Alice's Secret

by Lynne Francis

  ‘Is this rumour or fact?’ Sarah was already calculating how they would manage if the mill workers were laid off. She could supplement Ella’s income with what she earned from her herbalism but, if the local people fell on hard times, then her patients would no longer be able to afford her treatments. Their household income would suffer on two fronts.

  Alice came in to the room to find her sister and mother sitting by a cheerful fire, but in less than happy moods.

  ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘No, it’s nothing,’ replied Sarah, at the same time as Ella said, ‘Yes, they’re putting us on short-time at the mill.’

  ‘Oh.’ Alice, instantly understanding the impact of this, glanced at Sarah. ‘When is this to happen?’

  ‘Soon, I think.’ Ella looked downcast. ‘Some say they have been secretly watching us work and have already picked who will stay, who will go, and who will work part-time.’

  ‘But I thought you said the mill would be on short-time?’

  ‘It will be open as usual, but the workers will be on part-time shifts. Only the overlookers and some others will stay as full-time.’

  All three women sat in silence, their thoughts taking them in very different directions. Sarah was wondering about household economies that they might make, mentally reviewing the contents of the larder, thinking about the vegetables they were growing.

  Ella was anxiously assessing her conduct at work over the last week or so. They had all been unsettled, made skittish both before and after their half-day wedding holiday. Had she been any better or worse than the others? She hated her job at the mill, but accepted that it was the way things must be. If she lost it, how would they survive?

  Alice was rapidly running through possibilities in her mind. She’d thought that returning to the mill would be an option, leaving Elisabeth in Sarah’s care when she was a little older, although she worried how Sarah would manage. Now even this possibility was to be closed to her. She had wondered whether they might expand Sarah’s herbalism practice, taking small premises in Nortonstall, perhaps. It would have meant a hard walk there and back each day, and problems over what to do with the little ones, but now that didn’t seem to be an option, either. Short-time at the mill would mean that the whole area would feel the effect. Money would be in short supply.

  The germ of a different idea was growing in her brain, but she fought hard to push it away. Even as she did so, a nagging voice was starting up, telling her that it was the best way to solve all their problems, and to save Ella’s job too.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It had been a hot day, even for August, and still the sun seemed in no hurry to descend from the clear blue sky and take to its bed. It was sinking towards the horizon in a blaze of gold that continued to spread warmth right across the countryside around Northwaite. Alice felt sweat trickling between her shoulder blades. Elisabeth was even chubbier now, and walking with her resting on one hip on such a warm evening was proving heavy work. To add to that, Alice felt a sense of nervous apprehension, which was making her heart beat faster. She concentrated hard on the lane, heavily overgrown on each side with the white froth of hedge parsley, threaded through with trailing purple bush vetch. Through habit, she noted a patch of comfrey, pink and purple bells set against large, toothed leaves, a useful supply should their garden crop prove inadequate for Sarah’s herbal needs.

  The lane, by rights nothing but a track, was little used. Too steep and narrow for a horse and cart to pass, it saw very little footfall, so the vegetation had grown particularly lush and tall. Alice knew all the byways around the area, and who used them and why. They were mainly for getting between the villages, of course, or to work, or for farm workers to reach their fields. This lane was an anomaly, a leftover from times past when it was the only route up to a pair of houses at the top of the track. They had fallen into ruin ten or more years ago, their occupants gone in search of work elsewhere, or passed away, perhaps. It wouldn’t be long before the track itself would be absorbed back into the land around it. Alice knew, however, that the passage of one man alone kept it open. A man who chose to live a solitary life in a cottage, once that of a woodcutter, hidden away in the woods bordering the lane. A man who shunned his workmates, but every Saturday, at the end of the working week, found himself drawn to The Old Bell in Northwaite, to sit alone in its darkest corner, nursing his ale and offering a surly nod in exchange for a greeting. Rumours abounded as to the cause of his ill humour. Some folk said that he had been forced to flee from his home in Wales after he’d killed a rival in an argument over a woman. Others said he’d been jilted at the altar and had vowed revenge on all womankind. The only certainty was that no one ever dared to question him and so whatever secret he harboured remained secure.

  Alice, pretending to be absorbed in showing Elisabeth the froths of hedge parsley almost overgrowing the track, was aware of this very man coming down the lane towards them. Her heart hammered painfully in her chest, and it required little pretence for her to gasp and jump when he uttered her name: ‘Alice!’

  She turned to face him, her cheeks flushed by more than the warmth of the evening.

  ‘Ah, you startled me!’ She glanced down at Elisabeth who, made uncertain by Alice’s reaction, was looking as though she might be about to wail. Her bottom lip trembled.

  ‘Sssh, sssh,’ Alice soothed, smiling to reassure her. ‘There’s no need to be afraid.’

  Elisabeth regarded the newcomer gravely, not yet ready to reward him with a smile.

  The man’s attention, however, was focused on Alice.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ It came out in a threatening manner, and he hastened to soften his tone. ‘I mean, ’tis rare to find any soul using this track.’

  ‘Oh, you’d be surprised at how often I come here.’ Alice hoped the lie couldn’t be read in her face. ‘There’s plants growing here that can’t be found anywhere else around.’ She saw that Williams, for it was he that she had been waiting for, still looked unconvinced. ‘I come here to gather them for remedies. I wanted to check whether the comfrey was still in flower. We’ve almost exhausted the supply that we grow. And it is – just back there.’ Alice waved vaguely back along the track.

  Williams’s face cleared. He had no reason to suspect her of lying. He nodded his head in an awkward greeting and made as if to move on. Alice thought quickly as to how she might detain him.

  ‘Here, will you hold Elisabeth for a moment? I need to check the bank just here to see if any skullcap is to be found.’ And she thrust Elisabeth at a startled Williams.

  Taken aback, he was clumsy and awkward, but Elisabeth’s attention had been caught by the novelty of a beard, something she had never seen in Sarah’s house. She reached out a chubby fist, grabbed hold of it and cooed. Williams, with no experience at all of children, was at a loss as to how to break her grip.

  Alice ceased her rummaging in the undergrowth for the non-existent skullcap and straightened up. She laughed, and gently disengaged Elisabeth’s hand, but did not immediately move to take her back. Instead she stretched, hands placed in the small of her back.

  ‘She’s grown too heavy to carry so far afield,’ she remarked. ‘I’ll have to leave her at home if I’m to come this way again.’

  Alice blushed as she spoke, suddenly aware that her remarks were open to interpretation. But Williams didn’t seem to have noticed.

  ‘If you’ve finished your business here, I can help you carry her back?’ he suggested, not a little bewitched by the novelty of holding a small, warm, wriggling person in his arms.

  And so they made their way down the track, exchanging desultory remarks about the weather and the heat. Alice purposely avoided all mention of the mill or of Richard and the wedding. Williams seemed almost reluctant to hand Elisabeth back once they rejoined the lane, but Alice made an excuse about needing to check one more thing for Sarah before they headed home, and made off across the fields carrying Elisabeth. He stood and watched them go until the
sun dipped below the horizon, more than a little bemused by what had just passed, before turning and resuming his journey.

  So it was that Alice found occasion to be out and about in other locations where Williams would pass. He had no inkling that his habitual routes had been the object of some attention by Alice. She had reasoned that with Richard now married she was unlikely to be able to find a way of asking him for money to help support his daughter. In any case, such a thing wasn’t in her nature. She was proud and determined to manage things for herself. Another option had presented itself to her instead, one which might provide for herself and Elisabeth and keep Ella’s job secure. With summer on Alice’s side, over the next fortnight Williams came across her in a variety of places around the mill and the village. Making his way back from the packhorse bridge after his weekly check on the water levels upstream, he spied Alice perched on a rock at the water’s edge, dangling Elisabeth’s feet in the cool water. He paused to watch them from the shade of the path, as Elisabeth squealed and splashed and Alice protested over how wet she was making them both.

  He came across her picking wild strawberries along the field path above Tinker’s Wood, the path he used to make his way back from the mill long after the others had left it, in no hurry to spend an evening at home with only his own company to enjoy.

  He met her as she climbed the steep path out of the valley on the way back from Nortonstall, where he had been on the master’s business, and she had been to collect essential supplies for Sarah. They were enjoying such a long spell of fine weather, with unbroken sunshine, fine, high white clouds and warm breezes by day, and clear mild evenings stretching on into the twilight, that it did not seem odd to him that he should see her so frequently, both with and without Elisabeth. The fine weather was a bonus so unexpected that everyone wanted to take advantage of it. The mill workers chafed at being cooped up inside. On their release, they escaped with even more joy than usual, strolling, chattering and laughing as they dawdled their way home, breathing in the scent of the land as it relaxed, as the heat ebbed away but still radiated from the stone walls along their route. More than one romance was born out of these relaxed journeys homeward on such summer evenings. They were a stark contrast to the usual hurried escape, the workers’ heads bent and their shoulders hunched as they scurried along, eager for hearth and home. Instead, there was a general lightness in the atmosphere which seemed to affect everyone, and all worries about short-time working were temporarily set aside.

  Williams and Alice were very careful around each other. She was uncharacte‌ristically demure, showing only the occasional flash of her old fire, while, for his part, Williams was polite, even deferential. ‘A completely different man away from the mill,’ Alice reflected, wryly. The tables had been turned. In the mill, Williams was in control, but away from the mill his authority was lost and Alice now had the upper hand. She knew he was confused, recognising that a shift had taken place, but at a loss as to how to account for it. All Williams knew was that as he made his way to and from the mill he was increasingly on the lookout for a slim figure, most usually to be seen walking the paths in a faded blue cotton dress. He liked it better when she was alone. Elisabeth somehow set a barrier between them. But even without Elisabeth there, he found himself frequently tongue-tied, uncharacte‌ristically nervous and somehow wrong-footed. He dreamt of pulling Alice into his arms, of behaving as he had felt it his right to do when she worked at the mill. But faced with Alice in the woods and fields where she was so at home, he found himself unable to lift a finger to even touch her. She was like a nervous deer; one step too close and she would startle back, head tossing, and he would catch a brief glimpse of the fire that he remembered so well.

  Williams was a blunt, forthright man, not accustomed to thinking about feelings, his own or anyone else’s. In but a fortnight of chance meetings he started to flounder, feeling he was losing his grip on reality. If he’d had more scholarship, or imagination, he might have wondered about enchanted bowers, about whether fairy dust had been sprinkled across his eyes, or a love potion slipped into his ale. Instead, he felt an uncomfortable but not altogether unpleasant quickening of his heartbeat whenever he was away from the mill, a sense of anticipation, an unusual lightness of mood. He started to notice things about his day: the smudgy grey dawn that translated into a golden sunrise day after day as he trod the path to the mill each morning; the sharp stink of a fox that had been casting around outside his door overnight; the cool dampness of the woods; the dew on the grass, sparkling as the drops caught and fragmented the sun’s rays. The world smelt fresh, reborn, at that time in the morning, and Williams found himself thinking about Alice. Was she out of bed, tending to Elisabeth, or in the kitchen, splashing her face with water, then opening the back door to gaze out as another glorious day marched in across the horizon? Or was she still sleeping peacefully, cheeks flushed, quilt pulled up beneath her chin, wrapped up in her dreams?

  Even so, Williams was taken completely by surprise when Alice said, ‘Will you still make an honest woman of me? Would you be prepared to take on Elisabeth as your own? Shall we be wed?’

  A fortnight had passed and the weather was on the turn. The villagers had been out collecting brambles from the hedgerows, filling pails and boxes to carry them home to make jams and pies, marvelling at how early they were this year, how the sun’s heat had brought them on.

  Williams had found Alice blackberrying along the track to his house. Elisabeth was sitting happily in the middle of the track squashing fruit into her mouth with purple-stained fingers, while her mother dropped berries into the white enamel pail borrowed from the scullery and already nearly full to the brim. The blackberrying potential of the track had been forgotten by the village and the profit was all Alice’s.

  ‘See how plump these fruits are! How juicy!’ Alice held a deep-violet specimen out for Williams to examine. It glistened, picked at the perfect point of ripeness. The warmth of the sun had released its perfume.

  ‘Here.’ And before either of them quite knew how it had happened, she’d raised the fruit to his lips, he’d parted them automatically and she popped the berry in. He bit down, releasing a burst of warm, tangy juice, all the time not withdrawing his eyes from Alice’s. It was then that she’d asked. Three questions, out of nowhere. And out of nowhere had come his reply. ‘Yes, I will. And soon.’

  They’d stood back from each other, abashed, neither quite sure of what they’d done, what they’d agreed to. Then Williams reached out and pulled Alice to him. He could feel her trembling, but that sense of urgency from times past, from their days at the mill, suddenly threatened to overwhelm him. He kissed her hard, so hard that her teeth bit against his lip and he tasted blood, its metallic tang mixing with the berry juice. He pulled back, holding her at arm’s length, and she gave a sobbing gasp. They were both suddenly aware that Elisabeth, perhaps bored with being abandoned on the path, perhaps sensitive to the charged atmosphere, had begun to cry. Alice broke away to go to her and Williams experienced a surge of irritation. He wanted her back, he wanted her now, not to wait until a piece of paper had been signed, an agreement made in that cold, stone church. He made a move towards Alice but she turned to face him, Elisabeth held between them.

  ‘You must go away and think on it,’ she said, her face serious. ‘It will not be an easy match to make.’ And with that she picked up her blackberry pail and made her way up the path, Elisabeth’s weight on one hip balanced by the drag of the pail in her other hand.

  Williams stood motionless for a time after she had left. He appeared deep in thought, yet he wouldn’t have been able to describe a single thing that had passed through his mind. The trees along the side of the track shook in a sudden gust of wind, releasing leaves made yellow and parched by the sun. As they fluttered down around him, Williams looked up at the sky. It was growing darker as the evening drew on, but it wasn’t just the night sky that encroached. Storm clouds were brewing, and as Williams turned for home, he felt th
e first splashes of rain against his face. They hadn’t arranged where or when to meet again but, with the shift in the weather, Williams felt the enchantment lift. He smiled grimly. Alice Bancroft would be his, finally.

  Part Five

  Chapter One

  Alys had woken early that morning, after a troubled night. Head filled with dreams of the mill, with threads of the other Alice. She’d got up at 2 a.m., in search of a glass of water. Instead of the silence of a Yorkshire darkness, there were loud voices in the gardens at the back, the click and hiss of beer cans being opened, rapid talk. Looking out, she couldn’t locate the voices, but her eyes were drawn to the flats across the gardens where a man was framed in the window of a brightly lit room, gazing at a computer screen. Clothes were drying on a washing line strung from window to door. It was an odd glimpse into someone else’s world and she pulled away from the window, hoping that she hadn’t been seen. She’d forgotten what it was like to live so much on top of everyone, even after such a short time away, and she had struggled to get back to sleep.

  She sighed and went down to the kitchen. Her cats, Lottie and Ralph, were very pleased to see her. Lottie was keen to be stroked this morning: behind the ears, under the chin, her fluffy white bib, over and over. Ralph held himself aloof, as usual, but he was back to his old self. Yesterday, they’d both been hesitant, nervous, looking around her to see where the tall, noisy stranger she’d left them with had gone. Seb, the nephew of a friend of Kate’s, had been in charge; he was an intern at a newspaper, working for expenses only and sleeping on a friend’s floor. He’d been delighted at the offer of a whole house to himself for a few weeks, in return for a bit of cat care. Alys had feared the worst on her return, but he’d left the place clean and reasonably tidy. Better than she would have done at his age, to be fair.