The Innkeeper's Daughter

by Val Wood

  Downstairs in the taproom she twitched the curtains neatly. Annie had washed the windows this morning and put fresh net curtains up as she did every fortnight. Bella looked round. Everything was tidy, the tables polished, the counter clean, and on it a jug with sprigs of winter jasmine which she’d cut early this morning; all they needed were customers and she wished they were busier during the day rather than having a rush during the evening.

  She heard the back door leading to the stable yard being tried, and realizing that she hadn’t unlocked it she dashed down the passage, calling that she was coming. ‘Sorry,’ she began as she opened it, ‘I’d forgotten—’ and stopped when she saw Jamie Lucan standing there.

  ‘Sorry,’ they said in unison, and then both smiled. Bella didn’t know why she felt a sudden uplifting of spirits, but she did. A rush of warmth enveloped her and she said, ‘Come in, come in.’

  ‘I’m on my way back to Hull,’ Jamie said diffidently.

  ‘Won’t you come through?’ she said. ‘Come and warm yourself. There’s a good fire burning.’

  ‘Thank you, I will. It’s very cold.’

  She nodded and led him through. ‘It’ll start to thaw tomorrow. That’s what ’farmers say anyway.’ Then she blushed. He would know that if it was true that his father was a farmer.

  ‘Is that so?’ he said. ‘Well, they’d know. My father’s a farmer,’ he added as he held his hands out to the fire. ‘But I don’t think he knows folklore; he’d have to ask his foreman or waggoner.’

  He gazed into the flames. ‘It’s odd, I hadn’t thought of it before,’ he murmured, almost to himself. ‘My grandfather was also a farmer and apparently he worked the land along with his hands, but when my father married my mother he bought a bigger parcel of land and the house, which was my mother’s choice,’ he added, smiling. ‘She loved it, especially the sound of the sea, and I suppose that my father was then confined to his desk to run the estate.’

  Bella was listening, not only to his words but to the sound of his voice; it was steady and mellow, unusual, she thought, for an eighteen-year-old man, not blasé or arrogant as sometimes Joe and William could be. You would believe anything he told you.

  ‘Are you going back to your studies?’ she asked quietly. ‘Is your holiday over?’

  ‘Yes. At least, I could stay another week but I decided to go back.’ He turned to look at her. ‘Does that sound strange? Do I sound like a swot?’

  Bella shook her head, entranced by his confiding in her and not wholly knowing what a swot was.

  ‘It’s just that my father has agreed that I can sit the university exam,’ he said. ‘And I’m desperate to get good results so that he has no reason to change his mind.’

  ‘How clever you must be,’ she murmured. ‘It’d be a waste if you didn’t go. Where will you go? What will you study?’ and she thought that maybe she wouldn’t ever see him again and that made her feel quite melancholy.

  ‘I’m not so very clever,’ he demurred. ‘I want to study medicine; become a doctor if I’m good enough, and I’d like to go to King’s College if I can get in. That’s the University of London,’ he added, seeing the blankness in her face.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ she said softly. ‘And will you come back?’

  He hesitated. How very young she was, and unworldly. He wondered if she had ever been out of her village. Then he recalled that she had told him she had been to the seaside once, and had confided that she had wanted to stay on at school but had been unable to.

  ‘Oh yes, I expect so,’ he murmured. ‘There are some people who would miss me.’

  ‘Of course!’ She gazed at him and again he thought how fresh and innocent she seemed, untouched yet by life. ‘I hope you do,’ she said.

  ‘How old are you, Bella?’ he asked.

  ‘Fourteen.’ She simply stood, looking at him from her wide eyes. ‘Grown up.’ She smiled. ‘But not yet old enough to have my name above ’door.’

  ‘Even though you do most of the work?’

  She nodded. ‘My mother will take over again when she’s recovered from my father’s death, and ’birth of Henry. I expect,’ she added.

  Jamie swallowed. He had never met anyone quite like her and he couldn’t define the attraction he was experiencing, even though she was so young.

  ‘So – if I go away – and didn’t – wasn’t able to call for a time,’ he stammered, ‘and then I did come back, would you, I mean – would you still be living here?’

  It was as if a light had come on behind her eyes, for they glistened clear and bright. ‘Oh, yes,’ she breathed eagerly, and her cheeks were rosy. ‘I will. I don’t ever expect to move from ’Woodman. At least,’ she added, ‘not unless – I mean, not for a long time.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THINGS DON’T ALWAYS turn out the way we expect them to, Bella thought as she stood at her window watching the sun go down. She had celebrated her eighteenth birthday just two weeks before and there had been changes since that cold winter day when Jamie Lucan had called in to see her.

  That he had called especially to see her she had been certain, for he hadn’t asked for a drink and she hadn’t offered one and they had just talked, shyly, haltingly and hesitatingly, as if they were aware of the huge differences between them. At least, he would have been more aware of those differences than she had been, she thought, being older and of a different status. She gazed out at the long winding coast road and autumnal landscape, enraptured as she always was by the brilliant multicoloured sky. As far as she was concerned he’d been a handsome young man, polite and agreeable and with something special about him that made her senses flutter.

  It was later that day, when she’d thought about their conversation and the question he had asked her, that she’d read more into it, but now she doubted her immature reasoning; she had seen him once more that summer when he’d come to the inn and had his usual glass of mild, but as they were particularly busy that day there was only time for brief words when he told her that he would be going away to London in September. Their conversation had been stilted and she wondered if he was regretting any confidence he might previously have let slip.

  I was mistaken, she considered, sinking down on to her bed. The question meant nothing, therefore it doesn’t matter now.

  When William turned sixteen he declared as he had always claimed he would that he was leaving home to join the army. His mother had accepted the announcement with her usual apathy. The hope that Bella had held on to that her mother would become her normal steadfast industrious self had not been realized. She existed in a grey bubble in which she floated through the days, doing what was expected of her, nursing Henry until he was two, baking, washing and the usual household chores and occasionally coming into the public rooms of the inn, but not taking any great interest in them.

  When Henry had begun to walk, Bella had noticed that he seemed lopsided. She’d stretched out his legs one night when changing him for bed and noticed that one leg was shorter than the other.

  ‘Ma,’ she said, distraught. ‘He’s lame.’

  Sarah looked at him, stretched his legs as Bella had done and said, ‘So he is. He’ll manage.’

  Henry now sat at the table with the rest of the family and Bella served him the same food except that she mashed the potatoes and greens and minced his meat and gave him extra custard on his puddings to build him up. He had grown into a sturdy toddler, always getting into mischief but with an occasional tendency to fall over.

  Joe called him Hopalong Henry until Bella flew at him in a rage and ordered him to stop, and such was his surprise at her outburst that he complied. William had said that Henry would never be able to join the army, to which Bella had replied, ‘Good. One soldier in ’military is enough for any family.’ She had been bitterly disappointed in William, as even though she had been expecting his departure she had always hoped he would change his mind, not least because she had wanted him to help her deal with Joe, who was still drinking in spite of his
many promises that he would stop.

  After William had left, Bella asked young Seth if he would help her with chopping wood and filling the coal scuttles each morning. In return, instead of wages she would feed him breakfast every day. He was eager to do it and told her it meant one less mouth to feed at home. He kept it up for several months until his father told him it was time for a proper job and took him to the farm where he worked, where Seth was employed as a boot boy. The following year his mother miscarried another child.

  At twenty Joe was pasty-faced and sluggish and rarely went out of the house or garden. Bella accompanied him down to the cellar when there were casks to move, for she didn’t trust him to go down alone in case he got up to his old tricks. She felt that although he served in the bar every evening, she had some control over his intake of alcohol when he was where she could see him.

  She barely had time to consider that her life was dreary, for she hardly stopped between getting up at five and going to bed at eleven after the customers had gone, but there were occasions when she thought that perhaps there might be something more to life than what she was experiencing.

  But today her mother had delivered a blow; a cannon shot that had knocked Bella sideways.

  Sarah had taken Nell into Hull during the late summer, travelling on the carrier’s cart early one morning and not coming home until the evening.

  ‘Why are you going, Ma?’ Bella had asked her before they left. ‘We’re so busy just now! Field workers need feeding, ’labourers will be in for supper and yesterday we’d a group of walkers in for dinner and they said they’d be coming back again today.’

  ‘I’m going in now; today,’ Sarah had said stubbornly. ‘I’m going to see my brother.’

  ‘Your brother?’ Bella repeated stupidly. ‘Which brother?’ To her knowledge her mother hadn’t seen any of her remaining family in years.

  ‘Bart.’ Her mother wrapped her shawl across her shoulders and picked up her basket. ‘You don’t know him. I haven’t seen him since afore William was born. Hurry up, Nell,’ she called.

  ‘But, Ma.’ Bella was almost in tears. ‘Don’t take Nell. She could help with—’

  ‘No, Nell’s coming wi’ me. I don’t like going all that way on my own.’

  ‘What about Henry?’ Bella implored. ‘How can I watch him when I’m serving food and drink?’

  Sarah shook her head indifferently. ‘You’ll manage, I expect. You’re very capable, Bella. Tek him into ’taproom wi’ you and you can keep an eye on him. And Joe’ll be here.’

  ‘Joe!’ Bella said, exasperated. ‘He’s worse than useless,’ and she covered her face with her hands, trying not to cry.

  Nell came into the kitchen, done up in her best skirt and blouse and looking very uppish because she was going out for the day. Now she had left school she was supposed to help in the house with chores and baking, the laundry and cleaning the inn, for they had lost old Annie who had succumbed to rheumatism and could no longer turn the handle of the mangle or squeeze out the floor cloths. But Nell was lazy and did as little as she could possibly get away with, and persisted in declaring that one day she was going to be a singer.

  After they had gone Bella had sat down on a kitchen chair and sobbed. Henry had trotted towards her and put up his chubby arms to her. She lifted him up and he patted her face, his mouth trembling as he comforted her, which made her cry even more.

  Her mother said nothing about the trip when she came home and Bella didn’t ask her, mainly because Nell looked so smug, as if she had a secret which Bella knew nothing about, so in a fit of pique Bella left all the dinner dishes for her to wash and dry and put away.

  But now she knew the reason for the excursion into Hull. Her mother had received three letters over the past month, but hadn’t said who had sent them, and this morning she had received another. Joe hadn’t particularly noticed the others arriving but today he had been outside when the postie arrived and had taken the letter from him.

  ‘Who’s ’letter from, Ma?’ he asked, handing it to her. ‘Who do you know in Hull?’

  Sarah sat down and slit open the envelope with a table knife and brought out two sheets of thick notepaper. She read the contents before answering. ‘My brother Bart,’ she said. ‘I asked him to do a little job for me, and he has.’

  She went up to her bedroom, taking the letter with her, and said nothing more about it until later in the day when they were all sitting at the table having tea before opening the inn.

  She took the letter from her apron pocket and held it up. ‘I asked my brother to look for a place for us in Hull,’ she said. ‘And he’s found one. We’re flitting. We’re tekking over a public house.’

  Bella and Joe had looked at their mother as if she had lost her senses, which Bella was inclined to believe she had. It was Joe who found his voice first. ‘What ’you talking about, Ma? Why would we want to live in Hull? We’ve got a nice place here!’

  Sarah’s eyes moved stubbornly from Joe to Bella. ‘Cos I want to,’ she said. ‘It’s where I belong. It’s where I come from. I want to go back.’

  Bella glanced at Nell, who gave a smirk and raised both her eyebrows and shoulders in wilful dismissal. ‘Nowt to do wi’ me,’ she muttered, and then gave a self-satisfied smile. ‘But I shan’t mind.’

  There was nothing Bella could find to say to express her astonishment, dismay and absolute dread of leaving the only home she had ever known, so she excused herself from the table and escaped from the kitchen and ran up to her room.

  It’s not that I wouldn’t ever want to leave, she thought as she curled up on her bed, it’s just that I’d always want to come back. I imagined that ’Woodman would always be our family home. And when she recalled the question that Jamie Lucan had asked – ‘If I should go away for a time and then come back, would you still be here?’ – she remembered her reply. I said yes. Never imagining that I wouldn’t be.

  Bella knew that once her mother had made up her mind about a situation she wouldn’t be deflected from it. It was how she used to be before Joseph died, so to some extent she had made a partial recovery, and Bella wondered how long she had been planning a return to her home town. She hardly ever spoke of Hull and Bella had assumed she had cut all ties with her family. Now she realized that she hadn’t.

  She heard a clatter coming from the labourers’ room and rose from her bed. The men, who had been taken on by a local farmer to plough and harrow the fallow fields in readiness for sowing the winter corn, were going down for their supper and she must serve it, no matter what turmoil she was in over the news her mother had announced.

  If I refused to go, what would happen, she thought, pouring water from the jug into the bowl and rinsing her face. Ma couldn’t manage a public house or a hostelry on her own without me to help her. Joe would be a liability and Nell, well, her sister would be useless in running such an establishment. Ma would have to have paid help, or maybe this newly discovered brother would help her. She felt tears gathering again and wiped them away with the towel. And I can’t abandon Henry. He’s mine even more than he’s Ma’s and he’d be lost without me.

  The inn was packed that night and Bella was pleased; she thought that perhaps her mother would realize what a profitable business they had here, good enough for them all to have a living, although she would be the first to admit that their needs were few: they were not extravagant people and on the edge of a small village there were no temptations. Hedon was the nearest market town and as they had a goat for milk, grew their own vegetables and baked their own bread and cakes, and the butcher called once a fortnight, there was rarely any need to travel there, except perhaps to buy sundries such as cotton from the haberdasher’s.

  Her mother was pleased that they were so busy and pointed out after they had closed for the night that they must make an effort to make as much profit as possible, for they would need plenty of money for the move to Hull. She seemed to have suddenly found an enthusiasm for life.

  ‘But, Ma,
’ Bella implored. ‘We’ve a good business here, and this is our home! What’s ’advantage of moving into Hull? We don’t know anybody there. They’ll think we’re country bumpkins with straw in our hair.’

  ‘They’ll soon find out we’re not,’ Sarah said adamantly. ‘They’ll soon find out we know a thing or two.’

  ‘Not about town life, we don’t,’ Bella argued. ‘We onny know about country matters, about haymaking an’ pigs an’ sheep.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Nell butted in. ‘I want to go. There’re theatres an’ concert halls an’ places like that. I can’t wait to get there.’

  ‘And will you have money to spend in those places?’ Bella answered sharply. ‘How will you pay? Are you planning on getting a job of work?’

  Bella wondered if her mother had another plan or if she would continue to hold the purse strings. And would Nell stay to help them manage this unknown public house or leave to go into service, which is what she would have done if she hadn’t been born into a family-run establishment? And, Bella wondered, would it need four of them to make it pay? They must have a discussion, she decided, and thought that if her role wasn’t essential, if her mother was going to take charge, perhaps the way was open for her to follow her dream after all.

  Ideas began to flow through her head. If her former teacher was willing, perhaps she could go back to school to help with the children, and maybe she could take lodgings in the village if the small wage Miss Hawkins had mentioned was enough to pay for them. But then she reconsidered. What about Henry?

  ‘I’m not going to stop wi’ you, don’t think that I am.’ Nell interrupted Bella’s meandering thoughts. ‘I’ve allus said I’m going to be a singer. And I am. Tell her, Ma. Tell Bella what we’ve decided.’

  Their mother sat down and clasped her hands together. ‘Nell’d be no good in such a place,’ she said a little sheepishly. ‘We know that, don’t we, Bella? So what we’ve decided is that as she’s so set on being a singer, then that’s what she can try to be. She’ll try to get an audition. There are places in Hull where she can go. And then there’d be you and me to look after ’public house, and Joe to do ’heavy work.’ She looked pleadingly at Bella. ‘I’ll do more than I have done, Bella. I’ve not been well since your father died, but once I’m back home again I’ll be all right.’