Half a Sixpence

by Evie Grace

  ‘I don’t want your ma catching sight of me, or she’ll have me back in the fields.’

  ‘Is John with you?’

  ‘My pa is looking after him until I get back.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ She moved around and found another egg in the straw in the empty stable. She shooed a couple of the hens out. ‘I wish you’d do all your laying in the coop.’

  ‘That’s just it. I want to show you something.’

  ‘No, ta. This is bound to be one of your childish tricks. I don’t care if you are now twenty-one years old.’ She closed the stable door behind her.

  ‘It isn’t, I promise.’

  ‘How can I trust you?’ Catherine laughed.

  ‘You’ll have to take a chance.’

  She caught on to the suppressed excitement in his voice. It had been a dull day so far. She had been waiting for something to happen. Maybe this was it.

  ‘Please come, Cath— I mean, Miss Rook.

  ‘Call me Catherine. None of this “Miss Rook” nonsense.’

  ‘We haven’t much time. Please, hurry.’

  She took the eggs indoors and fetched her bonnet before hastening across the farmyard to where Matty was waiting for her. He’d washed his face and it looked as if he might have spat on his boots and given them a rub from the state of his cuffs. He carried a basket on his arm.

  They walked swiftly side by side along the track and past Toad’s Bottom Cottage to the crossroads where they slipped into the wood. The chestnut underwood was in full leaf and the sound of sawing filled the air.

  ‘I should really go back,’ Catherine said, hesitating. ‘I don’t want Ma to notice I’m gone.’

  ‘There’s something I want to show you. It isn’t much further.’

  She followed him along a deer track that wound between the trees until it reached a small clearing. He balanced his basket on a tree stump and moved close to her.

  ‘Look up there,’ he whispered. He pointed towards one of the trees, one bare of leaves and almost bereft of branches with a hole in its mossy trunk. A bee flew into the hole. ‘Where there are bees, there’s honey. What do you think?’

  Catherine’s mouth watered at the thought of sweet, sticky honeycomb as Matty knelt down and began to scrape dry leaves and pine needles into a small mound.

  ‘You will be careful,’ she said.

  ‘It’s all right. I’ve done this a hundred times.’ With a flint and stone, he lit a flame in the leaf litter and blew it out to leave it smoking.

  ‘Look at you.’ Catherine laughed as she gave him her shawl to protect his face.

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ he chuckled. ‘We don’t want to have to share.’

  He collected up the smoking heap and held it at arm’s length, stepping slowly and quietly up to the hole in the tree. He dropped it inside and ducked back quickly. A dark, buzzing cloud of fury emerged from the hole, followed by a stream of the smoke that was supposed to have quietened them.

  Catherine gasped.

  ‘Stay back,’ Matty warned. He squatted on his heels, watching the bees’ flight and waiting for the right time to extract the honey. When the buzzing subsided, he pulled a knife from his bag and approached the nest. Another bee flew out and hit his face. He slapped his cheek and pulled the shawl down further over his eyes. He reached into the hollow trunk and started cutting. He pulled out a dripping section of honeycomb and walked across to Catherine. He broke a piece off and handed it to her.

  It was chewy and sweet, the most delicious honey she had ever tasted.

  Matty wrapped the rest of the comb in a rag and they started to stroll back towards the village.

  ‘Are you looking at me?’ she asked, aware that he was staring at her.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you’re a beautiful woman,’ he said, blushing. ‘Very fine.’

  ‘Too fine for you,’ she said, trying to make light of his compliment.

  A shadow crossed his eyes as if he’d taken her dismissal to heart, but he pressed on.

  ‘Would you do me the honour of walking out with me?’

  A dragonfly hovered nearby as though waiting like Matty for Catherine’s answer. He was twenty-one to her twenty, tall, good-looking and strong. He had filled out, his limbs now clothed with muscle, and his jaw had grown squarer and more manly. She felt a surge of attraction for him as they stood face to face in the dappled shade, which was all very well and slightly disturbing, as she had looked upon him as a friend and almost as a brother since she had lost John in the accident. She scolded herself for her self-deception. There had been occasions when she had thought of him otherwise, but walking out with him? He had taken her by surprise.

  ‘Before you say anything, the honey wasn’t a trick to get you alone. I saw the nest and thought of you.’

  She wiped her hands on her skirt.

  ‘You know you have no right to think of me in that way.’ She wondered immediately why she had said that.

  ‘Why not? Are you taken? Is my brother courting you?’

  ‘Stephen? Whatever gave you that idea?’

  ‘I don’t know. He likes you, that’s all.’

  Her laughter rang hollow in her ears.

  ‘Ma wouldn’t approve of me being courted by one of the Carter brothers.’

  ‘So you are spoken for?’

  ‘Not yet.’ She didn’t yet know what she wanted and it wasn’t fair to take it out on him. She opened her mouth to apologise for her contrariness, but it was too late. He was angry.

  ‘You are a spoiled brat. Where do you think you sprung from? Royalty? The way you talk, anyone would think you were Queen Victoria ’erself. Yet your grandfather’ – he paused – ‘that’s Thomas. He was just a farm worker in the beginning.’

  ‘Thomas?’ Matty was deliberately trying to confuse her. ‘Thomas is my father, and Thomas was my grandfather before him.’

  ‘The man you call Pa is your grandfather, didn’t you know? Your ma is your grandmother.’

  Catherine felt her heart fluttering like a bird in a cage.

  ‘You must be mistaken,’ she stammered. Her dearest Pa was her father. She’d never had any reason to doubt it, except … A memory flowed back into her head, like the water passing under the bridge, catching a stick briefly then carrying it on downstream, a thought she had long ago dismissed.

  ‘Ivy’s your ma.’

  ‘It isn’t true.’ She stared at Matty. ‘How dare you suggest such a thing? Ivy isn’t my ma. She can’t be. She and Len haven’t been blessed with a child.’

  ‘She had you. My ma says it’s a punishment for what Ivy let that man do to her.’

  ‘What man?’ Tears sprang to Catherine’s eyes. How could he be so cruel?

  ‘Ivy was in service,’ Matty said.

  She’d known that, Catherine thought. Ivy had been a maid at Churt House, but her time there had been cut short for some reason.

  ‘Even though he were a married man, she seduced him with her fancy looks’ – Matty seemed to moderate this opinion – ‘by some accounts. She was sent home in disgrace. After you was born, she was married off quick as lightning to the blacksmith.’ He tipped his head to one side. ‘You’re a bastard.’

  ‘And you’re a tale-telling, lying weasel. I shan’t speak to you again.’ Catherine stamped her foot and turned away from him before briefly glancing back over her shoulder to spit out the words, ‘I hate you, Matty Carter.’

  She ran along the deer path, haring along as fast as she could to get away from him, but he was quicker. He jumped over a tree stump to overtake her and stopped in front of her, blocking her path.

  ‘Get out of my way,’ she ordered.

  ‘I didn’t mean anything by it,’ he said, moving close to her, his voice hoarse. ‘I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. It was supposed to be a secret – my pa let it slip one day. I’m sorry I spoke of it.’

  ‘Why did you then?’

  ‘Because I wanted to get back at you for turning me down. I’m
fond of you, Catherine. Your past doesn’t matter to me.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I thought you might be sweet on me.’

  She denied it, even though she could recall more than one occasion when she had been tempted to hold his hand, or lean in for a kiss.

  ‘I hope I’ve never given you that impression. I’m not and never will be. We were friends, that’s all.’ She looked him up and down. ‘Look at you in your threadbare clothes, with your hands and face dirty from working on the farm. Why would anyone want to walk out with you? Get out of my way,’ she repeated, ‘or else.’

  ‘Or else what?’ he said scornfully. His chin jutted out in defiance, but his lip wobbled as if he was about to cry.

  ‘I’ll scream.’ She pushed him aside and ran home to the farm, where she almost bumped into Ma who was carrying a trug of beans towards the house.

  ‘What happened to you?’ she sighed. ‘I hope you haven’t been laying yourself open to accusations. You know how people round here talk.’

  ‘They should mind their noses,’ Catherine said sharply. She couldn’t bring herself to ask Ma outright just yet about what Matty had told her.

  ‘I need you to fetch bread and beer. Here.’ Ma dropped a couple of coins into her palm. ‘Ivy has darned some stockings and let out a dress for me. You can collect those and take the pie I’ve made for her as well.’

  Catherine compared her mother’s pudsy hands with her own slender fingers. She was a little different from the rest of the Rooks, physically and in spirit, so was there some truth in Matty’s tale that she wasn’t one of them? There was only one way to find out, and Ma had given her the perfect opportunity.

  There was a pair of big bay dray horses with silken feathers and soft brown eyes standing outside the forge. Len, dressed in his leather apron and heavy boots, was bent over, hammering nails into a grey cob’s hoof. The horse shifted its weight as the blacksmith twisted off the clenches. He uttered a growl of annoyance. The horse raised its head and flicked its ears nervously back and forth. Len’s presence had a similar effect on Catherine, but today she was feeling brave, spurred on by the mixture of anger and disbelief that she felt at Matty’s revelation. At one moment, she thought he must be right, the next that he had to be wrong.

  Len looked up, and spoke with nails in his mouth. ‘What brings you here?’

  ‘I’ve come to call on Ivy.’

  He limped across to look inside her basket. She lifted the muslin from the top to show him the pie’s golden crust.

  ‘She’s indoors.’ He nodded towards the door into the cottage, a thatched building with a timber frame, then looked back towards the forge where Stephen was standing with a glowing horseshoe on the end of a pritchel. ‘Lad, get back to your work. What are you gawping at?’

  Flushing, Stephen hooked the shoe over the end of the anvil.

  ‘Good morning, miss,’ he said, acknowledging Catherine with a shy smile.

  ‘Good day to you,’ she said, looking down her nose. He was one of the Carter boys after all, and he didn’t even know what time of day it was. She walked away and knocked on the door to the cottage. There was no reply, but she entered anyway. Ivy wasn’t one for keeping the home spick and span. Catherine was never sure what she did do, apart from mending and sewing.

  ‘Ivy, are you there?’ she called as the musty odour of damp and rats hit her throat.

  She moved into the kitchen, where she found her sister sitting sewing at the table with the drapes letting in just a chink of light which fell across a rent in the garment that she was working on. She turned her face away and began rummaging in her sewing box.

  ‘Why is it I can never find the scithers?’ she said sharply.

  ‘I’ve brought you a pie,’ Catherine said, sensing that something was wrong. She removed it from the basket and placed it on the table.

  ‘Tell Ma, thank you.’ Ivy squinted to rethread her needle. ‘Off you go now.’

  ‘I thought you’d be outside. It’s a lovely day.’

  ‘I’m indisposed.’

  For a moment, Catherine wondered if the family’s prayers had been answered and she was with child at last, but Ivy turned and gazed at her. Her eyelids were swollen and her eye half-closed.

  Catherine gasped.

  ‘Don’t say anything to Ma and Pa. I walked into a door. I am a dolt and a clodpole.’

  ‘No, you aren’t. Len did that to you.’ Ire welled up in Catherine’s breast. She had never seen Pa raise his hand to Ma, even when she’d goaded him to anger. ‘You must leave him.’

  ‘How can I when I’m bound to him for life?’ Ivy said bitterly. ‘Oh, he’s a good husband in many ways. He doesn’t look at other women, only their menfolk to check that they aren’t looking at me. You must promise me you won’t breathe a word of this.’

  ‘Don’t ask me to keep a secret,’ Catherine said curtly. ‘That’s why I’m here. To find out about what you’ve been hiding from me all these years.’

  She noticed how Ivy’s hand shook, her needle hovering above her handiwork.

  ‘Don’t deny it,’ she said, biting back tears. ‘All I want is the truth.’

  ‘We’ll talk outside. Bring your basket.’ Ivy put down her sewing and Catherine followed her into the garden and down the cinder path that ran between the vegetable and flower beds to the privy.

  Ivy was tall, like Ma, and blonde, but she wore her hair down and her clothes were dirty, and her shoulders stooped. She turned to face Catherine in the shadow of one of the pear trees that grew at the end of the garden. For a moment, Catherine thought that she was going to tell her that it was idle gossip and send her on her way, but it wasn’t to be.

  ‘I knew you’d find out one day,’ she began. ‘It was only a matter of time.’

  ‘So you aren’t my sister?’ The ground seemed to fall away from beneath Catherine’s feet. She reached out for the tree trunk to steady herself as her head swam. Her identity had been torn apart. She had been betrayed by those closest to her, the people she loved most. ‘How could you?’

  ‘Ma made me promise to hold my tongue.’

  ‘I mean, how could you give me up? A poor defenceless baby? Your own flesh and blood?’

  ‘I did it out of desperation. I was scared and ashamed. I had no choice. Ma wanted me out on the street. If it hadn’t been for Pa’s intervention, I would have ended up dead.’ She took a breath before continuing, ‘Your father disowned you before you were born.’

  ‘Who is he?’ Catherine prayed that Matty had got that part wrong at least.

  ‘The year before I turned fifteen, Ma helped me pack a basket with my belongings and walked me to Churt House where I went into service as a housemaid. They wanted me when I was younger, but Pa forbade it.’ Ivy glanced nervously towards the cottage.

  ‘Does Len know about this?’ Catherine asked, as the sound of hammering rang out from the forge.

  ‘He knew of the rumours, then on our wedding day and against Ma’s advice, I confessed because I didn’t want to start married life keeping secrets from my husband.’ Ivy began to cry bloodstained tears. ‘I wish I’d never told him. He’s held it against me ever since.’

  ‘Oh, Ivy,’ Catherine exclaimed. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘None of this is your fault.’ Ivy touched her throat.

  ‘Tell me more about my father.’

  ‘I can’t think of the man who sired you as a father – he isn’t like dear Pa. He’s hard and ruthless, and deeply unkind.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘It was Mr Hadington, the master,’ she whispered.

  ‘But he’s so old. He must be at least fifty,’ Catherine exclaimed, thinking of the lawyer with his fine coat and cane who strolled up the aisle in church to take his pew every Sunday and who’d almost run Emily down with his horses and carriage. ‘And he’s married,’ she added, thinking of his wife. She felt sick.

  ‘You are sadly innocent in the ways of the world, as I was back then. I didn’t know that such men existed.’

  �
��What do you mean?’ It was common knowledge that Mr White, the wheelwright, had had a connection behind the oast with Mrs Clackworthy, the landlady of the beerhouse, so Catherine thought that she knew a little about men.

  ‘Mr Hadington has a preference for girls on the verge of womanhood. He pursued me for over a year, often inviting me into the library alone, and trying to entice me to sit on his knee or climb the library steps to reach a book for him, so he could grasp me around the thighs and bury his face in my skirts to keep me “safe” from falling.’ Catherine noticed how Ivy shuddered at the memory. ‘One afternoon, we were alone in the house. He contrived it. It was the lady’s afternoon for calling on the neighbours, and the kitchenmaid was in bed with the fever, so he dismissed Cook for the rest of the day. When he called for tea in the library, I found him sitting behind his desk. He was in his cups, which was a relief to me.’

  ‘Why?’ Catherine frowned.

  A smile briefly crossed Ivy’s lips. ‘Have you not heard of the term “brewer’s droop”?’

  Catherine had heard the term being shouted about at harvest time when the men had taken too much strong beer. She blushed as she recalled how Matty had once offered a crude explanation to her and Emily behind the hayrick.

  ‘I thought that if I could persuade him to take a little more whisky, he’d fall into a slumber, but the more he drank, the more insistent he became and then …’ Ivy’s voice trailed off ‘… he ruined me, and when my belly started to swell, he said I must lay my child to someone else or take something and kill it. I wasn’t the first, or the last. My lady paid me what I was owed, I packed my basket and walked home to Wanstall Farm. I had nowhere else to go. I couldn’t work anywhere else because the lady refused to give me a reference.

  ‘The one piece of advice I give to you is to keep yourself pure and your reputation beyond reproach until such time as you are legally married. Never listen to a man’s promises, no matter how much you love him. They will say anything in the heat of the moment. Mr Hadington told me that he cared for me and would make sure I was looked after. He lied. Fancy that from a man of the law,’ Ivy said sarcastically. ‘Never mind, eh? That’s the way it is and nothing can be done about it.’