The Potter's Niece

by Randall, Rona

  Since one thing Amelia never indulged in was gossip, sisterly or otherwise, the comment amused her, and she answered that as far as home was concerned she had no news, but as far as the pottery was concerned she had exciting news indeed. ‘At last I’ve won my way over the excavation of the marlpit. Work has started and is already yielding items for the Drayton museum — shards of pottery made not only by our ancestors, but no doubt by other potters in the region; none identifiable, of course, since it was never the practice of potters to mark their wares until recently. Standing on the brink, watching the digging, is very exciting.’

  ‘You don’t mean you actually go to that awful spot? It was forbidden territory even when we were children. Now it can be nothing but a fetid mass.’

  ‘But people once lived beside it. The remains of the Gibson hovel is still there, mercifully crumbled. Villagers have carried away half the stone to patch up their walls. How poor Meg and her mother ever survived there, I cannot imagine. But for those dreadful conditions, her mother might have lived longer, poor soul. I’ve heard that in wet months the bog swelled right to their door and that Meg used to walk knee-deep through it to get to work. Jessica and Simon did the kindest deed of their generous lives when they managed to get the Gibsons rehoused down Larch Lane. But now the swamp is yielding up its treasures — some, such as animal carcasses, not so pleasant, but all that I expected in the way of pottery relics. What I am hoping to find are samples of Meg’s work. Other than that, I have no news … ’

  Amelia let her voice tail off uncertainly, wondering whether to touch on one particular item of which she was not yet sure, and which she felt it would be tempting providence to reveal, so she changed the subject by saying, ‘As for Burslem activities, you are more aware of those than I, involved as you are with various charities.’

  ‘Not so much as I used to be, my health being of a delicate state, but naturally I lend my name to certain good causes, and through them hear occasional items — such as the old witch’s illness and the failure of all her magic brews to cure it, and her stubborn refusal to let a doctor come near her. Not that any doctor will, so long as she refuses to pay for one. They do say she earns enough from her secret practices to pay for the best doctors in Staffs and Cheshire.’

  Then who is looking after her, and what is her illness?’

  Agatha’s buxom shoulders shrugged. ‘Rumour has it that a female relative has turned up. Imagine, after all these years, when no one knew she had a relation in the world! As for her illness, she had a fall outside the Red Lion, which surprises no one, and her old bones won’t knit together again. I expect that’s all that’s wrong. That and old age.’ Her voice reached Martin at the end of the table. He promptly asked if the Tinsley relation was Meg. ‘I’ve been awaiting her arrival because I very much want to employ her again.’

  Max cut in, ‘Meg? The only Meg I recall was the famous one at the Drayton Pottery. I liked her, but she didn’t like me. Not that I blame her for that — ?’ whereupon Agatha voiced disapproval of the girl, doubting very much whether time would have improved her.

  ‘You must know the kind of creature she was, Max. She was notorious. You won’t have heard how she ran off to London with a rich client, or so everyone always believed except Martin, who apparently knew all along that she pursued old Martha Tinsley’s nephew to Liverpool and married him, which was lucky for her.’ Amelia said, ‘Meg had a raw deal in life and deserved a better one.’

  ‘My, my!’ exclaimed Caroline Fletcher. ‘The scandals of English life — secret practices, abortions no doubt, prostitution — what else, I wonder? I thought you British folk pretended to be respectable!’

  At her husband’s glance she laughed and, half turning her back on him, smiled confidently at Lionel.

  Amelia rose to lead the ladies to the withdrawing room and Martin said he would call on Meg tomorrow. ‘If she it is at Tinsley’s cottage, and I’m sure it must be.’ Agatha lingered to scoop up the last mouthful of tipsy cake because ‘waste not, want not’ was her favourite motto, and Caroline rose reluctantly, not because she was hungry — she had merely toyed with food — but because she was enjoying Lionel’s admiration and had no taste for female company, but before Amelia reached the door Caroline’s unwilling step was halted by Martin’s further words, addressed to her husband.

  ‘John Wesley is returning,’ he said. ‘He will be here within a matter of days and would like to meet you again. He feels he curtailed his visit to your house somewhat abruptly.’

  Caroline gasped. ‘What was that? Did you say John Wesley visited my husband, that he was received by him and welcomed by him, and has the audacity to think he will be received again? Pray convey a message to the man, since you appear to be on friendly terms. It is this. Never, so long as I live in this country, will he be received in my home.

  ‘You may also tell him why. Before my marriage I was a Hopkey. That should be enough.’

  ‘Caroline — ’

  ‘Don’t try to silence me, Damian! I’m not ashamed to give my reasons. It will be a good thing if they are known. No, Mrs Drayton, I am not joining the ladies yet. You and the others go ahead.’

  ‘Indeed no, we will wait,’ Agatha declared before her sister could make a move. ‘What is all this about John Wesley? I am agog to hear. We remember him well from the first time he preached in Burslem. That was on Cobbler’s Green and you were there, Max. Surely you recall the riot that broke out? We were all there — you and Amelia and Martin and Jessica too. And why is everyone signalling to me to be quiet?’

  ‘I am not,’ Caroline said sweetly. ‘I won’t be silenced myself and I am not in the least afraid of giving my reasons, however much my husband wishes me not to. They are well remembered amongst the many branches of the Hopkey family. John Wesley came to Savannah when my grandmother, Sophia Hopkey, was eighteen. She was a niece of the chief magistrate. Wesley tutored her in French in his spare time, fell in love with her and she with him, but after proposing marriage, he jilted her — ’

  ‘If he had doubts, he was wise to withdraw for both their sakes,’ Damian said, at which Caroline rounded on him.

  ‘Surely you’re not defending a man who wreaked vengeance on her for marrying someone else? If he didn’t want her, or was too afraid to marry — as, from all accounts, he continued to be until landing his rich widow — he should have retired from the field. Instead, he humiliated my grandmother in public. His rigid doctrines had already made him vastly unpopular. He persisted in plunging every baby he baptized naked into the font unless its parents produced testimony that it was weakly. He denounced private sins publicly from the pulpit. He barred Dissenters from Holy Communion, even though they had no minister of their own to take the service in their own churches. He required people to give notice of their intention to take Holy Communion and to prepare themselves for it by repentance and prayer. He declared that all these tyrannising rules were those of the Church, but they were unknown in Georgia, where worshippers went to take the sacrament when they felt the need for it. So did my Grandmother Sophia, after her marriage. When she knelt before the Communion Rail, John Wesley refused to administer it to her, branding her as unworthy. It was a public insult. Next day, she and her husband applied for a warrant for his arrest on the charge of defaming her publicly without cause.’

  ‘And what happened?’ Martin asked.

  ‘He was indicted before a Grand Jury on ten charges. Only one of these concerned Sophia Williamson, as she now was. The others were complaints of his ecclesiastical practices. A Grand Jury couldn’t condemn or sentence a person; only declare there was a case to be answered, so Wesley was still at liberty. He argued that a secular court had no right to interfere in matters of ecclesiastical discipline. As a result the case kept being postponed, and though the magistrates issued a proclamation forbidding him to leave the Colony until his case was heard, he slipped away surreptitiously and boarded a vessel for England. He never came back. Now do you understand why the man will neve
r be acknowledged by me, and if my husband persists in receiving him, I won’t be at his side? I must ask you, Mr Drayton, not to bring him to my home.’

  ‘Naturally, we understand your feelings, but I wonder how much of this you have revealed to Damian, and how much you have perhaps left out, possibly because, like Wesley’s enemies, you could never comprehend it? His despair because the Indians showed no desire to be converted and because the people of Savannah rejected his ministry; his feeling that all hope of doing useful work was at an end; of being unwanted, a failure?’

  ‘His own fault! His own fault entirely!’

  ‘Unfortunately, most of our failures are our own fault,’ Damian put in, ‘but it’s interesting that despite this unhappy story, about which I’ve heard a certain amount, but no more, Methodism has flourished in America more strongly than anywhere else, and that its success is widely attributed to him. And though I can understand the bitterness felt by the Williamsons, perhaps we redeem ourselves by forgiving the faults and mistakes of others — ’

  ‘As I must forgive yours?’ Caroline blazed. ‘It is because of you that I am here, living in a country not my own, in a home unlike anything I’ve ever known or ever expected to know! Do you want me to tell them how that came about?’ Rage choked her. Turning blindly to Lionel Drayton she begged him to take her home. Promptly, he obliged.

  CHAPTER 20

  It was many a year since Martin had ridden down Larch Lane, situated in a distant area of the village and inhabited by only two cottages. After their marriage Jessica and Simon had occupied the far distant one and, later, helped Meg Gibson and her sick mother to move into it, an occasion Martin well remembered because he had lent a hand. As he turned into the lane now he recalled that day, with Simon driving the Kendall gig and poor Mrs Gibson beside him, the meagre Gibson possessions piled around them and Jessica, Meg, and himself walking behind. He also remembered Meg’s apprehension as they approached the Tinsley dwelling. She had stubbornly refused to glance toward it. He had thought it uncharacteristic of a girl who was afraid of nothing and no one.

  But another reminder came to him, one he had not recalled for an even longer time. ‘You will take a closed carriage to the top of Larch Lane after darkness, and wait, then transport a passenger — to where, you will know as soon as you meet. Ask no questions. Just do as you are told and keep your own counsel.’

  Not for a long time had he guessed who the woman would have been, had things turned out as Joseph expected. Next morning he had been called to the Master Potter’s office.

  ‘About that errand tonight — it is cancelled.’

  ‘You mean I am not to drive to Larch Lane?’

  ‘What else can I mean?’ his brother had snapped, leaving Martin wondering what had provoked his bad temper. And within a few hours he had heard the astonishing news that Jessica was to marry Si Kendall. The news had startled him, not merely because they were no more than acquaintances, but because he knew of her love for Roger Acland, and of Joseph’s dismissal of the man, and of his plans for her to marry Max Freeman instead … and of Jessica’s vehement refusal.

  Over twenty-one years ago … and now, riding down the lane, memory came flooding back. What would have happened to Jessica had she obeyed her brother and gone to the old witch for an abortion? It didn’t bear thinking of, for many were the tales of tragic mishandling and crippling results. Was that the punishment Joseph would have meted out for disgracing his name? ‘You will obey me. There is a woman in Burslem who will do the job and hold her tongue for the right sum.’ That is what he would have said, no doubt pointing out that Tinsley was a medicine woman, a herbalist to whom many people turned. ‘You will accept this merciful help and no one will be any the wiser … ’ Well could Martin imagine him saying it — pompously, self-righteously, uncaring about the outcome or of his sister’s suffering so long as his plans were not thwarted. The marriage to Max would then have proceeded unhindered. Thank God, it had not. Jessica had married a better man.

  The curtains of the Tinsley cottage were drawn; dirty, threadbare, reminiscent of the old woman herself. Recalling the pride Meg had taken in the cottage further down, an unexpected and belated paradise for herself and her mother, he wondered how she was tolerating this neglected place. He had no doubt that she had at last arrived.

  The garden was a wilderness of weeds and wild herbs, the gate tumbledown, the thatch bedraggled. He wielded the iron knocker, and waited. When the door opened, a smell compounded of stale cooking and sweat assailed him, but even that was forgotten when he saw Meg standing there. An older, quieter Meg, but with beauty undiminished. No scarlet skirt, no low-necked blouse, no voluptuousness, but quietness and grace and the softness of womanhood in early middle age.

  For a moment she stood there, staring at him, until he said her name and held out his hand. Then tears brimmed and fell unheeded down cheeks unnaturally pale. She had once possessed the olive beauty of a dark-eyed gypsy, and though the remnants were still there, sorrow had etched lines upon her face and fatigue had stamped purple circles beneath her great dark eyes.

  ‘So you’re here,’ he said simply. ‘My wife and I were hoping you would come to us.’

  ‘I couldn’t, Master Martin. Not when I seed her. There she were, ould and wasted and crippled by a fall, and no-one t’tend her. They’d brought her back from t’Red Lion on a cart, and that were that, ’cos she’d have now’t to do with doctors. O’course, she didn’t want me, neether, but she were too weak to argue. So I stayed. On the way I passed Medlar Croft, but didn’t like to knock on t’door. I passed your brother’s house, too, but when I saw Miss Phoebe coming down the drive I walked on. Not that she reckernized me, but I weren’t taking no chances ’cos she nivver liked me.’ She stepped outside. ‘I won’t ask ye in, sir. ’T’aint nice in there though I’ve done what I can for the time being. She’s bin laid out, but until they’ve taken her away I can’t get down to cleaning the place through-like.’

  ‘You mean — ?’

  ‘Aye, she’s gone. I’d’ve liked to see her laid in the earth earlier than this, but they refused her place in the churchyard, she being a dissenter. And sum’one found out that she’d been in Liverpool’s jail for witchcraft — fifteen years, ’tis said. But I couldn’t see her laid in a pauper’s grave. Not Frank’s only kin.’

  They stood in the wilderness of a garden, the early morning air fragrant with the herbs the old woman had used for her cures. Not everything about her had been evil, nor had she done anything believing it was evil. Abortions had been her speciality, but herbal medicines her stock in trade. A cackling, scheming old woman, malicious if she chose to be, honed by hardship and prejudice in a harsh dockland world — a world from which her nephew Frank had emerged unscathed, despite being born in his mother’s brothel and reared in misery. Honest, wholesome, kind and loving, a tow-haired youth who could see only goodness in the world — that, miraculously, had been Frank Tinsley, and his old aunt had loved him.

  And so, very deeply, had Meg. ‘He changed my life,’ she said simply, when Martin attempted to express compassion for her loss. ‘He changed my world. He turned unhappiness into happiness. He gave me hope and faith and kindness — more than twenty years of it. More than my pore ma had in her lifetime, for she were widdered when I were a mite and lived wi’ pain for most of it — but in comfort t’wards the end, thanks to Mistress and Master Kendall. So y’see, life’s bin good and I’ve a lot t’thank God for, even though He nivver gave us children. That left all our love for each other, and it were strong. Frank allus said I weren’t t’weep for him, were he took first, but only t’remember the good things, the beautiful things. So that’s wot I do.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Each day as it comes. Today she’ll be laid t’rest in a corner of the churchyard, Eve seen t’that. Vicar didn’t say no when I showed him t’colour o’me money.’ A flash of her old, mischievous grin peeped out. ‘Money talks, don’t it? Caused a deal o’trouble between t’ould woman
an’ me once upon a time … ’

  ‘I heard about that.’

  ‘Did ye now? Who from, sir? T’ould woman hersel’? Then ye’ll know ’t’were about two gold pieces, promised by your — ’

  She bit the word back, but Martin supplied it. ‘My brother,’ he said. ‘I guessed.’ He had also guessed a lot more, and wondered if Meg had, and knew they would neither of them ever refer to it.

  Because she seemed willing to talk about Frank, he asked about the shipwreck and how he came to be back at sea. ‘I understood he’d settled down in a dockland job, in order to be with you … ’

  ‘So he did, Master Martin, and did well at it, too. So well that he saved some money and bought a share in a cargo vessel plying between Liverpool and the Caribbean. He did the shore work, and t’were fine and profitable. Then came a chance to ship nutmegs from Grenada. Did ye know that nutmegs fetch a lot o’money, being much in demand now? The deal were so good that he went along to handle it. “It’ll be t’first an’ last time, me lovely” That were wot he allus called me — “me lovely” — and those were the last words I ivver heard him say. “Goodbye, me lovely … ” afore he went aboard.’

  He asked, with difficulty, if there had been any recompense for the lost cargo, to which she shook her head and shrugged her shoulders, plainly uncaring. Frank had left her provided for. She was all right. They had a cottage outside Liverpool, the rent paid up to date — Frank had been a stickler for paying bills promptly — and he’d left her some money, too. ‘Enough to keep up the rent and look after mesel’, and I can always work at summat if needs be. I wouldn’t have come back to Burslem, but to bring some things he wanted his ould auntie to have. Carvings from Pollyneezia. She’d allus fancied’em, he useter say, and I — well, I don’t.’