Tilly Trotter (The Tilly Trotter Trilogy)

by Catherine Cookson

  Tilly made no response, she just rose to her feet and walked to the door of the woodshed where she leant against the stanchion and looked up into the clear high sky. And her thoughts sprang upwards too. She asked God why, why was He allowing all these things to happen to her? She had done no harm to anyone, she wished no harm on anyone – except to Hal McGrath, for added to the other business she would always remember the feeling of his hands again on her body after he had thrust her legs through the holes of the stocks.

  It came to her now as she stared upwards that she would never know happiness until she could leave this place . . . Yet she could never leave it as long as it held the two people she loved and who needed her. She was like the linnet in the cage hanging outside the grocer’s shop in the village which sang all day to the world it couldn’t see: they had poked its eyes out because they said blind linnets sang better.

  She walked down through the back garden, crossed the field and when she reached the burn she lay down on the grass and, bending over the water, she sluiced handfuls of it over her face and head. That done, she took a rag from her pocket and after wetting it in the burn she went into a thicket and there, lifting her skirt, she washed her thighs in an endeavour to erase the feeling of Hal McGrath’s hands at least from her skin if not from her mind . . .

  When she returned to the house she endeavoured to go about her duties as usual, but William noticed the change in her and he remarked, ‘You look peaky, lass, bloodless somehow. You’re not eating enough, is that it?’

  ‘I . . . I suppose so, Granda.’

  ‘It’s a pity you don’t like cabbage, and you grow them fine, there’s a lot of goodness in cabbage.’

  ‘Yes, Granda.’

  ‘Are you feelin’ bad, lass?’

  ‘No, Granda.’

  ‘Are you tired then?’

  ‘Yes; yes, I’m feelin’ a bit tired.’

  ‘She’s growin’.’ This was Annie’s voice from where she was placing some griddle cakes on the hanging black griddle pan.

  ‘Aye, yes; yes, she’s growin’, and into a bonny lass, a bonny, bonny lass.’ His voice faded away and his head sank into the pillow, and Tilly and her granny exchanged glances . . .

  It was almost dark when there came a knock on the door and it was opened before either Tilly or her granny could get to answer it. To their surprise they saw Simon standing there.

  Annie’s first words to him were, ‘Anything wrong, Simon?’ He made no reply for a moment but looked through the lamplight from one to the other, then turned his gaze towards the bed and William, and Annie, sensing trouble, said quickly ‘William’s not too clever, he . . . he had a turn yesterday.’

  ‘Oh. Oh.’

  ‘Anything . . . anything wrong, Simon?’ William’s words were slow and halting, and Simon called to him, ‘No, no; just on me way back from the fair, I thought I’d look in, see . . . see how you were doing.’

  ‘Aha.’ This was all the comment William made before closing his eyes again.

  ‘You all right?’ Simon now asked softly looking full at Tilly, and after a moment she answered, ‘Yes, yes, I’m all right, Simon.’

  ‘Well, that’s fine, that’s fine. I . . . I just thought I’d look in.’ He glanced again towards the bed and making sure now that William’s eyes were closed he made a quick motion with his hand towards both Annie and Tilly, and they understanding the motion followed him to the door, which he opened quietly and went outside.

  In the deep gloom they stood peering at him, and it was Tilly he looked at as he said, ‘You had a bad day then?’

  ‘Yes; yes, Simon.’ She turned her head away.

  ‘They’re devils. I’ll do for that McGrath yet.’

  ‘No, no, Simon’ – Annie put her hand on his arm – ‘no violence like that. No, no.’

  ‘No violence, Annie?’ His voice had a strange note to it now. ‘No violence you say! Well, I haven’t only come to see if Tilly was all right, I’ve come with some news, violent news, bad news.’

  He was again looking at Tilly. ‘Tom Pearson said you were dazed and you mightn’t have taken in what happened. Do . . . do you remember the fight that took place?’

  ‘Just . . . just dimly, Simon. I think I fainted like. I must have ’cos everything went black.’

  ‘Well, I must tell you because you’ll know soon enough, they’ll . . . they’ll be coming to question you.’

  ‘They? Who’s they?’ Annie’s voice was sharp.

  ‘The police, Annie. The police.’

  ‘What!’ They both said the word, Annie sharply and Tilly in a whisper.

  ‘Apparently three pitmen that the parson’s wife was teaching their letters to, went with them, I mean the parson and missis, when Tom Pearson told them that Hal McGrath, Burk Laudimer and Andy Fairweather had Tilly in the old barn in the stocks, and apparently from what I can gather there was a fight, and Laudimer was knocking daylights out of one of the pitmen, who was almost at his end, when Mrs Ross who had taken a peg out of the stocks to release you Tilly, saw this little fellow being knocked silly by Laudimer and God knows why, because she’s a refined lady, but she hits him on the neck with the peg. But of course she didn’t know that there was a nail in the top end, it was placed there I suppose to stop the peg slipping further into the socket. Well, it went into Laudimer’s neck.’ He stopped, swallowed, looked from one side to the other, and now in a mumble he finished, ‘He . . . he bled to death.’

  ‘No! No!’ Tilly backed from him, her head shaking. ‘No! Mrs Ross could never have done that. No! no! She’s small, not strong.’

  ‘It’s all right, Tilly, it’s all right. Now, now stop trembling.’ Both Simon and Annie had hold of her now, but so violently was her body shaking that they shook with her.

  ‘Get her round to the back, Simon, William . . . William mustn’t be disturbed . . . ’

  Once more they were in the woodshed, and Tilly was crying loudly now, ‘Oh no! no! they’ll hurt her, they’ll do something to her. She’s lovely, lovely, a lovely woman. An’ all through me, all through me.’

  ‘Hold her fast, Simon. I’ll go an’ get a drop of William’s laudanum, she’ll go off her head else.’

  In the dark he held her while, with her arms about him, she clung to him, crying all the while, ‘Because of me, because of me. There’s a curse on me. There must be, there must be, Simon, there must be a curse on me.’

  ‘Ssh! Ssh!’

  And with one arm tightly around her waist and the other cupping her shoulders he thought, And there’s a curse on me, a blind curse. Why in the name of God couldn’t I see where me heart lay. Oh Tilly! Tilly! There, there, there my love, my love.

  Six

  ‘Why don’t you go and live across there?’

  ‘Look, Mary . . . ’

  ‘Don’t look Mary me. Yesterday you went to the old fellow’s funeral. He was buried at ten o’clock in the morning but you never landed back here until almost dark. Do you think the farm can run itself?’

  ‘No, I don’t think the farm can run itself.’ Simon’s tone now had changed from one pleading for understanding to an angry yell. ‘I was born and brought up on it and for the last ten years have worked from dawn till dusk, and far into the night. I’ve made it what it is, so don’t you say to me do I think the farm can run itself. And what’s more, let’s get this out into the open once and for all, the Trotters are my friends, our families have been close for years . . . ’

  ‘Huh! a miner and a farmer friends?’ Her words were a mutter but he picked them up and cried at her, ‘Yes, a miner and a farmer; but not an ignorant miner, William Trotter was one of the wisest men I’ve ever known. Well, now he’s gone and his wife, an ailing old woman, and Tilly, but a lass, are alone . . . ’

  ‘But a lass!’ Mary Bentwood flounced round so quickly that her heavy wool skirt billowed; then as quickly again she turned towards him, her voice as loud as his now as she cried, ‘That girl’s a menace! From the day I wed she has got into my hair. I�
�ve got her to thank for my wedding night and the week that followed and this thing that’s been between us ever since. They’re saying round about that she’s a witch and not a good one, a bad one, one that creates trouble. A man is dead, and it wasn’t really the parson’s wife who brought him low, that poor woman would have had no need to go to the barn that day if it hadn’t been for that . . . that creature.’

  ‘Don’t’ – Simon’s voice was low now, his words thick – ‘don’t speak of her like that. She’s naught but the victim of circumstances. She’s too attractive for her own good, and women, aye women like you Mary, sense this. Yes, yes’ – he nodded at her, his head bouncing on his shoulders now – ‘I’m telling you the truth, and men, aye, men, although they mightn’t know it, want her. She’s got something about her that they want and because she won’t give it their feelings turn to hate.’

  ‘Aw! Oh!’ Mary Bentwood’s face was now wearing an unpleasant smile that slowly mounted into a broad sneer, and after staring at her husband for a moment she asked, ‘Are you speaking of your own feelings, Simon?’

  ‘Oh my God! woman’ – again his head was shaking, but slowly now – ‘you’ll drive me mad afore you’re finished.’

  ‘Huh! Huh! Five months we’ve been married and now I’m driving you mad. All right, I’m driving you mad. Well, what I’m going to tell you now might add to it, and it’s just this, Simon Bentwood, when you’re away from the farm I don’t work, the milk can go sour, the churns green, but I don’t do a hand’s turn when you’re gone from this house other than the days you’re at market. Now there you have it. And I’ll add to that, I didn’t promise to be your wife in order to be a slavey.’

  He stared at her for a full minute before he inclined his head towards her once, saying now, ‘Very well, have it your way. You don’t work, then I get someone in who will, and I’ll hand the housekeeping over to her every week. You can sit on your backside and pick your nails, or sew fine seams for your frocks, as you seem to have done all your life. Anyway, now we know where we stand. I’m away to give me men their orders and they’ll see that the farm, at least outside, doesn’t drop to pieces until I return from Newcastle.’

  Simon now turned from his wife and went across the room and as he opened the door into the hall her screaming voice seemed to thrust him forward as she cried, ‘I hate you! Simon Bentwood. I hate you, your old farm and everything about you and it.’

  He closed the sitting-room door quietly, then standing still, his shoulders hunched, he screwed up his eyes tightly and bit on his lip before straightening up again and, this time thrusting back his shoulders, he crossed the hall, went through the kitchen and out into the yard to where his trap was waiting for him.

  Simon loved Newcastle. The first time he had visited it he had gone on foot. As a lad of thirteen he had walked the ten miles to watch the hoppings on the town moor; but even on that day his interest had been caught by the sight of the amazingly beautiful buildings. He remembered he had left the town moor in the early afternoon and wandered through streets and crescents and terraces, imagining that they couldn’t be real because no man could build so high and so decoratively with great lumps of stone. In the village it took the masons and the carpenters all their time to erect a double-storied house. Of course round about the village were the big houses of the gentry, but at that early age, he didn’t imagine these had been built by the hand of man either.

  Since those days he had not once visited the city without leaving himself time, if only half an hour, to wander about; and now in the twelve years that had passed the changes that had come about were amazing. The bridges he found fascinating, but the streets even more so because these were where people actually lived.

  There was the new Jesmond Road and the Leazes Crescent with its rounded gable ends, and the beautiful Leazes Terrace, four great windows high; as for Eldon Square, he always imagined that Mr Dobson, the designer, must have thought it up during the period of his life when he was happiest. And Mr Grainger, who built the Square, well, what had he thought when he put the last touches to the long handsome wrought-iron balconies?

  Strangely, after each visit to the city he would experience a day or two of unrest. Although within himself he was aware that he had been born to farm the land, he realised there were other avenues in life that could give a man intense satisfaction, for once a street, a terrace, a church was built it was there. You could move on to other things, greater things, express greater dreams, but on the land life covered but one year at a time, your long efforts were whipped up with the scythe or ended when you struck the fatal blow at an animal you had come in a way to like – he wouldn’t go as far as to say love . . .

  But here he was in Newcastle today and it would be the one time he wouldn’t walk its elegant streets that spoke of wealth and comfort, but which he recognised in his heart housed only a small portion of the population, for at the other end of the city there were rows of hovels that he wouldn’t put his pigs into.

  As he drove the trap towards the courthouse his mind was a turmoil of emotions, private emotions. His marriage had gone sour on him right from that first night. He knew he had made a mistake in picking Mary for a mate, but he also knew he’d have to live with his mistake.

  His horse was brought to a standstill in the midst of a mêlée of traffic. There were gentlemen’s coaches, beer drays, ragmen’s flat carts laden with stinking rags and their horses with heads bent as if in sorrow at their plight. There were meat carts and vegetable barrows; there were fish carts and knackers’ vans, the latter displaying their trade by the legs of the dead animals sticking out from the back, one animal piled on top of the other as if they had been instantly massacred, which he hoped was the way they had died, for some men made killing a slow business.

  The din was indescribable; Simon’s call to his horse to be steady was lost to his own ears. The pavements along each side of the road were full of people. These in a way were fortunate because they were walking on flagstones, a new acquisition to the streets, but the road where the traffic was jammed was still made up of mud and broken stones.

  When at last there was a movement and Simon turned his horse’s head towards a lane that led off at the top of the street he found his passage again blocked. Standing up in the trap he could see that the hostelry ahead where he usually left his horse was jammed full. He looked to the side of him where a man in a similar trap to his own shouted, ‘The town’s out, it must be the case at the courthouse, the parson’s wife,’ and he nodded; but Simon didn’t return the nod. He glanced behind him. No-one had turned in from the main road to block his return passage and so, jumping down from the trap, he took the horse’s head and eased her backwards, to the main road where he mounted the trap and rode onwards.

  Agitated inside, he pulled out a lever watch from his waistcoat pocket. It said quarter past eleven. The case would have already begun and Tilly, looking round for just one friend, would encounter nothing but the hostile gaze of the villagers. And these would undoubtedly be making a day of it. Oh yes, they’d be making a day of it all right.

  He did not at this moment think of what might happen to the parson’s wife; she had lawyers and big men on her side, her family were important. Anyway, she was only being charged with manslaughter, not murder, and whatever her sentence, one way or another, she’d be gone from the village after today. But not so Tilly, Tilly had to live there, as long as her granny was alive Tilly would stay there. But what would happen to her? Apart from Tom Pearson and himself, aye, and young Steve, there wasn’t one soul in that whole place that had a good word for her. After Laudimer died they would have killed her. Now that was strange for it wasn’t she who had struck the blow; but they’d worked it all back to the beginning: the parson’s wife was in the pickle she was because of Tilly Trotter.

  My God! if only he could get out of this jam.

  It was a full half-hour later when he found a stable where he could leave the horse and trap, and from there it was all of a
ten minute run back to the courthouse. And run he did; but when he tried to enter the building his way was blocked by the spectators. The outer hall was a mass of people, yet all strangely quiet, until he began to thrust himself between them, when there were angry murmurs. But he took no notice. Some made way for him, thinking he was some kind of an official, that was until he came to the main doors leading into the courtroom itself, and there he was confronted by an officer of the law.

  ‘How . . . how far is it on?’

  ‘Over halfway I should say, sir.’

  ‘The main witnesses, have they . . . ?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. The young lass is on the stand now.’

  ‘Please let me in.’ Simon brought his face close to that of the officer, saying again, ‘Please, let me in. You . . . you see I’ – he gulped in his throat – ‘I’m about the only friend she has.’

  They stared into each other’s eyes for a moment; then the officer said, ‘Well, even if I could, sir, I doubt if you’d make it, it’s as bad in there as it is out here, it’s crammed.’

  ‘Let me try, please.’ His hand came out of his pocket and slid unobtrusively in front of him and pressed something into the officer’s hand and the officer not taking his eyes from Simon’s now, said, ‘Well, you can have a try, sir,’ and on this he turned the big handle of one of the double doors, and as he opened it a number of people almost fell backwards. Simon, pressing himself forward with the aid of the policeman, forced himself into the throng, and the door was pushed slowly behind him; and there he was looking to where Tilly stood on a railed dais gazing towards the bench and the man who was speaking to her . . .

  ‘You have heard what the other witnesses in this case have said. To their mind you are the cause of Mrs Ellen Ross being present here today and being charged with manslaughter. One of them has definitely stated that you have some . . . well’ – the judge now looked down at the bench, then over it and on to the head of the clerk standing below before he raised his eyes to the witness box again – ‘occult power. You understand what I mean by that?’