginning to darken and long silver and purple streaks ran across it. He turned his head to look behind him and saw that the sunset was filling the whole sky, and he gazed at it in wonder.

  ‘Look there,’ Louisa whispered and pointed beyond her father’s head. ‘From here you can see Lincolnshire on ’other side of ’Humber.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ he said. It wasn’t like looking across the Thames from the Embankment where there were many fine buildings on the other side. Across this water could be seen a long low landscape with chimneys issuing thick grey smoke into the sky, and on the estuary itself were sea-going ships and trawlers, coal barges and smaller fishing boats.

  ‘Open ’gate, Louisa.’ Her father’s command was terse as he drew up the horse. ‘Come on, look sharp. I’m gasping for a mug o’ tea.’