The Runaway

by Audrey Reimann

  ‘An apprentice? I’m an apprentice?’

  ‘Stop shoutin’,’ she yelled.

  ‘Apprentice what? Apprentice bloody slave?’

  He’d got the better of her. Again. ‘Get yerself up to t’farm,’ she said, impatience with him rising above annoyance. ‘Tell Wilf to bring some potatoes and milk if he can gerrit. And if you see Old Jessop tell ’im you’re startin’ work tomorrer at t’quarry. Sir Philip said so. Take Wilf’s baggin with yer. And take our Tommy.’

  She handed over the linen-wrapped parcel. ‘Coom on. Be sharp.’

  ‘What are yer feeding that great ugly beast for?’ Oliver asked cheekily but he grabbed the parcel and ran. ‘You don’t send any baggin up when I’m in the fields,’ he flung at her.

  ‘No! And you don’t earn enough to keep yerself in salt, never mind bloody baggin!’ she called after them.

  She raked the hearth and brought sticks and paper from a box under the settle. There were a few logs left, enough to finish the rabbit stew she’d started yesterday. When she had done, and the stew was bubbling over the fire, Dolly changed out of her working dress into a skirt of brown dyed calico and a blouse, pink silk and lace-trimmed. Apart from a feathered hat, the blouse was her best bit of finery, bought in a rummage sale for twopence. She boasted of its distinguished history, having once seen Lady Oldfield in something similar. Wilf would be back in an hour or so and she liked to look fetching.

  Half an hour later she stood at the door, in her skirt and blouse, scowling, impatient for their return.

  ‘Get some water, will yer?’ she demanded of Oliver, lifting the pail from its shelf above the kitchen slab. ‘Get a move on! And you, coom in, Tommy.’

  Oliver took the iron-hooped pail to the pump, which was shared by all the cottages. She can’t face the neighbours, he thought smugly. And no wonder when she goes around like a wanton woman. She’s got nowt on under that skirt. Everyone can see right through it.

  He took the water back to the cottage and placed it on the kitchen slab. The duck was hanging, plucked and drawn, at the open window.

  Dolly stood at the door, arms folded in front of her waist, head cocked to one side in the battling attitude Oliver knew so well.

  ‘I had to stand and take a tellin’-off from Sir Philip this afternoon – over you and yer bloody duck,’ she said in her sharpest voice.

  ‘You’re glad enough to pluck it though, aren’t yer?’ Oliver replied caustically. ‘You didn’t chuck it out, did yer? Who told him? Wilf?’

  ‘If he did, it’s because he has to,’ Dolly said. ‘Sir Philip knows we’re gettin’ married – me and Wilf. He knows Wilf’s responsible for us. So it’s Wilf as’ll get blamed for your nonsense,’ she added with the air of one who has just put a miscreant in his place.

  She was sticking up for Wilf again. Oliver’s anger got the better of him. He grabbed her wrist and held it. ‘I’d have looked after yer. You and our Tommy. I earn ten shillin’ a week and I give you nine and six.’

  ‘It doesn’t alter the fact. Wilf’s going to have to answer for us.’

  ‘You can tell Wilf Leach that he’s only answerable for his own bloody nonsense. Not mine,’ he roared, bending until his face was close to hers. ‘I only take what’s there for the asking. Like wild duck and rabbits!’ He gripped her wrist tight until he saw an answering anger in her eyes. She’d not let him know he was hurting her. Oliver loosened his hold but his mouth was a tight, hard line.

  ‘I don’t take anything that belongs to yer stinking Oldfield family,’ he told her. ‘They don’t own what’s wild and free. Ducks and rabbits come and go as they please. They don’t have to kowtow!’

  Dolly pulled her arm away and faced him, eyes blazing. ‘You’re just trying to make it harder for me, aren’t yer,’ she said, ‘always making trouble. Yer can’t stand it, can yer? Can’t stand anyone else in charge?’

  ‘There’s nobody tells me what to do. Least of all Wilf Leach.’ Oliver heard the fury in his own voice. ‘How you can let him do what he wants with yer I’ll never know.’

  ‘Wilf wants to marry me. There’s nobody else’ll have us. The Oldfields put us out of the quarry-master’s house when Joe died. They’d put us out of ’ere, soon as look, if I couldn’t work. Wilf’s going to look after me and you can’t let him be. Can yer?’

  ‘Marry you?’ Oliver looked at her in disgust. ‘He’ll not marry you. He’s promised half the silly widder wimmen in the village that he’ll marry ’em.’

  ‘You’re a liar!’ Dolly tried to push past him but Tommy was in the doorway to the living room, blocking her way.

  ‘Don’t marry Wilf, Ma. Find someone else,’ he cried.

  ‘Wilf’s not a bad lot, son. I’ll not let him do anything to you,’ she said in a gentler voice. She went to the cupboard and brought out basins, placed them on the old stained table and began to ladle rabbit stew for them.

  ‘Did you tell Old Jessop you’ll start tomorrer?’ Dolly asked as she sliced bread for them to dip in the bowls.

  Oliver knew she was trying to change the subject. She half-believed all he’d said about Wilf’s other women. He sighed and sat down. What did it matter? He’d be gone tomorrow. She could go to the devil any way she wanted. ‘Aye. He said to be there sharp so I’ll go to bed straight after me supper.’ The lie came easily but he dared not look at Tommy as he spoke.

  When they had eaten he climbed the steep spiral stair that led to Dolly’s tiny attic room and the cubbyhole beyond, where he and Tommy slept. He gathered his few possessions into a roll, slipped outside, and hid them under a heap of dusty straw in the old stable, then went back into the cottage to wait.

  At ten o’clock Oliver and Tommy lay in their corner on the heap of old clothes that served as a mattress. There was no window in the roof space and the place under the eaves that they shared was musty and airless in summer but damp and freezing in winter. They heard Wilf return, singing loud and tunelessly, swinging a sacking bag wildly as he tried to keep his balance on drink-weary legs.

  ‘I’ll take my belt to that Oliver. He’s asking for a hiding, Dolly. I’ll thrash the bugger to within an inch of ’is bloody life!’ His words carried clearly up the stairs.

  ‘Leave ’im, Wilf. Anyroad, he’s starting work for Old Jessop in t’morning,’ Dolly replied.

  ‘Jessop’s never seen ’im. Jessop would have told me if he’d taken ’im on. Look in the bag, woman!’

  They heard him lurch against the stair door, heard the contents of the sack being spilt over the floor, heard Dolly set the milk can upright and squeal with delight. Oliver crept to the foot of the stairs and watched, through the cracked door.

  ‘Here.’ He saw Wilf pull Dolly towards him, gathering up her thin skirt in his dirt-engrained hands. The waistband tie came loose and he pulled clumsily at the fastenings on her blouse. His hands searched her body and he took her noisily and violently, standing against the stair door, his beard raking her neck, thrusting her hips repeatedly against the wood.

  Oliver went back up to Tommy who lay, squeezing his eyes tight shut, his fists to his ears to blot out the sounds of Wilf’s grunts and a strange high wailing that must surely come from his mother – and the terrible, rhythmic hammering.

  The drinking started. Soon there would be angry voices. Every night followed the same pattern – Wilf enraged and bullying: Dolly placating and whining by turns until they staggered up the stairs to fall, too tired and drunk to do battle any longer, upon the rough wooden bed.

  Chapter Three

  Oliver waited until Wilf’s grating snores masked Dolly’s, then, lowering his head, he crept past the bed and edged his way downstairs to the living room that looked eerie in the pale light that bathed it. Wilf’s breeches and boots were lying discarded on the settle.

  He dressed quickly, his hands fumbling in their haste, and at last he was away, retracing his steps of the afternoon, now in brilliant moonlight and the air like wine, with only the gentlest of breezes, filling him with spe
ed and energy.

  He ran past the silent cottages at Hollinbank, along the whitened grass that bordered the path and up towards the high field where the stooks of wheat the men had made in the afternoon resembled groups of small people leaning together in talk. He ran through them swiftly and silently, along the top field to the hedge and down the long slope that led to the lake, back to where he been earlier in the day.

  He paused at the lakeside and looked across the still, inky water to the big house. Lanterns were strung across the front of Suttonford House – bright yellow points of light hanging between the tall windows. On the wide semicircular sweep of gravel carriages waited to take the guests. Oliver heard light, happy voices. It was as if the lake amplified the sound for he heard the horses’ hooves stamping impatiently, waiting their turn to move forward.

  In the brightly lit entrance hall people were saying their farewells. Gloved hands waved from the darkened carriages as they pulled away and though Oliver could not see their faces from where he watched he wondered if she was there; the girl he had seen from the island.

  He ran round the lake’s perimeter, keeping to the trees and bushes, out of sight of the guests. He ran round the back of Suttonford House itself. He ran parallel to the two-mile gravel drive that extended from the manor to the highway and he crouched behind the hedge that bordered the road when the carriages passed by.

  The last carriage passed within feet of him. And she was there; the girl he had seen earlier. She wore a dress of blue satin, cut low in the front and she was tiny, as aristocratic families are, not much above five feet, Oliver guessed.

  She leaned out of the lowered window, her long fair hair fanned out about her shoulders and her voice when she spoke was musical and low. ‘Mama. Do look. It’s so beautiful. There’s not a soul about.’ The carriage rounded a bend and was gone from his sight but the impression remained for long afterwards of the loveliest girl Oliver had ever seen. He could have believed he had imagined her, were it not for the trundling wheels, crunching gravel and the rattling of harness he could hear through the trees.

  Middlefield was a hilly market town between Manchester and the Derbyshire border. The three main streets met at the cobbled market square before the solid, four-square edifice of the Town Hall, which in turn was overshadowed by the Norman church of St Michael and All Angels. The church sat at the highest point of the town in a solemn churchyard, enclosed by a stone wall under which the steep, tortuous Wallgate led down to the cattle market and railway station below.

  The three main streets, Rivergate, Wallgate and Churchgate, were busy thoroughfares, noisy with the passage of coaches and carts whose iron-clad wheels clanged against the stone setts and where the metal-on-metal screech of heavy brakes added to the din.

  Oliver entered the town at dawn where the main road became Rivergate, beyond the bridge over the same river Hollin which meandered carelessly through the estate at Suttonford. By the time it reached Middlefield the river had become swollen from tributaries on the way and was a fast-flowing river that cut swiftly through the town, bringing with it the power to turn the machinery of the cotton mills lining its banks.

  He felt excitement stirring within him at the clatter of heavy clogs on the little streets leading to the cotton mills. The mills lined the fortified walls of the Hollin and stood edge to edge with it, overpowering it and making it a dark rush of menacing waterway.

  He found shops interspersed with taverns along the main street. There were entries – covered alleyways leading to flagged courtyards and damp workers’ cottages and all were disgorging their occupants who, at six o’clock on this blue summer morning, appeared lively, even eager, to reach their workplaces.

  Throwsters, spinners and weavers all made their way to the mills. Men shouted across the streets to each other, making ribald comments about the girls in bright cotton dresses who, in twos and threes, arms tucked into one another’s, gave as good as they got, laughing and shrieking at the more outrageous remarks.

  It was going to be another hot day. Oliver watched a farmer delivering milk from his cart, lugging the can through the alleyways to the shared yards where old women brought jugs and basins to be filled. The man carried a long-handled measuring can under his arm and there was a second ladle on the side sill of the cart beside another churn. Oliver waited until the man disappeared from sight and, ignoring the protesting snorts of the horse, clambered over the side and drank deeply, ladling himself gill after gill of its creamy freshness.

  He reached the market square and watched the stallholders setting up. He saw that the established ones got the best sites. The middlers took what came and casuals, men with laden ponies and donkeys, were given what was left. Latecomers had to find a space, clinging to the fringes, setting out their wares on the smooth brown cobblestones.

  He walked around the stalls, enjoying the bustle, the air of purpose and the feeling he got, without his having any part of it, that there were rivalries and jealousies under the banter that passed between the traders. A man could start in business in a market he thought, if only he had something to sell.

  A baker was laying out trays and Oliver led the man’s horse to the yard behind The Bull for him in return for a couple of warm, sweet-smelling barm cakes.

  ‘Here, lad! Want to earn a shilling?’ A red-faced man from the oil and candle stall hailed him.

  ‘No. I’m going to find lodgings. I’m new here.’ Oliver replied, hoping that this would not be his only offer of work. ‘I’ve nobbut a few bob but I’ll find a place to live and come back up, eh? I’m looking for work.’

  ‘There’s a job going at The Pheasant on Rivergate. Leonard Billington’s looking for a stable lad. You can handle a horse. Get a haircut and shave at the barber’s and go for a wash. There’s a tap behind the Town Hall. Come back when you’re ready and I’ll tell you where to go.’

  ‘Ta. I’ll be back in a while.’ Oliver followed the man’s pointing finger to the barber’s shop. Inside, men sat on forms around the room, waiting their turns at the two chairs where the barbers worked, open razors skimming up and down the leather strops. Oliver felt the hot softness of the lathering brush on his chin and closed his eyes so as not to flinch when the razor stroked away the soap. He opened them to watch his hair being cut, falling on to his shoulders and prickling the back of his neck until finally it was combed and smoothed into a sleek, parted cap.

  ‘That suit you, sir?’ the young barber asked, holding aloft a mahogany-framed mirror, reflecting the shorn back of his head. Nobody had called him ‘sir’ before. Oliver could have lingered. He liked the mingled smells of hair pomade and bay rum, the gossip, smart talk and veiled hints.

  He went back to the market place and crossed it to descend the bustling Rivergate where, outside The Pheasant, a line of men waited. All were older than himself. ‘Are you waiting for the job?’ he asked a short man in a greasy top hat.

  ‘Aye. Go to t’back of the line,’ the man said sharply.

  Oliver did as he was told and listened to the tales the men told him, of weeks without work. Some had not eaten for two days or more and all of them seemed ill-tempered and unfriendly. As he waited and listened the urgency to find work grew on him and when at last his turn came to go inside he wanted the job very badly.

  It looked a busy place. A row of barrels, tapped and on their sides, lined the long, windowless wall of the dark tavern. Heavy tables with forms and stools were placed near the door and around the empty fireplace.

  Oliver hoped the man would like him enough to take him on. His knees knocked as Mr Billington, a stout man in a hessian apron, looked him over. ‘Can you handle horses? Drive a carriage and pair?’ the man asked.

  ‘Aye. I drove them on the farm. Big ’uns. Shires. And I ploughed and harrowed with them.’ Oliver tried to make his voice sound confident.

  Mr Billington wiped his hands on his damp apron and took in his appearance. ‘What makes you think you’d be any better than the others I’ve seen? Why should I
take you on?’ he asked.

  It was a strange question but Oliver answered him as honestly as he could. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you’ll get another chance. I think I’ll be taken on pretty quick.’

  Mr Billington, who had seemed serious up until then, began to laugh though Oliver could not for the life of him see the humour in his answer. But he knew he’d made a good impression when the tavern-keeper said, ‘You look strong. Big enough to handle the coach and harness the horses. You seem an honest country lad. They’re often easier than town boys. D’you think you could get used to lighter horses and driving on the roads?’

  Oliver had already marvelled at the drivers he had seen weaving in and out of the tangled network of narrow streets, passing one another on the steep Rivergate and backing laden carts down a precipitous Wallgate. Still, horses were only horses and he’d never let one get the better of him yet. ‘Oh, aye. I’m not afraid of the roads. Will I get me dinner and somewhere to sleep?’ Oliver asked.

  ‘You’ll have the groom’s place. Back of the stables. Look after the horses, clean the stables and carriages and drive for anyone that wants you. Most bring their own drivers but we have a coach and pair. They’ll pay you themselves for driving. A good groom can earn two or three shillings a day, easy.’ He looked Oliver over. ‘There’s a morning suit and top hat should fit you. Ask Mrs Billington when you go round the back. Supper’s at six. Breakfast at seven.’

  He opened the door at the side of the counter. ‘Albert!’ he called. A tall, lanky youth, a little older than himself, Oliver guessed, appeared from the kitchen beyond.

  ‘What is it, Dad?’

  ‘Take this lad. What’s yer name? Take Oliver round to the stables will you? Show him everything. He’s our new stable lad.’

  ‘Aye. Follow me.’ Albert went ahead through the side door, which opened outwards onto the short driveway between Rivergate and the coach house and stables of The Pheasant. As soon as the door was closed behind him Mr Billington’s son leaned casually against the doorpost, barring Oliver’s way. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked. ‘Country bumpkin are you, lad?’