A Family Affair

by Nancy Carson

  ‘One of each for my bedroom, one of each to go on top of our piano at home, one of each to go in the studio and one of each to go in the foyer. All framed.’

  She laughed happily. ‘I never got round to taking one of you, Tom.’

  ‘Next time, eh?’ He winked saucily.

  ‘Do you want to stay for tea?’

  ‘I’d love to, Clover, but Mother will be expecting me. I’ll finish my pint and go. So I’ll see you tomorrow night.’

  She smiled and nodded. ‘Usual time?’

  ‘Usual time…Hey, I nearly forgot. One of the women from Cook’s drapery store came in today with her daughter. She reckons they’re after an assistant to work in the fabrics department. I said you might be interested.’

  ‘Cook’s?’ she repeated, her eyes lighting up. ‘That’d be a lovely clean job. I wonder what they pay?’

  ‘Probably not as much as you get now, and you’d have to work Saturdays, but it would be cleaner. Why don’t you go and find out about it? Ask for a Mr Butters. You never know.’

  ‘I’ll mention it to Mother later.’

  Zillah Bache had made some liver faggots for tea that evening and they smelt divine. They had them with grey peas and boiled potatoes with hot, thick onion gravy, a doorstep of bread-and-butter and a huge jug of beer between them. Talk was about brewing and the inroads Beckitt’s Beers were making into the local hostelries.

  ‘Elijah’s got another forge signed up today and the Earl’s ironworks have agreed to take a couple of barrels to try, to see if the blokes take to it,’ Jake announced proudly as Clover placed dinners in front of them all. ‘Everything’s on song, Mary Ann. Already we’m selling fifty barrels a week on top of what the Collier takes. Already the money’s rolling in.’

  ‘And no good squandering it,’ Mary Ann advised seriously. ‘But I don’t reckon much to that new drayman you’ve started, Jacob. I wunt trust him as far as I could throw him. And idle? He’s too idle to scratch hisself.’

  ‘I know, I’ve been watching him,’ Jake replied defensively. ‘I’ve got somebody else lined up.’

  ‘Mother…’ Clover muttered tentatively. ‘If the business is doing better now, can I leave the foundry?’

  ‘And work here in the business with us, you mean?’

  ‘Not in the business. You always said you didn’t want me working in the licensed trade. Tom says they’re after somebody to work in the fabric department at Cook’s in High Street in the town. I fancy applying for it. It would be clean work.’

  ‘I see no reason why she shouldn’t, Mary Ann,’ Jake proclaimed before her mother had chance to swallow her bit of faggot and shape her lips. ‘Like I said, we’m on target and making money. What bit Clover’s been contributing is chicken feed now. Let the wench find herself a nice clean job. I certainly wunt like to work in e’er a foundry.’

  Clover smiled her best smile and thanked Jake for his consideration. ‘I know it’ll mean working Saturdays but I don’t mind that. At least I’ll be able to buy material and things cheap for dresses…for all of us.’

  ‘I should get the job fust, afore you start planning what you’m gunna get cheap, our Clover,’ Mary Ann counselled.

  ‘I think I’ll call in tomorrow. There’s no sense in letting the grass grow under my feet. I’ll have the day off.’

  It was on the Tuesday that Clover informed Ned Brisco she would not be working at the foundry for much longer. The tramlines of Birmingham Road glinted like polished silver in the low sunshine as they seemed to disappear into the depths of Dudley Castle, which stood sentinel over this thoroughfare into the town. Trams rumbled past with workers packed tight, while others, preferring to take in the summer evening, walked home. Ned climbed over the stile into Brewery Fields before Clover and courteously handed her down when she clambered over it.

  ‘When are you finishing then?’

  Clover shook out her long cotton skirt and continued walking. ‘Friday. I told old Ratface Mason today.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘What could he say? Oh, he said he didn’t want me to go, but he could tell I’d made my mind up.’

  ‘Did he offer you more money?’

  ‘It wouldn’t make any difference if he did. I’d be mad not to take this offer of shop work. It’s less money, but shop work is what I’ve always wanted. I hate working in filth.’

  ‘But I shan’t see you, Clover,’ Ned complained. ‘We’ll lose touch, specially now you’re courting him.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. You know where I live. You can always come and have a drink. I’ll always be glad to see you.’

  ‘If you could find time on the nights you don’t see him you could still come and help me with the Gull, if you wanted.’

  Clover disliked the resentment Ned always manifested for Tom in the scornful tone he used when he said ‘him’. It was unjustified, but she let it pass. ‘If you still want me to, I will. Tom won’t mind, you know. He’s not an ogre.’

  ‘Would you tell him?’

  ‘’Course I’d tell him. He knows I helped you before. He admires what you’re doing. He says he’d like to take some more photographs when you go flying again.’

  ‘I don’t want him taking any more photos, Clover. The last ones he took he sold for five guineas. Julian Oakley, the reporter from the Herald told me. It’s as if he’s pinched all my work and he’s the only one to get paid for it. If anybody should be making money from photos of me and my Gull, it should be me. The money could go towards an engine.’

  Clover was taken aback. ‘Is that why you resent Tom? Is that why you’re always so scornful when you mention him?’

  ‘Partly. I resent him most because he’s got you, though. You know how I feel about you – how I’ve always felt about you…But he suddenly pops up from nowhere and sweeps you off your feet.’

  Clover sighed, feelings of guilt over Ned returning. ‘I can no more help how I feel than you can, Ned,’ she said gently. ‘It doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.’

  Further conversation seemed superfluous after that. So they climbed St John’s Road in silence, past the vicarage and its vast garden, almost as big as the churchyard. The forge opposite the church was still working and the great thud of forging hammers shook the earth beneath their feet. Workmen with dirty faces and dirtier hands drifted into the Freebodies after their shifts for a drink before they went home, as they would be doing at the Jolly Collier.

  ‘Aren’t you going up Price Street?’ Clover asked, at last punctuating their wordless silence, for at this point they normally went their separate ways.

  ‘No, not today,’ Ned answered defiantly. ‘I’ll come and have a drink at the Jolly Collier. I can say hello to Ramona.’

  Clover cast a concerned glance at him. ‘Won’t your mother wonder what’s happened to you if you’re late?’

  ‘I’m not a little boy, Clover.’

  She glanced at him. No, he was not a little boy. He was a man, full-grown. Yet he was perilously immature in so many ways. He lacked the experience of requited love, had never known the joy, the pleasure, the richness it could bring…or the agonising heartache. He had not experienced the intense, uncontrollable emotions that prompted rational people to behave in totally irrational ways. Maybe he had not known desire either; he had never said.

  Ned obviously knew jealousy. But jealousy was not the same as being in love; it was an unwelcome bed partner of love. Clover had experienced jealousy over Ramona when she believed she had taken Tom from under her very nose. It was a cruel state of mind, an injured lover’s hell. She wanted no more of it, so she sympathised the more with Ned.

  But desire…?

  Clover at last was beginning to understood how a timely kiss, exquisitely delivered, could stoke up enough desire to allow you to throw caution to the wind. Desire could turn your world upside down, could make you wanton. She desired Tom now. Ever since those delectable moments on Sunday afternoon when she had lain naked with him on his bearskin, she had been una
ble to concentrate on anything else. Ever since she’d felt that profound tenderness and exhilaration, which had fuelled the need to give herself utterly in the name of love, the reliving of it in her mind had consumed her. Yet it had been over all too soon. She longed for that absolute and total intimacy and gentleness to last and last. Although spiritually, she had been content, physically she was left still tingling, instinctively wanting more, requiring more. There must be more to it than what she had experienced that first time. But what she’d had was enough to whet her appetite for the next time they lay together on his bearskin – and that would have to be tonight. Whether it was his intention or not, it was hers. The thought made her pulse race.

  Chapter 8

  ‘It’s bloody scandalous, the price of an ’undredweight o’ coal,’ Noah Fairfax complained to the man sitting on the adjacent stool in the taproom of the Jolly Collier, which was buzzing with laughter and a dozen assorted conversations. ‘I’ve just bin to fetch a load in me barrer and I couldn’t catch me breath when old Ma Poxon asked me for the money. One and threepence ha’penny her charged me.’

  ‘Blame the miners,’ the other man, Urban Tranter, said and noisily slurped the froth from the pint Ramona had just placed on the table before him. ‘They’m forever on strike. Swines. Never satisfied, them lot. Coal’s bound to be scarce.’

  ‘Scarce?’ Noah queried indignantly. ‘Rockin’ hoss shit’s scarce but nobody’s asking one and threepence ha’penny a bloody ’undredweight for it.’

  ‘But nobody wants to burn rocking hoss shit, Noah. Trouble is, when coal gets scarce, the price goes sky bloody high.’

  ‘So what they oughta do,’ Noah said, withdrawing a tin of twist tobacco from his jacket pocket, ‘is let them saft Suffragettes go down the mines when the miners am on strike.’

  Ramona returned to the table. ‘Your change, Mr Tranter.’

  ‘Ta, my lover,’ he said and pocketed it. Urban chuckled at Noah and nodded his agreement as he dipped his nose into his pint mug.

  ‘Yo’ can loff, Urban, but if them Suffragettes want the vote like a mon, then let ’em get down the pits and dig coal like a mon.’ Animatedly, he rubbed a knob of tobacco between the palms of his hand to break it into smokable strands. ‘Then they might get a bit o’ sympathy from the likes o’ you and me. Eh, Urban? Then we might get reasonable price coal and all.’

  Elijah Tandy, who was also serving, heard the discussion and laughed. ‘Are you going to argue about the Suffragettes now, Noah?’ he asked. ‘Ramona will argue with you, won’t you sweetheart?’

  ‘Me? I never argue with customers, Uncle Elijah,’ she replied pleasantly and pulled another pint. She caught his eye and he winked at her, which had an unsteadying affect. She could not hold his look, for fear he could read her mind and see the image of himself therein, standing magnificently naked in the bathtub in the brewery. Her long eyelashes swept the intensifying bloom of her cheek as she turned away.

  ‘You’re blushing, Ramona,’ he teased provocatively, for he believed he knew why. And it was easy for him to make gain from a situation that would have mortified another man.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ she protested and pulled another pint to keep her face hidden. Since she’d secretly watched him towelling himself dry, she’d seen her Uncle Elijah in a dangerously different light; not as an uncle – her father’s brother – but as a man. And an attractive man at that, with all man’s hard and healthy cravings for love. She’d been excited at what she’d witnessed so secretly. Oh, he was a man all right, fit and full-blooded. And she’d found it impossible to dismiss from her mind the images of him standing in all his full-blooded glory in the oblique rays of the yellowing sun as it streamed through the brewery window onto his muscular body that evening.

  When she thought her colour had subsided she looked up and saw with grateful surprise that Ned Brisco was standing beside her, an expectant grin on his face.

  ‘Ned! What brings you here?’

  ‘Hello, Ramona. I just walked back from work with Clover. I thought I’d call in and have a drink before my tea and say hello.’

  ‘Sit you down, eh, and I’ll bring you a pint over.’

  ‘I’ll stand here by you, if that’s all right.’

  ‘All right. Just so long as you don’t stand in my way.’ She smiled to soften what might sound like disapproval. ‘Clover’s back now then, is she?’

  ‘Yes. She said she was going to wash and change. I suppose she’s going courting tonight.’

  ‘Lucky girl.’ She delivered two drinks and returned with the money which she dropped into the till.

  ‘Are you courting now, Ramona?’

  It was a leading question. She began pulling another pint. She could so easily say no and wheedle an invitation out of Ned to go out with him. And, if she answered no, she wasn’t courting, she would be telling no lie, for Sammy had joined the Staffordshire Fusiliers and had gone away to commence his training. On the other hand, she could so easily say yes to an invitation. Ned was nowhere near as fanciable as Elijah but what the hell. It could be her way of getting back at Clover for luring Tom away when she reckoned he was so close to asking her to be his girl. Clover cared about Ned, for all her denials. She had even warned her off.

  ‘Well?’ Ned prompted.

  ‘No I’m not courting any more, Ned…’ She looked him in the eye and handed him a pint of bitter beer. ‘How’s your flying machine coming on?’

  He delved into his trouser pocket and handed her sixpence. ‘Oh, all right,’ he answered brightly, well and truly sidetracked. ‘I shall be flying it again in a week or two to try out some modifications I’ve done. Why don’t you come and watch? I daresay Clover will come if she can drag herself away from that Tom Doubleday.’ He took an ample quaff from the glass.

  Ramona regarded him with pity. ‘You ain’t still bitter about him, are you, Ned? What you need is a sweetheart of your own to take your mind off things.’

  ‘I know. I wondered if you’d like to come out with me one night, Ramona,’ he said, mustering every ounce of his confidence.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ she answered in a whisper. ‘But let it be our secret, Ned. We won’t let Clover know, eh?’

  He smiled conspiratorially. ‘That’s all right by me. When shall I see you?’

  ‘How about tomorrow night?’

  After tea, when Clover had washed up and she was getting herself ready to see Tom, Ramona tapped on her bedroom door.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Yes, ’course. How does this dress look, Ramona?’ She twirled around in it and looked over her shoulder at her stepsister.

  ‘Depends what you’re going to do in it?’

  ‘Do in it?’ Clover queried guiltily, turning round to face her.

  ‘I mean, it’s all right for walking out, but not for sitting in a theatre.’

  ‘I’m not going to a theatre.’

  ‘Then it’s fine, Clover. The colour suits you.’ Ramona gave a generous smile. ‘The style suits you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘How’s Tom? I don’t get the chance to talk to him now like I used to when he would come in two or three times a week after work.’

  ‘He’s lovely,’ she responded simply, predictably, with a broad smile. She thought it best not to crow that he used to come in just on the off-chance of seeing herself. Now they were courting he had no need.

  ‘He is nice, Clover. I think you’re very lucky.’

  ‘I think so as well…Hey, I bet it was a surprise to see Ned tonight, wasn’t it?’

  Ramona hesitated to reply. ‘That’s why I’ve come to see you before you go out, Clover…I wanted you to know…’ She sounded very concerned.

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘That he asked me to go out with him…But I said no, Clover. I told him I didn’t have time these days.’

  ‘Poor Ned…But thanks for telling me. In any case, you wouldn’t find him very entertaining. You’d be bored to tears, I daresay.’

/>   ‘That’s what I thought. You won’t mention it, though, will you? I’d hate him to think I’d broken a confidence.’

  ‘I won’t mention it.’ There was a shout from downstairs. Tom Doubleday had arrived. ‘Coming,’ Clover called.

  ‘Uncle Elijah’s just gone out as well. I don’t know what he sees in that flipping Dorcas. I don’t like her very much, do you, Clover?’

  ‘Not very much, no.’ Clover adjusted her hat in the mirror and followed Ramona down the stairs.

  Ramona watched Clover link arms with Tom Doubleday as they left. Pity Tom had got away. She could have been content with him. Tom was all man; smart, courteous, confident, handsome. Ramona sighed. She needed a man. She needed a man to allow her vibrant emotions to enjoy some much-needed exercise now that Sammy had gone and left this void. Well, Ned was patently interested in her now. Clover was no longer apparently the centre of his world. The trouble was, Ned would be no challenge. She could never fall in love with Ned.

  As the sun went down behind the roof of the Board School, where St John’s Street met Owen Street some distance away, the whole sky flared into vivid hues of apricot and orange. A ruck of clouds that had sneaked up were trapped in the blaze and daubed with its wild colours. The heat of the day remained, uncomfortably humid and warm.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Clover asked Tom.

  ‘Where would you like to go?’

  She hoped he was fishing for her to suggest his studio, but she would not. Oh, she wanted to go there more than anything in the world, but she must not appear so brazen as to suggest it herself. ‘Shall we go for a walk in the town?’ she suggested instead. If they went for a walk in the town, logically, they were ever likely to pass his studio on the way back.

  So they walked up and down High Street from Hall Street to Top Church, peering in shop windows, discussing this piece of furniture, that dress. Outside Cook’s, they admired the window display of fine materials and Clover said how much she was looking forward to working there.

  ‘I’m looking forward to it as well,’ Tom remarked. ‘I might even get to see you dinner-times.’