Kitty Little

by Freda Lightfoot

  Now what titivating gossip could she find to entertain Archie?

  Esme awoke early the following morning, stretching her limbs deliciously in the warm cocoon of sheets. Today she had at last turned nineteen, one small step closer to being her own woman. She smiled at the dust motes dancing in a ray of sunlight. What did it matter if life would go on as usual? Inside she could at least feel different.

  She wondered if her father had bought her Great Expectations, or The Old Curiosity Shop perhaps. If he hadn’t, she could only hope for something a little livelier than the copy of Pilgrim’s Progress he’d bought for her last year which remained on her shelf, unread. And anything would be a change from Swiss Family Robinson.

  From the crags surrounding the vicarage garden, she could hear the chack-chack of a merlin falcon. It brought her leaping from her bed to fling open her window and draw in lungsful of clear, crisp air.

  ‘The first day of the month and I forgot to say white rabbits,’ she chided herself. ‘Now I shall have bad luck.’ But she was laughing as she pulled on her old grey pleated skirt and blouse, for the day was already showing every promise of being hot, and perhaps, if she hurried over making her father’s porridge and skimped on the dusting and cleaning today, (since it was her birthday after all) she might have time to walk up through the woods and find some real rabbits.

  Esme splashed water from the jug into the blue bowl and dipped her hands in it, enjoying the sting of its coolness on her warm cheeks.

  Would anything ever change? This afternoon she must attend the sewing circle as usual, and no doubt be politely scolded for slipping out early last week. Tomorrow evening she must attend a special meeting of the Sunday School teachers where suitable infant hymns would be chosen and lessons planned. The only possible subject which might provoke interest and even a lively discussion, would come over where to take the children for the summer picnic. The superintendent would suggest a long walk in stout shoes. Mrs Walsh would opt for a steamer trip while Miss Agnes would offer dire warnings about children falling overboard. The children themselves might dream of a trip to the seaside, to Morecambe or Blackpool, but in the end they would do what they always did. They would take a charabanc to Arnside, then walk over to Fairy Steps and eat their picnic before trekking all the way back again.

  On Wednesday there was to be tea and buns at the Mother’s Meeting, for which she’d promised to fill the urn with water to be boiled in good time. Someone recently returned from the Far East was to give a lantern slide show. What relevance it would have to motherhood she couldn’t imagine, nevertheless it was an undoubted improvement upon the usual dull lecture on the problems of colic or nappy rash. And so the week would continue, dull, dutiful, all carefully set down in the parish diary.

  But this morning, apart from the preparation of breakfast and lunch for her father, and because Esme was determined not to do a scrap of housework, she was free. Gloriously free. It was her birthday and she meant to enjoy what she could of it, meetings or no meetings.

  She left the porridge simmering on the stove and ran all the way up the hill without even pausing for breath. In the woods she did indeed see several rabbits, moving through the dewy grass quite unafraid at this hour of the morning. A thin pearly light filtered down through the branches and here and there patches of blue sky glowed bright as a jewel, seeming to represent a glorious glimpse of freedom. One day, Esme vowed, she would journey to the very edge of its vastness. A magpie eyed her quizzically before flying off, perhaps in search of its mate. Esme watched it go. ‘One for sorrow, two for joy,’ she recited, anxiously looking for another.

  She lingered for an hour or more, picking violets and garlic flowers, then heard the church clock strike ten before turning to run all the way home.

  Reckless with joy on this glorious summer’s day, she didn’t care that she was late. Perhaps Father might not even notice. He would have eaten his breakfast by now and be in his study surreptitiously reading the morning paper while purporting to prepare his next sermon. He spent a good deal of time in his study, when he wasn’t visiting his faithful flock. ‘But not always working,’ she said out loud, giggling to herself. ‘Thinking I don’t know he’s taking a nap.’

  Esme often talked to herself, largely because she liked to but also because there was rarely anyone else for her to converse with. The Reverend Bield did not approve of idle chatter.

  He wasn’t in his study when she arrived back, rather flustered and out of breath, feeling a nudge of guilt at having taken so long, despite her brave-hearted rebellion a moment ago. The porridge was where she’d left it, keeping warm on the hob, browning slightly at the edges where it had stuck to the pan. Her father’s bed had been neatly made, Esme noticed, when she risked a peek around the bedroom door to check he hadn’t overslept. Not that she ever remembered him doing so. Deciding he must have gone out early to see some sick parishioner, she ladled a portion of congealed porridge into a dish for herself, hungry after her morning’s exercise, enjoying the healthy glow of her cheeks.

  Esme was on her second bowl when the knock came. She opened the door upon an agitated Mrs Phillips. Afterwards she was to be grateful that it was her dear friend who brought her the news but for now she simply stared, knowing at once by the expression on the good lady’s face that something was amiss.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’ll tell you inside, love, so half the street don’t hear.’ Ida Phillips quickly closed the door behind her as she drew the now trembling girl back into the suffocating warmth of the kitchen. ‘Not that it won’t be all round the village by dinner time.’ She sat Esme back at the table, moved the porridge dish out of the way, then slid the kettle back on and looked about for the tea pot.

  ‘For pity’s sake, Mrs Phillips, tell me. What’s happened?’

  Ida Phillips sat down rather suddenly, as if her legs could no longer support her. ‘It’s your father. He’s - well, there’s no easy way to say this, but he’s...’

  ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Esme heard the hollow echo of her own voice in the suddenly silent kitchen, even as she felt a huge surge of relief.

  ‘It was so like the dear girl to save me the embarrassment of having to say it,’ Ida would later confide to anyone prepared to listen. Esme Bield was, without doubt, a sensible lass but then she’d need every ounce of that good sense, to face what she had to face.

  ‘I’m afraid so. But there’s worse I’m afraid.’

  Esme, ashamed of her initial reaction, felt strangely detached from reality, as if she were standing outside herself, calmly watching the conversation rather as an observer might. Part of her speculated on what could possibly be worse than death, while the rest worried over why she felt no grief. But then Father insisted that death was no more than the opening of a door. The older woman’s cheeks, she noticed, had gone unusually pink, quite at odds with the paleness bad news was reputed to bring.

  ‘Tell me. Whatever it is, I can bear it.’

  ‘I reckon you’ll have to.’ Ida Phillips leaned forward and gripped Esme’s hand with astonishing power. There were unshed tears in her faded eyes. ‘It’s the nature of his death which is going to make tongues wag, love.’

  ‘Oh?’ Esme suddenly didn’t want to hear, but the words poured over her just the same, and Mrs Phillips’s tiny frame seemed to shrivel like an empty string bag as she released them from her pinched mouth.

  ‘He died in Netta Riley’s bed. There now, that’s the truth of it. If I didn’t tell you someone else would, and with more pleasure. No better than she should be, that woman, though it’s happen wrong to speak ill of them wi’ less sense than yerself, I dare say.’

  Esme stared at her friend unblinking, her mind a blank. ‘In her bed? Why? Was he ill? What on earth was he doing there?’

  Ida looked at the girl and sighed. This conversation was clearly going to be even more difficult than she’d feared. ‘You might well ask,’ she said drily.

  The funeral was over in no time and the
church commissioners wasted even less in informing Esme that her tenancy of the vicarage was now terminated. Her father’s solicitor added to this stock of bad news by revealing that the Reverend Bield, not a material man in any sense of the word since he gave away most of the money he’d earned during his lifetime, had left what little worldly wealth remained, a sum of thirty guineas, to the Tapworth Street Mission. To his daughter, he left his best hunter watch and a single string of pearls which had belonged to her mother. The will stated that he knew she would not object to this decision, since she possessed a charitable heart and the ability to earn her own living through service, as he had done.

  Charity was not an emotion high in Esme’s heart right at this moment, for she realised with a dreadful certainty that she had become, almost overnight, both penniless and homeless.

  ‘What shall I do? Where am I to go?’ she asked of anyone prepared to listen to her plight.

  Miss Agnes clicked her tongue and sidled away, as if by engaging in conversation with the daughter of a parson who had died in a prostitute’s bed would somehow rub some of the scandal onto her. And to think she had played the organ for him for twenty years? Mrs Walsh, less easily shocked by the weaknesses of men and being of a more practical nature, offered temporary accommodation in her attic, in return for various mundane chores on her farm. But it was Ida who put her finger precisely on the reality of her situation. Albeit she was in her way trying to help by suggesting, not unkindly, that Esme’s best option as a single young woman with no visible means of support, was to become a paid companion or housekeeper to some kindly gentlewoman.

  In that moment Esme had a clear vision of the life she faced. The Reverend Andrew Bield, her beloved parent, had been that worst of creatures, a hypocrite. No wonder they’d pitied her, those with the wit to notice what had been going on. Now, even their pity had seemed to evaporate. She was to become one of the army of unmarriageable spinsters. Invisible, unloved, unnoticed, a leftover remnant of the Victorian age, dependant upon charity and service to survive. She would be expected to exchange one life of service and duty for another, one that would go on for as long as she lived and breathed, without even the redeeming factor of his love, suffocating and confusing as that had undoubtedly been.

  Kitty turned on to her back and stared up at the grimy ceiling with hot dry eyes. The smell of stale cabbage along with the ubiquitous kippers Myrtle had cooked for breakfast lingered on, mingling with the suffocating fustiness of too many people crowded into too small a space.

  Through the thinness of attic walls she could hear gasps and small cries coming from Clara’s bedroom next door, and the usual creaks and twangs of the bed springs. Her mother, being a voluptuous woman with, as she termed it, a lively appetite for life, never seemed to go short of admirers. Leonard was her latest conquest. Clara loved his white beard and the way he quoted poetry the whole time. Kitty pulled the pillow over her head and tried to shut out the too-familiar sounds.

  Was this, she wondered, how she had come about? From one of her mother’s more ardent lovers whose name she couldn’t even remember? Clara herself firmly maintained she’d been properly and legally married and that her husband had deserted her the minute he saw he had two babies to support as well as a wife.

  She would have dearly liked to learn more about her father, for, as things stood, Kitty had as much faith in the name Smith being her true name as she had in the more esoteric Terry. Clara never enlarged upon the tale. It wasn’t that she told lies exactly but simply preferred her life to appear dramatic. The role of deserted wife achieved that perfectly.

  Later when breakfast was over Kitty stood at the sink, hands deep in suds as she went through the motions of washing up. Her eyes were fixed on the window as if seeking escape, for all there was nothing to see through it but the back yard wall. She was only vaguely aware of the activities going on around her: of Clara’s voice yelling in the stairwell, Myrtle’s sniffs and grumbles as she buttered bread, the kettle starting to whistle. It stopped abruptly, though somehow she knew that Myrtle hadn’t made a move towards it.

  If her choice was between slaving in the kitchen of Hope View for the rest of her life tending to out-of-work actors and commercial travellers, her hopes and dreams of escape dead and buried with poor Raymond, then perhaps marriage with Frank in a new house in the garden suburbs didn’t seem so bad after all.

  Plans for the wedding seemed to escalate with alarming speed. Only Archie supplied the one dissenting voice in the gathering excitement which was gripping Hope View with the kind of fervour usually reserved for a Royal event. When it came to organising anything which resulted in a profit, Clara proved to be frighteningly efficient. A white lace gown had been purchased, wrapped in tissue paper and hung in Clara’s wardrobe with a lavender bag affixed to the hanger. The smell of it made Kitty feel slightly sick and she thought she would forever associate lavender with Frank. Mrs Capstick in middle back, lent her some satin shoes and Leonard produced a blue garter, for luck, though how he’d acquired it nobody dared ask.

  Kitty couldn’t quite take it all in. Despite his promises not to rush her, Frank hadn’t even attempted to persuade her mother to postpone the wedding, had in fact cheerfully agreed on the third Saturday in July, which was now perilously close. He’d arranged it all directly with Clara as if Kitty had no opinion whatsoever which, her mother tartly informed her, was the way the nobs went about things. It didn’t seem at all the right way to Kitty, yet what could she do? She felt utterly powerless, couldn’t even seem to get her brain to resolve the matter. It seemed easier to stand back and let the roller coaster hurtle on. The last thing she wanted was for her mother to lose Hope View to the bailiffs. Not only would they then have no income but no home either.

  ‘You and me has to stick together, Duchess.’ Clara would say, over and over. ‘We’ve no family now save for each other, so must depend upon our own wit and ingenuity to get out of this hole.’

  If Raymond were here, what would he have her do? Kitty repeatedly asked herself but came up with no answer. How could she? Her brother was dead.

  Sometimes she felt as if she didn’t truly exist, as if she had neither past, nor future, save the one Clara had invented for her. Could Archie be right? He persistently begged her to think again, to wake up, to come to her senses; that she should learn to speak up for herself more. But how?

  Yet perversely, throughout the hectic days of preparation, Kitty continued to defend Frank, pointing out his many strengths, even parroting her mother’s words.

  ‘He’s good and kind.’

  ‘Always ready for a laugh.’

  ‘Generous to a fault he is.’

  And even, ‘He’ll go far will Frank Cussins. I’m sure one day I’ll be grateful for Ma’s foresight,’ till Archie would shout piffle, or something worse, and stamp off in high dudgeon.

  Now, when his voice whispered against her ear, ‘It’s still not too late. You can stop this right here. Let your mother solve her own problems,’ she stared at the engagement ring as it lay winking at her from the window sill where she’d set it while she washed the dishes, and shuddered.

  ‘You have some other solution do you?’ Kitty tartly enquired, determined not to go over the why’s and wherefore’s since she’d done so countless times before, then perversely found herself doing so anyway. ‘Ma needs me. My father, whoever he was, let her down so badly by leaving her alone with two babies, she can’t even bear to talk about it. How can I risk doing the same? I’m all she’s got. I can’t see her thrown out on the streets. I must help.’

  ‘Not by playing the sacrificial lamb. There must be another solution.’

  Kitty could feel the familiar swell of panic tighten in her breast. ‘What can I do? I’ve already promised.’

  ‘Frank Cussins won’t make you happy. Don’t trust the blighter, Kitty-Cat. He’s as slippery as an eel.’

  ‘You marry me then and pay off Ma’s debts.’

  ‘Told you, old thing. Marriage and m
e is like a sour cocktail. We don’t mix. And I don’t have the dosh. But I’d consider any other suggestions you might have. We could always run off together, as we once dreamed of doing.’

  She felt angry suddenly for his flippancy. Why couldn’t he see that she’d no alternative? ‘This isn’t the moment for jokes, Archie. This is real life, not fantasy land.’ She slapped a soapy cup down on the draining board with such force it was a wonder it didn’t crack.

  Archie picked up a tea towel and began to dry it with painstaking care. ‘Don’t do this to yourself, Kitty. Tell Clara to live her own life and let you live yours.’

  Kitty couldn’t even see the window now. Too much steam or moisture blotting her vision for some reason. Taking her hands from the water she turned and ran from the kitchen and left Archie to finish the washing up by himself.

  In only one respect did she win a small victory: Kitty refused, absolutely, to marry in church. She insisted her mother abandon plans for hiring a twenty-strong choir complete with organist that she couldn’t, in any case, afford; adamant in her belief that it would be a sacrilege to say her vows in such a setting to a man she could never truly love.

  But if Kitty had hoped to put Frank off by this obstinacy, she was mistaken. ‘Just as well,’ he said, firmly supporting her decision, ‘or we might end up in Westminster Abbey being married by the Bishop of London.’

  It was agreed that the marriage would take place, very quietly, at the nearest registry office. Frank’s brother would be best man and they wouldn’t bother with a bridesmaid.

  ‘But you’ll be taken in a motor, Duchess. Only the best for my girl,’ Frank grandly informed her.

  ‘Please don’t call be by that name. Clara calls me that, and I don’t care for it. It implies that I’m above everyone, toffee-nosed, or something.’