Down Weaver's Lane

by Anna Jacobs

  He and Mr Butterfield nodded to one another as if they were already acquainted, then he sat down in the front pew on the other side of the aisle.

  Parson cleared his throat and began the service. It didn’t take long and little of it registered in Emmy’s mind. When it was over, the two men employed as gravedigger and gardener at the church came and lifted the coffin. She didn’t know what to do next and looked questioningly at Mr Butterfield.

  ‘We must follow them to the grave,’ he said quietly. He stood up and went to wait at the end of the pew for her to lead the way out of the church, as if she were a lady.

  The other man followed them in silence.

  It was all so strange Emmy didn’t know what to make of it, had given up trying.

  To her surprise they didn’t go to the back of the churchyard, to the spot reserved for paupers, but stopped near a newly dug hole.

  ‘I could not see my sister laid in a pauper’s grave,’ Mr Butterfield told her. ‘This is where the rest of the Butterfield family are buried, Emmeline.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You should call me Uncle Isaac.’

  But she couldn’t say that. It just didn’t feel right. And she couldn’t remember the last time anyone had called her Emmeline. Her mother had always said the name had been her father’s choice, to match his own name, Emerick.

  The Parson said some more words at the graveside while Emmy watched his surplice bell out in the breeze and wished he’d hurry up. That wind was sharp as knives and even in her new clothes she was finding it hard not to shiver. Besides, what did words matter? They wouldn’t bring her mother back, would they?

  ‘Emmy!’

  She realised Parson was looking at her as if he expected her to do something. Panic filled her. She should have been paying attention. What did they want?

  ‘You should throw some earth on the coffin,’ the stranger prompted. He bent to pick up a little moist dark soil, so she did the same, and when he gestured, she threw it into the hole. It seemed a pointless thing to do and it dirtied her hand, but both men did the same thing, after which Parson did some more praying.

  When that was finished, he looked at the two men. ‘If you need to talk to Emmy, you can be private in my study.’

  ‘Thank you,’ the stranger said. ‘We do need to talk to her.’

  Remembering the last time she had been alone with a stranger, Emmy hung back. ‘I don’t want to go with them, Mr Bradley.’ And then the tears came. Tears for the mother who would never know that her brother had cared enough for her to come to the funeral and pay for a proper burial. Tears for Mrs Tibby, whom Emmy was missing dreadfully. Tears for herself, too, because she was not only alone in the world, but was suddenly very afraid of what these men might want with her.

  ‘She won’t understand till she’s settled down,’ Parson said. So they took her back to Mrs Bradley, who sat with her till she’d grown calmer then accompanied her into the Parson’s study when she confessed she was afraid to go alone.

  ‘This gentleman is Mr Reynolds, a lawyer,’ Parson said. ‘He has your mother’s will and has brought some things for you.’

  Emmy could only gape at him. She had never expected her mother to make a will. You only did that if you had something to leave people. For the first time she wondered if some of her mother’s tales of better times were true. She had never quite believed them, knowing how Madge always embroidered the truth and saw things as she wanted them to be instead of as they were.

  The lawyer placed a cardboard box in front of Emmy. ‘Your mother left you everything she owned - but sadly she’d fallen on hard times so this is all that remains: a locket and some papers she wanted you to have.’

  All Emmy could think of to say was, ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘The locket belonged to your father’s grandmother. It’s a pretty piece.’

  She didn’t want anything from her father’s family, because if they really were well-off and had sent her and her mother away after her father died, she’d never forgive them for condemning her to a life of shame. But she didn’t dare refuse it. Taking the box, she put it on her knee. The lawyer had a narrow face and kept talking over her head to the other men as if she didn’t exist, occasionally throwing disapproving glances in her direction as if he didn’t like what he saw. She didn’t know why that annoyed her so much, but it did. She sniffed away the tears that were still threatening and tried to listen, but could not seem to concentrate on the words, only stare from one man to another.

  Her uncle was looking tight-faced and angry now. Well, she hadn’t asked him to come today, had she?

  In the end it was Parson who spoke to her. ‘We’ve been discussing your future, Emmy, while you were - composing yourself.’ He leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands across his plump belly. ‘At seventeen you are very young to go out into the world alone. You have just escaped from serious trouble and we do not want you facing other temptations.’

  ‘Mrs Bradley said she’d find me a position, sir. Away from Northby. I’m sure I’ll be all right once I have a place. I’m a good worker and I won’t let you down.’

  ‘It would be better if you had someone to keep an eye on you, a family member, until you are older,’ Mr Butterfield replied.

  He didn’t say, So that you don’t follow the same path as your mother, but that was what he meant, Emmy thought resentfully. ‘I’ve been on my own for a while now, sir - Uncle, I mean - working for Mrs Oswald. I don’t need anyone to keep an eye on me, I just need a job. I’m not like my mother and I’m never going to be.’

  ‘Very laudable,’ Parson said. ‘Yes, yes.’ He glanced sideways at the stranger as if expecting him to speak and when he didn’t, asked, ‘Is that all you wish to say, Mr Reynolds?’

  ‘Yes. Since Mr Butterfield is taking an interest, I feel the less said the better. My family does have some - concerns, but I feel today’s decision will answer the case nicely.’

  The long words meant nothing to Emmy. She wished they’d just let her get on with her work. She was determined to prove to Mrs Bradley what a good worker she was, determined to do everything she could to wipe out the past. She realised with a start that they were all looking at her again and glanced uneasily sideways at Mrs Bradley.

  ‘She’s still a bit upset and finding it hard to concentrate,’ that lady said. ‘Let me explain it to her.’ She took Emmy’s hand in hers. ‘My dear, we don’t feel you should be on your own. Life can deal very harshly with young women like you.’

  ‘When I get another place, I’ll not be on my own. You said you’d find me one.’

  The mistress’s hand patted hers firmly. ‘Well, what we’ve decided will be better. Your uncle has kindly offered to take you into his own home.’

  Emmy gaped at the stern man on her other side. ‘But why?’

  Isaac looked at her in surprise. ‘Because I’m family. The only family you know now.’

  ‘But I don’t know you! And your wife won’t want someone like me living in her house.’

  ‘My wife knows her duty to the family, I hope.’

  ‘And there are your daughters ... they hate me, too!’ Everyone stared at her as if she were telling lies, so she added desperately, ‘They say nasty things to me in the street. I can’t go and live with people who hate me.’

  ‘She’s overwrought,’ Mr Reynolds said.

  Emmy answered for herself. ‘I’m not! And I won’t do it.’

  ‘You have no choice, dear,’ Mrs Bradley said quietly. ‘You’re under age and they are your family.’

  ‘Then where were they when we didn’t have enough to eat? I don’t want a family like that.’

  Isaac looked at her in shock. ‘Didn’t have enough to eat?’

  ‘Many a time!’

  ‘All the more reason for Mr Butterfield to look after you now, young woman,’ Mr Reynolds said firmly.

  ‘What do you know about it?’ she flung at him. ‘It’s none of your business what I do, you’re only the lawyer.�
�

  Everyone looked at Mr Reynolds as if expecting him to say something else, but he didn’t.

  Emmy felt as if her head would burst with the anguish of this day.

  ‘I think you should go with Mr Butterfield, dear,’ Mrs Bradley urged. ‘It really is the best thing for you.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. People in Northby will know about my mother and say I’m like her. I need to get away, make a new start.’

  Parson spoke, his voice sharper than usual. ‘That’s ungrateful, Emmy. They’re your family.’

  ‘They still hate me.’ Why could he and his wife not understand that?

  Mr Butterfield looked at her and for a moment his face softened. ‘I don’t hate you, Emmy. I hate what my sister became, but that isn’t the same thing at all.’

  Then Mrs Bradley said in that no-nonsense tone of hers, ‘Emmy, that’s enough! We’ve found you a good home and it’s all settled. Besides, Mr Rishmore himself wants to make sure you’re properly looked after. He’s taking an interest in your welfare and you would be foolish to go against his wishes. His support offers you excellent protection from the other things you fear.’

  Emmy looked from one to the other and closed her lips on further protests. But she knew this wouldn’t work out. And she was afraid of going to share a house with Lal Butterfield. Terrified. Lal was so much bigger and stronger than she was.

  10

  ‘Why did that man come to my mother’s funeral?’ Emmy asked suddenly as she and her uncle walked slowly up the hill from the church.

  ‘Mr Reynolds? Well, um, on behalf of your father’s family.’

  ‘The Carters should have come themselves. I hate them. It’s all their fault my mother had to earn her living like that. Why could they not look after her when my father died?’

  ‘Because she had lived in sin with him before they were married. They never forgave her for that. And I think you should know: your father’s name wasn’t Carter. Your mother changed her name after he died, because of what she was doing.’

  She stopped walking to stare at him in surprise. ‘What was his surname, then?’

  ‘His family would rather keep that secret. They don’t wish her shame to be known.’

  ‘Their shame, too. She didn’t like doing it, you know.’ Anger warred with tears and she fell silent as she fought for control.

  Isaac sighed. ‘It’s our fault as well, I’m afraid. The Butterfields didn’t help her, either. I shall always regret that.’ After a few more paces he pointed ahead, ‘That’s where we live.’

  Emmy stared at the Butterfields’ comfortable villa, four stories high if you included the attics above and the cellar below, one of a pair of semi-detached houses at the upper end of Weavers Lane, where the better class of folk lived. Only a hundred yards north of the church, it felt like a hundred miles away from the bottom end of the street with its squalor and tumble-down houses, its seedy inhabitants and furtive passers-by.

  Here folk walked sedately, nodded to one another, called greetings or stopped for a leisurely chat. They spoke to her uncle and stared at her in curiosity when he simply nodded back without stopping to introduce her. He was carrying her bag of clothing and personal possessions while she held her mother’s box in her arms, clutching it to her chest as if it could protect her. Only it couldn’t. Nothing could protect her now that they’d forced her to stay in Northby where no one would ever quite trust her. She breathed in deeply and slowly to hold back the tears that still threatened to overwhelm her.

  Her uncle opened the front door and led the way inside, calling, ‘We’re here, my dear.’

  There was the murmur of women’s voices from the front room. The door opened and Lal stood there, looking scornfully at Emmy before closing the door carefully behind her and saying in a low voice, ‘Mother says to take her up to her bedroom because Mrs Moston has called.’ She stared at the box in Emmy’s hand as if trying to assess its contents, then went back into the front room.

  Isaac looked helplessly at Emmy then gestured towards the stairs. ‘I’ll lead the way, shall I?’ Not waiting for an answer, he strode up stairs so thickly carpeted that his feet made almost no sound. Emmy looked down the long narrow corridor also covered in a carpet runner that led towards the back of the house then followed him, feeling strange and cut off from everything she knew.

  He stopped on the first landing to say, ‘You’re in the attics because all the bedrooms on this floor are occupied’ Opening a door, he disappeared through it.

  Emmy followed him in silence up another set of stairs, narrower and steeper, with a worn carpet on them. Here the walls were in need of painting and it was much colder.

  ‘This is your room, Emmy.’ His tone was apologetic.

  She went reluctantly inside. The bare boards were unstained but clean - well, bare boards were no hardship to her. The room was larger than any she’d had before, but no effort had been made to make it feel welcoming and the bed was narrow and hard-looking. The only other furniture consisted of a rickety chair and a tin trunk.

  ‘I suppose you’re meant to put your clothes in there.’ Isaac went over to the trunk and lifted the lid. ‘Yes, see, it’s empty. But we’ll have to find you a rug and a proper wash stand.’ He pulled out a silver pocket watch and consulted it. ‘Dear, dear! I really must get back to the mill. I’m sorry to leave you. Why don’t you unpack? I’m sure someone will come to fetch you as soon as Mrs Moston has gone.’

  When his footsteps had faded away and the front door closed, the silence seemed oppressive. Emmy turned round in a circle, then did it again as she surveyed her new room. Mrs Bradley had provided far more comfort for her maids than these people were providing for a relative, but if you looked on the bright side, at least there was no one sharing this room with her. She went to try the bed and it felt as hard as it looked.

  Something bumped against her thigh and she looked at the box of her mother’s papers which she had set down beside her, remembering the way Lal had stared at it. What if Lal took her locket away? It was the only thing Emmy had from her father. She could not bear to look at it yet, for her emotions were still raw from burying her mother and she was still angry with her father’s family lawyer for disposing of her like this. What right had they to interfere in her life now when they hadn’t helped her before?

  Emptying the contents of the box on the bed she looked round for a hiding place for them, getting up to inspect the room more carefully. Nowhere in here. She tiptoed out into the big open attic space outside her room, which had some trunks and pieces of old furniture piled in corners. Not in those, either. Anyone could find things in there.

  A door opened and closed downstairs and she stopped to listen, her heart pounding as if she were contemplating a crime, but there was no sound of footsteps coming up here, so she continued her inspection. The walls sloped to the ground at one end and the plaster had crumbled away near the bottom. She picked up the bag of papers left by her mother, which she would read later, when she could face what she didn’t doubt were more shameful details about the past. She slipped the locket into it and pushed it between the slats of wood showing beneath the rotted plaster. She could poke her finger through and reach it if she wanted to get it out, yet from only one step back you couldn’t tell it was there if you didn’t know what to look for.

  She sighed in relief then realised she had to put something else in her box. In the bedroom she hastily fumbled in her bag of possessions and found a piece of embroidery and a few skeins of thread that Mrs Oswald had given her. They would have to do. Tears came into her eyes as she stared at the embroidery. Mrs Tibby had been trying to teach her fine needlework, but this was her first piece, clumsily done and grubby-looking because she’d had to pull her stitches back a few times.

  After putting it into the box she took everything else out of her bag, folding her clothes and laying them neatly in the trunk, then setting out her soft felt house shoes beside it, ready to change into. She put the cardboard box on top of the tru
nk, then wondered what to do.

  The front door opened, there was a murmur of voices, it shut again. Her room was at the rear of the house, so she couldn’t see who came and went. She expected her aunt or cousins to come up for her then but time passed and still nothing happened. What were they doing?

  The church clock struck the hour then the half-hour. Tired of sitting there with nothing to do, Emmy wandered out into the attic again. There was a larger bedroom opposite hers but it didn’t look as if anyone used it because the bed was not made up.

  At last she heard footsteps on the stairs so went back into her own bedroom, standing beside the window facing the door. No need to tell her that her aunt didn’t want her here, she thought bitterly. They were making it all too plain.

  A very plump lady whom she recognised from church puffed her way across from the top of the attic stairs and stood staring at her from the doorway. Lal and Dinah were visible, smirking behind her as if expecting to enjoy themselves.

  Emmy’s aunt was fashionably dressed in full skirts and her sleeves were so wide at the top that they made her look even larger. She was wearing a fussy, frilled cap on her head which had bunches of ribbons to each side of her face and did not suit her. She stared at Emmy in a chill, assessing way. ‘So you’re that woman’s daughter? I never thought I’d see the day when I’d have to give house room to someone like you.’

  This open malice was far worse than Emmy had expected, but she said nothing.

  ‘I am not pleased to have you living in this house, girl, and I shall never regard you as a member of my family, whatever my husband says! However, Mr Rishmore wishes you to live with us so we must make the best of things. You will work hard and earn your keep, believe me, and you will behave yourself. Do I make myself plain?’

  ‘Yes, Aunt Lena.’