"He'll come to it," John reassured her.
"No, but the idea was beyond him. The thought was too…you know."
"I believe you must always stretch a young mind with thoughts beyond it. There's no learning without bewilderment. I hope when we rear bairns, ye'll not be too busy with affairs to talk like you did to Tommy down there. Me and all."
Again she found herself on the point of telling him that she was quickened, and by now could be almost certain of holding the child; but, again, the memory of earlier miscarriages held the words bottled within her. For the moment.
The following morning, Tommy slipped down to the shop on his own, before seven o'clock, when it was time for Nora to go down and start moving up the meat. She meant to scold him when she arrived, for he had left her to carry down the ledger and the bonus book by herself; but as she drew near the doorway she saw him standing at the threshold with his arms folded, looking very proprietorial, wearing a folded paper hat. And its cockade was composed of a magnificent black plume of hearse feathers. He tried to look solemn but the excitement within kept bubbling up and forcing him to grin. Just as she came to the door he stood aside with a flourish and revealed, pinned to the door, a scrap of paper bearing the words "Tommy Shop."
She shook her head in mock despair. "Is that what it was all about!" He grinned. "I don't know, Thomas M. What do we do with you?"
But she soon showed him once they were inside. He was to manage the bonus book, sitting next to her at the pay desk by the door. She would tell him how many tickets to give each customer, and he was to tear them off and note down their numbers and the name of the customer in the bonus book. At half past seven, her four women assistants came up from Walsden. She ran through their duties once more: one was to serve meat, another potatoes and cabbage, another tea, sugar, and bread, and the fourth was to keep their stocks replenished and to serve out the ale casks as Nora directed. She herself kept the ale book, where she recorded the deposit each customer paid and noted whether the cask was at once removed or left for a husband to collect on his way home in the evening.
To start with, trade was not at all brisk, and by midmorning Nora, with a heart that sank lower into her boots each idle moment that passed, was contemplating the ruin of the whole scheme. John had come in several times and, on the last occasion, had left looking very thoughtful.
Tommy drew a palatial shop, with its wares displayed in the air all around it, thronged with customers.
"Chance'd be nice," Nora said when he showed it her. She was just toying with the idea of giving away a pound of beef to each of the first 400 customers, thus passing on most of Charley Eade's unintentional bonus, when half a dozen wives entered in one hesitant group, as if they needed the mutual support. Ten minutes later they left, staring at their bonus tickets and looking a lot more cheerful. Never in their lives can they have had such swift and willing service. Even before they had left, more had arrived, then more, and still more. By noon there were actually lines of people waiting.
With a bit of insight, as Nora later cursed herself, she might have worked it out. Of course, most of the women would hang fire, waiting for one or two brave, or foolhardy, souls to return. Then they'd compare the quality, drink a cup of tea, have a gossip, and finally make up their minds to give it a try. If she had worked all that out for herself, she could have let her assistants off for an early lunch, and have taken some herself. As it was, with the line growing longer by the minute, there'd be no lunch today for any of them.
The line worried her. By one o'clock it was taking thirty minutes between joining the line and even reaching the door. Had she been a newcomer she was sure she'd have turned around and gone elsewhere; but it seemed to have the opposite effect on these women—as soon as they saw the long caterpillar of people stretching back from the door, they actually broke into a run. And the noise of their chatter and laughter blotted out all other sound; it even brought the menfolk to the mouth of the tunnel to stare in wonder. As she watched, the women come inside, their eyes shining and replete as if from a feast, she realized that, far from seeming irksome, this enforced wait and the chance it gave for a chat and a laugh was a welcome element in the day.
Soon, there was such a crush that she had to halt the entries and, later, to resume only on a one-out-one-in basis. John came over then, filled with relief. "Want help?" he asked. She shook her head. He watched the operation for a while. "Ye want a bigger door," he said. "Or another door over there. Everybody and everything is coming in and out by the one place." But she refused his suggestion. "If ye want," she said. "Ye could put me in a door at the back, where Mrs. Cattermole can bring fresh stock in and out." By three o'clock one of the carpenters was sawing a hole in the back wall to take the door he had made. "I've no lock furniture," he said, "but I'll come back at eight this evenin' and screw it fast the jam for thee."
Then there was a lull and she was able to let the women go, one by one, for a late lunch. Tommy took his bread and cheese and a pot of small beer up to the turnpike. He liked to watch the horsemen and cattle go by and the coaches made him jump up and down in excitement. A flock of chickens gathered around the milestone where he sat and fretted at him for crumbs. Before he returned, he played Three Blind Mice for them on his whistle.
The next rush was at six, when the single men came off work and the husbands called to collect the casks their wives had paid for earlier. A lot of men, she noticed, bought nothing, but watched their mates being served or searched thoroughly through the produce on offer and left. At first this puzzled her until one said as he left: "I'll send the missis tomorn."
"Victims of past tommy shops," John said later. "You can't blame the buggers."
At the end of the day, they carried over £276 up the hill to the new iron safe at Rough Stones. John was delighted and not a little relieved. But all Nora would say was: "We must do better tomorn."
The first day was no guide to the second. The rush began only fifteen minutes after the door opened; and though they were as gossipy and jovial as the earlier crowd, they were also more critical. A lot of talking must have been going on around the fires last night. If she didn't lack for trade, Nora also had her fill of good advice. She should open Mondays, too; or Tuesdays; or every day; she should stock carrots, turnips, pork, coffee, leeks, onions, Scotch kale, mutton, salt. And though she gave no outward sign of it, she grew tired of saying they intended to expand their lines as soon as they had experience of the trade, and of giving out the two addresses where supplies were guaranteed if the other shopkeepers took offence.
She found it a great comfort to have Tommy at her side most of the time, for he read to her when trade was down and did drawings and wrote little stories and copied his letters. She supervised his work in the bonus book several times and found not a single mistake. Many of the women thought it a marvel that a boy so young could do a grown man's work; and this, for reasons she could not fully explain, made Nora feel very proud. When lunchtime came, they shut the shop for half an hour and she and Tommy went up to the turnpike.
She sat on the milestone while he sat on her lap. And when they had finished their pies he reached guiltily into his pocket, pulled out a potato, and offered it to her.
"For me?" she asked. He nodded. She felt it. "But it's raw," she said. "I can't eat potatoes raw."
He laughed then. "Not you," he said. "My chickens."
She looked at the poultry, fretting around them in the roadway, and at the potato in her hand. "I just give it them?"
He shook his head, and, with a look of even deeper guilt, took another potato from his pocket. Before she could speak he made a tiny bite in its flesh and spat the morsel at his feet. At once the chickens made a dart for it. Nora giggled. Emboldened, he took another bite and spat it, this time, into the middle of the highway. The flock darted there and harried the one who got it first. Nora laughed. "Go on, ma'm. You too," Tommy said as he took his third bite and spat it as far over the road as he could manage.
&n
bsp; Nora took a bite and followed suit. It was amusing to see how the stupid, demented birds flocked around, running this way and that, mobbing the successful, driving off the weak, grabbing, losing, looking stupidly north when one more astute than they ran stealthily south with a full beak—they were very human, really. And soon the air was full of bits of potato, feathers, laughter, and hysterical birds.
"Which is your favourite, ma'm?" Tommy asked when neither of them had any potato left to chew and spit.
"The one with a black patch over the eye—that one. The cock."
"But he gets all the bits. Hannibal, he's called. He's the greedy one."
"How d'you know he's called that?"
"Only by me. I've given them all names."
"Oh! Have you? And I suppose you've been spitting my potatoes at them, too. Is that what you were up to yesterday?"
He looked at her fearfully. "I'll pay," he said. "I've not had more than I could pay for."
She laughed and tousled his hair. "You may have three," she said. "Three like that." He grinned weakly in his relief.
"Which do you prefer?" she asked.
"Biddy," he said, pointing to one whose tail feathers had been mostly pecked out by the others. "I'm the only one who likes Biddy."
She shook her head sadly. "You're your father's boy all right. You love all the weaklings."
He looked at her, to see her mood, before he said: "My father calls them the meek and the poor in spirit. Jesus loved them."
She did not know how to answer. But at that moment the northbound stage came hurtling round the corner in a flurry of gravel and flying hooves. If there had been cows or sheep in the road, it would never have managed to stop in time. Tommy, shouting, "My chickees!" stood up and was about to leap in the road to save them when she grabbed his belt and hauled him back. It was not a moment too soon for in the next second the road immediately in front was a thunderous, rumbling, shuddering cavalcade of pounding hooves, foammottled mouths, sweating flanks, and rolling iron-tyred wheels. The noise was so colossal that she not only heard it but felt it, shuddering at the very pit of her lungs. She hugged him, shivering, his elbows locked in that familiar, awkward stance while he shouted at the coachman, a wordless, shrill, cry of hate. When the noise had dropped and the coach was swaying and jolting away down the road, her mind held the image of the coachman, his fierce grin, his weather-browned cheeks, his flashing eyes, as he had been in the instant he swept past them.
Tommy was still rigid, making an unnatural gurgle in his throat, and pointing at a bedraggled little bundle of dirty feathers in the road, just where the coach had passed. Like him, Nora, when she saw it, thought at once it was a dead chicken. But it was only the weakling hen, Biddy, squatting down the way they do for a cockerel on the tread. Something in her pea-sized little brain must have taken the coach for a juggernaut-cockerel; only now, when it was almost out of sight down by Deanroyd bridge, was she stretching her wings and standing her full height again. Tommy laughed to see she was still alive and would have run into the road if Nora had not grabbed him again.
"You see!" she said. "They can take care of themselves. Unlike you. That was very stupid. Even they've got more sense. You might have been killed. D'you know that?" He stood sullenly looking down. "Do you understand that?"
"Yes."
"If I thought you'd do a stupid thing like that again, I'd stop you coming up here. I'd forbid it."
"No!" he pleaded.
"I would. You promise you won't?"
"Yes."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
"Never again?"
"Never. Never."
"If I see you, I'll stop it for good. So you be cautious." She could see he took her seriously. "Now you go on back to the shop. Here comes someone I know."
He ran eagerly back to his shop.
The someone was Lady Henshaw, on a fat sorrel mare with a white face. Behind, though she took not the slightest notice of it, trotted a single goat.
"Mrs. Stevenson," she called. "Was that boy wearing hearse feathers in his cap?"
"Yes, my lady," Nora replied.
It was only then that Lady Henshaw allowed astonishment to show in her face, as if the fact needed confirmation before the reaction could properly be registered. She stared after Tommy's vanishing, fleetfooted little shade until her horse halted beside Nora. "How eccentric," she said absently and then, turning to Nora, added with much greater intensity: "And so young, too."
"I've not been to call," Nora said, "because I've been too busy."
"The devil you have!"
"I fancied I might come round after midday this Sunday."
Lady Henshaw was too astounded to make any sort of a reply to that.
"Well," Nora was now even more defensive, "I've a living to make. I've not got leisure like some folks. Sunday's all I can spare." She wondered if Lady Henshaw had heard.
"D'ye like me horse?" was all she said.
"Looks a good hack in need of a sweating. That's something I'd like to know more about. Horses. Horseriding…hunting."
At last there was a reaction: Lady Henshaw's face lit up like a beacon. "Capital!" she said. "Champion. I knew there'd be something you needed. Till Sunday then. Don't bring Mr. Stevenson, mind. No discourtesy meant but this isn't idle social fan-dangling."
Nora shrugged. "Can you give me any idea, madam?"
Lady Henshaw turned the mare for home. "Oh…" she called airily as she ambled away. "I'm writing a book. Need your help."
The goat ran before the horse all the way home.
That Saturday evening Nora was able to strike a balance in her book:
rent of waggons £4 10 0 rail haulage 1 8 0 other haulage 2 0 0 wages 10 0 apportionment of costs (buildings, sidings, equipment, working capital) say £10 0 0
From sales £621 3 3
less cost 485 13 6 gross profit 135 9 9
£18 8 0 18 8 0
NET PROFIT £117 1 9
free from C Eade(!) 9 14 0
£126 15 9
She passed it to John. "Not too rusty," she said self-deprecatingly. "For our first week's trading."
He looked at the figures and whistled.
"Mind," she said, "we handed out just under eleven pounds' worth of bonus tickets against next week. And we can't expect Charley Eade to be so generous next time either! It'll be down by twenty pounds or so."
"I think I might just manage to fight back my tears," he said.
They had further cause for joy at this time, too: The Reverend Doctor Prendergast was almost killed by an attack of bronchitis that had turned to pneumonia. They did not actually pray for his death, but they earnestly entreated Providence to forgive him his sins so that he might be more fit for judgement. Word reached them that it would be at least a month before he put a foot to the floor.
John wrote a hypocritical note wishing him a speedy and complete recovery. Nora sent it over to his house with a jar of goatsmilk cheese—a gift to her from Lady Henshaw.
Chapter 36
Once Nora grew used to the stink of goats and dogs she found Lady Henshaw's place quite agreeable. Henshaw Park was a smallish country house of about twenty principal rooms and upstairs provision only for the above-stairs staff. Below-stairs servants slept in an annexe that linked the house to its stables and cowsheds, so that they were topologically in without being architecturally of the main house. The style of building was the dull, insipid, fake-classical mode of the previous century. Inside, however, the rooms were pleasantly airy and well lit—as she discovered when Madoc showed her in.
"Her ladyship may be ten minutes or more, madam," he said. "May I bring you anything?" He obviously expected her to refuse.
"Perhaps I'll come back another day if this isn't to her convenience. What is she doing?"
He crossed the room to open the tall french window and shout "go away!" at a goat, browsing on what had, many years ago, been a flower bed. The goat took no notice. Madoc shook his head and shut the wind
ow. "That's the one I'll butcher next," he said with cold glee. He looked at Nora. "Her ladyship is in the kitchens with the vet, madam," he said.
Nora wondered what a "vet" was—a disease? An implement?
"Lancing boils. One of the dog's got boils."
"I'll come back," Nora said and made for the hall.
Madoc followed her. "She'll be very disappointed, madam," he said. "Will ye not go and see her?"
Nora was torn between her sense of curiosity and her annoyance at having come the best part of a mile for nothing, all at the behest of a lunatic baroness. "Very well," she said. "Where are the kitchens?"
"Ah! Humble apologies for all this," Lady Henshaw called as soon as she saw Nora, who wondered what the word "humble" might possibly mean when applied by her ladyship to her own behaviour. She was holding a once-elegant silk cushion over the head of a shaggy and dirty-coated great barbet, or waterdog as some call it. This dog was lying across the kitchen table, its forelegs pinned by one servant girl, its hind legs by another. A rusty seven-pound weight held down its tail. A horse-doctor—what Madoc had called the "vet"—was lancing a string of suppurating ulcers down the dog's left flank and cleaning them out with flowers of sulphur and tar. Only the fact that the dog was very drunk enabled them to subject him to these indignities.
World From Rough Stones Page 55
