Sarah's Story

by Lynne Francis

  She’d reached the gate of Lane End Cottage now and she paused for a moment, casting her eyes around as if hoping for some clue. All looked as usual; there was nothing outwardly to show that there was anything wrong within. At that moment the kitchen door at the side of the house opened and Martha peered out.

  ‘Is that you, Sarah? Thank heavens you’re home. What a to-do we’ve had!’

  She bustled Sarah into the kitchen and pulled out a chair at the kitchen table for her.

  ‘Here, I made some tea and kept the pot warm for you,’ and she poured a cup from the big teapot warming on the hob.

  Sarah looked around: all looked peaceful and as it should be, but where was Alice? And Ada?

  ‘Is it …?’ She paused, not sure who to enquire about first.

  ‘Alice is with Hannah, next door to me,’ Martha said. ‘I thought it best to get her out of the way. She’s well, you mustn’t worry. You know how Hannah dotes on her.’

  All at once, Sarah knew. Her grandmother hadn’t been looking well for days; she’d grown paler and greyer as the weeks went on. Sarah had been worried about leaving Alice with her while she went to work but Ada had been emphatic.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me that one of my tonics won’t cure. I’m just not as young as I was, that’s all. It’s just the weather. You’ll see: once the first primroses are out next spring I’ll be as right as rain.’

  Sarah had taken from that what she wanted to hear, rather than trusting the evidence of her own eyes, because she didn’t want to think about the potential problems if Ada wasn’t well enough to mind Alice.

  ‘It’s Ada, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘What happened?’

  Martha rubbed Sarah’s shoulder, in a sign of brisk sympathy.

  ‘Aye, I’m afraid it is. Mrs Sykes came to collect her remedy and found the door ajar. When there was no reply to her knocking and calling she went in.’ Martha hesitated, as if weighing up how much information to give. ‘She found Ada collapsed here in the kitchen, on the floor.’ Martha indicated the spot and Sarah’s hand flew to her mouth to stifle a cry.

  ‘Mrs Sykes ran round to bang on my door and I came at once. Poor Ada, I could tell she’d breathed her last.’

  ‘And Alice?’ Sarah whispered.

  Martha looked uncomfortable. ‘We couldn’t find her at first, until we looked upstairs. Then we found her huddled under the quilt on your bed.’

  She patted Sarah on the back as she started to cry. ‘Don’t fret. Alice has had a shock but she’s young. She’ll forget about it very quickly.’

  Sarah found little comfort in her words. She was consumed with guilt over what Alice had witnessed, and anguished over the loss of her grandmother. Martha let her sob for a bit then asked gently, ‘Do you want to see her?’

  Sarah, whose thoughts had been wide-ranging as she cried, looked at her in some bewilderment.

  ‘Ada. Do you want to see Ada?’ Martha repeated.

  Sarah nodded slowly, then she got to her feet and followed Martha as she led her through to the parlour.

  ‘I had to call out the doctor to make sure all was as I thought. He got me some help to carry her through here.’ Martha paused before opening the parlour door.

  Sarah stepped hesitantly over the threshold. Somehow a coffin had already been acquired for Ada and she lay within, looking so tiny and shrunken that it seemed as though it had been made for a giant. Sarah approached with some trepidation. The figure in the coffin bore little more than a faint resemblance to her grandmother. The hair looked right, as did the clothes, but as all breath had left her body it had clearly taken with it whatever it was that made Ada who she was. The diminished, grey figure lying there looked much older than the woman Sarah had been used to seeing on a daily basis, and fresh tears flowed at the sight of her.

  ‘She was all alone,’ she whispered between sobs.

  Martha tactfully refrained from referring to the fact that Alice had been there, but reassured Sarah that, according to the doctor, Ada wouldn’t have known a thing.

  ‘He said it would all have been over in seconds,’ she reported.

  The stark details brought on another fit of sobbing, as Sarah reached out to touch Ada’s hand. It felt cold and waxy to the touch. She was too late. The Ada of that morning, of just a few hours previously, had gone. She could no longer say all those things she should have said before, nor thank her for all the love and care she had bestowed on Sarah over the years.

  ‘I’ll leave you. There’ll be things you want to say. And don’t think she can’t hear you,’ Martha said, preparing to make a tactful withdrawal. ‘Her presence is still strong in this room. I can feel it.’

  Sarah was torn: she wanted to see Alice, to make sure that she was all right, but she also wanted to say some last meaningful words to her grandmother. Except that now she couldn’t think of a single sensible thing to say. She sat beside the coffin and tears flowed again. She felt very alone. With Ada gone, it seemed to Sarah as though she had lost the final family member who could offer her any support. Her father didn’t count; he hadn’t been a presence in her life for years. There was Joe, of course, but he was never there when she needed him. It was very clear that she was on her own now. She needed to be strong, for Alice and herself. There was no one left to rely on.

  Sarah sat beside Ada for a few more minutes, her tears now dry. ‘I wish I had listened to my own worries this morning and hadn’t left you alone. I’m sorry,’ she said. Her shoulders started to shake with fresh sobs but she fought them down. ‘You taught me well,’ she whispered. Then, as a thought struck with her with increasing clarity: ‘I’ll continue your work.’

  She bent over the coffin to kiss Ada’s forehead but in her heart she felt it was too late. There was nothing to be done now except to make sure that she put into practice everything that her grandmother had taught her. Sarah resolved in an instant that she wouldn’t continue at the mill; in any case, who could be trusted to look after Alice with Ada dead and Martha now a sight too fond of the bottle? Instead, she vowed that she would become the best herbalist that she could possibly be, in honour of her grandmother.

  Chapter 52

  The days up to, and after, the funeral passed in a blur. Ada was welcomed back into the fold of the Methodist Church for her final resting place although this caused Sarah some heartache for she’d had no guidance from her grandmother as to her wishes. Sarah stuck by the resolution she had made by Ada’s coffin and gave notice at the mill. She was too troubled by Martha’s drinking to feel that she could leave her in sole charge of Alice all day, and so she felt that in a way the decision had already been made for her. She was encouraged in her tentative plans when, at Ada’s funeral, which was well attended, several of the mourners approached her to say that they hoped she would continue in her grandmother’s footsteps.

  ‘Ada spoke very highly of you as a herbalist,’ one of her grandmother’s long-term patients confided. ‘She felt sure that you would be a more than worthy successor to her once you applied your mind to it.’

  Sarah felt both proud and ashamed. It was true that she had worked at the practice of herbalism in fits and starts, distracted by the birth of Alice, by Joe’s imprisonment and by the necessity of earning a regular income through Ada’s previous illnesses. Now, though, she told herself how very lucky she was to have this to fall back on: something that would allow her to look after Alice while she worked. She felt guilty at first, giving up her job at the mill, but Edie gazed at her in astonishment when she confessed these feelings.

  ‘Do you not think I’d be away from here in a heartbeat if there were aught I could do instead?’ she demanded. ‘I know grief does strange things to a body but I fear it’s addled your wits. You go and get on with what you’re good at. I’ll be sending Carrie along for something to help her in childbirth. She suffers something terrible, poor lass.’

  Will and Carrie had been married within six months of the mistletoe incident and their first baby had been born in the O
ctober of that year. Their second child was now well on its way. Sarah privately thought that Carrie’s petite frame was the likely cause of her difficulties, but making up some raspberry-leaf tea for her in the latter weeks of pregnancy could do no harm.

  So it was that, with Ada barely in the ground, Sarah found herself trying to get to grips with taking over Ada’s practice and patients. She devoted herself to a thorough study of the few books that Ada had possessed, then, resolving to bring something of herself to this venture, she made contact by letter with other herbalists spread throughout the country: in Scotland, Plymouth, Nottingham and London. At first she was hesitant, fearing that these established herbalists would view her as an upstart, but her correspondence allowed her to seek advice and support which, much to her surprise, was readily forthcoming. Before long she felt confident enough to adjust existing remedies to suit the changing needs of her patients.

  In the weeks following Ada’s death, Alice was subdued. Gran’s ‘falling down’, which had resulted in such sadness and in her vanishing from her life, had made her anxious. She was very clingy at first, so much so that Sarah despaired of being able to get any work done at all during her daughter’s waking hours. With time, though, Alice’s anxiety lessened and she relaxed as she accepted that her mother was now at home taking care of her. She became better at amusing herself when Sarah was busy and the regular stream of visitors proved to be a welcome diversion in what was now such a small family.

  That first Christmas without Ada, barely a month after her death, was one of such unremitting gloom both in the weather outside and in the mood within the house that Sarah preferred not to remember it. Ada’s death had left her with no other adult to talk to on a daily basis, no one with whom to share chores and worries, nor triumphs, when they came.

  At first, Sarah left her grandmother’s bedroom untouched. Then one day, after six months had passed, Sarah decided that it was time to pack a few of her grandmother’s things away. It wasn’t that she had a use for the room: simply that it felt wrong to leave it just as it had been on the morning that Ada had died. Her brush and comb were set down just as she had left them, a few items of inexpensive jewellery lay in a box next to them on top of the chest of drawers, while her clothes were still neatly folded in the drawers below.

  Having decided to make a start Sarah hesitated, suddenly unsure of what to do. Ada’s clothes were well worn but still serviceable. She supposed they could be packed up for the workhouse. Then she remembered the patchwork quilt she had made with her grandmother just before their move to Lane End Cottage. Suddenly she felt happier: she would make a quilt using the fabrics, and that way she would retain memories of Ada. Sarah began to sort the clothes into piles of plain and patterned fabric, then she further grouped them into colours that worked together. As she burrowed down into the final drawer, the deepest one at the bottom, her fingers struck something hard.

  She cleared the folded clothes away from around it and uncovered a tin box, which had once held biscuits. It rattled as she lifted it out; thinking that perhaps it held buttons or pieces of costume jewellery that had fallen from favour, Sarah casually prised off the lid. To her astonishment, the tin contained sovereigns – many sovereigns – as well as a folded sheet of paper.

  Sarah sat down on Ada’s bed with the box before her, then unfolded the paper.

  ‘My dear Sarah,’ the note read, ‘if you are reading this then I am no longer with you. The money in this tin is all I can leave you by way of a legacy. It came to me from my mother, Catherine Abbot, who earned it from the sale of her paintings. I haven’t spent any of it – in fact, I have been able to add a little to it over the years – and I know that you will use it wisely to safeguard your, and Alice’s, future.’

  The signature was in Ada’s familiar, neat handwriting. Sarah tipped the sovereigns onto the blanket and counted the coins, trying to take in what she had read as she did so. There were fifty sovereigns, an enormous sum for Ada to have kept all this time. With tears in her eyes, she read the note again, moved by her grandmother’s thoughtfulness and this final contact with her from beyond the grave.

  Then it struck her that the wording of the note was significant. There was no mention of Joe. Sarah thought about what this might mean. Joe had played so little part in her life in these past years that it was hard to imagine how they might go on when he came out of prison. She felt a sudden stab of anxiety that she had never visited him – indeed, she hadn’t really tried to after he had refused her initial attempts. She had been prompt and dutiful in her letters to him but had felt constrained; she knew that someone else was reading them to him and it was hard to include anything personal beyond details of how she, Ada and Alice fared.

  She had written to let him know about Ada’s death, and to his credit a letter sent by return had expressed concern over how she was coping and a wish that he could be with her to support her at such a time of sorrow. Now that she thought this over again she wondered, not for the first time, how much of that came from Joe, and how much was suggested to him by his scribe.

  She immediately felt disloyal to have such thoughts. Yet, if she looked back over the years since her marriage, how much had she been able to rely on Joe? That she and Alice could call Lane End Cottage home and had survived thus far was entirely due to her own efforts.

  Although Ada hadn’t spelt it out in her note, the implication was there by omission. She didn’t trust Joe to provide for the family and so she had taken it upon herself to ensure that they had something to fall back on. They couldn’t live off such a sum but, if times were hard, it offered them some protection. She knew instinctively that Joe should never learn of it. Which left her with the problem of where to keep the tin box. Storing it amongst her own clothes would be risky, and now that she had cleared out Ada’s chest of drawers it couldn’t be hidden there.

  Sarah took the box down to the parlour, lifted the hearthrug and located a floorboard that was a little looser than all the rest. She used a kitchen knife to prise up the board, placed the box in the cavity revealed below and nailed the board back in place. It felt firmer than it had previously, making it harder to judge which board it was, so she fetched a piece of chalk and rubbed it along the short edge of the board. She hoped it would neither be conspicuous nor wear off under the pressure of the rug.

  In the end, the tin didn’t remain in place as long as Sarah had planned. Around eighteen months later, an unexpected visitor caused her to change her plans.

  Chapter 53

  As the year turned, Sarah grew quietly more confident in her practice of the herbalist’s art. She had been dispensing Ada’s remedies to the long-standing patients without a problem and her initial worries over diagnosing new patients, or new complaints in existing patients, proved groundless. She discovered that she enjoyed the challenge and was delighted when a remedy that she had created proved successful. A lot of the skill lay in drawing out of the patient exactly what the problem was: sometimes a diagnosis that appeared immediately obvious proved to be false under further probing. More than once Sarah found that a patient presenting with a stomach complaint hadn’t necessarily eaten something that had upset them but, as like as not, was suffering an anxiety related to another area of their life and it was this that was causing the problem.

  Sarah had no small success in getting new patients from her time spent at the mill. Edie had been an early loyal supporter of her in her new role, while Carrie had been enthusiastic in her praises of her to friends and relatives. Sarah began to see more and more cases of the persistent cough caused by the fine cotton fibres that clogged up the atmosphere in the mill and she resolved to try and find a remedy that worked long-term, not least because she herself continued to suffer in the winter months.

  As her knowledge grew, Sarah began to develop the herb garden further. In addition, she drew up lists of where in the surrounding countryside she might find reliable sources for herbs that required the sort of growing conditions she couldn’t repli
cate in the garden. Going on collecting expeditions gave her an excuse to be outside with Alice when the weather was good and stopped her feeling too much confined to the house.

  It was on one such trip, in the late summer almost two years after Ada’s death, that Sarah and Alice were to be found sitting on the shady edge of Tinker’s Wood, high up on the hill, enjoying a picnic. This time, the focus of their collecting had been blackberries, rather than herbs. Alice, now aged six, was gazing down into the valley as she licked her fingers to remove the sticky sweetness of the fruit she had consumed.

  ‘Look,’ she said, pointing. ‘There’s a hat moving along all by itself.’

  Sarah followed her finger and spotted a straw hat bobbing jauntily along, level with the top of the hedge. She laughed. ‘You’re right. That’s Tinker’s Way. It must be set on someone’s head but the hedges having grown so high, it makes it impossible to see. How odd it looks.’

  She was quiet for a moment, reminded of that day over seven years ago when she had first seen Joe, down there on Tinker’s Way, and how she had at first thought him very forward and then irresistible. So much had happened since then. And even though she was now married to Joe, how little she had seen of him during that time!

  To shake off unwelcome thoughts, she began to gather their things together.

  ‘Time to go home,’ she said, stalling Alice’s protests by promising that they could make a repeat visit before the week was out.