Barefoot on the Cobbles

by Janet Few

  It was Sunday before Leonard saw the girl again. Leonard’s attendance at chapel was borne out of habit rather than conviction. His parents went, many of his neighbours went, except, of course, the Anglicans who plodded up the hill to All Saints or crammed into the tiny, village chapelry that was St Peter’s. It was what you did. This particular week, Leonard’s family arrived later than usual, Lily’s hair ribbon had not passed muster and the hunt for an acceptable replacement had delayed them. As they hustled in, Leonard caught sight of Granny Smale, sat as usual in the back right hand corner of the crowded Methodist chapel. Her Sunday-black shawl was not so much an acknowledgement of her husband Harry’s recent passing, more a practical garment for an elderly woman. The girl was next to her, squeezing against the wall, as her grandmother’s ample frame settled on the hard, narrow pew. She was, as he remembered, small and slight, sitting rigidly upright, her tightly plaited hair secured with a dark bow. Her face was shaded by a voluminous bonnet and she did not look round as the late arrivals entered at the back of the chapel. Newcomers were always a source of whispered interest in a community such as Clovelly and sidelong glances were cast in the girl’s direction but the service was beginning and all attention was focussed on the minister as he bade them welcome, uttered a prayer and announced the opening hymn.

  After the service, the ladies assumed concern for Granny Smale’s recently widowed state, using this as an excuse to appraise the new arrival. Leonard wasn’t particularly interested but the gossip swirled round him, whilst he waited impatiently for his mother to indicate that it was time for them to leave.

  ‘Yes, this was Annie.’

  ‘You remember, she’s Mabel’s girl. You’ll mind Mabel, her who married at seventeen to Ben Stoneman over to Bideford and only just in time that was too.’

  ‘Well, they say Mabel’s eldest ’tweren’t Ben’s, you’ve only got to look at young Susan to know that.’

  ‘Susan’s married herself now of course and gone to live down Newton Abbot way.’

  ‘This one’s the youngest, well the youngest that’s survived of course.’

  ‘No, not the youngest, Mabel’s last babe survived, born last year she was.’

  ‘Well, Mabel’s not had a lot of luck with her chiles.’

  The chattering rattled on.

  ‘Left school at Christmas young Annie did, so just handy to come and help her Gran.’

  At this point, Leonard raised his estimate of the girl’s age by about three years but his ability to assess girl’s ages, based largely on his sisters and girls he had known at school, was rudimentary. When was his mother going to be ready to leave? He’d promised to go up to the woods with the lads. They would ignore the drizzle, share cigarettes and companionship, enjoy an afternoon that was free from chores. As soon as he’d left school, Leonard had assumed that he could now join the queue in Ellis’ shop for an occasional packet of ten Woodbines without being gainsaid. His parents were broadly accepting of this habit, which in turn had extended to Bertie when he too reached fourteen, as long as they didn’t smoke in the house or on a Sunday. The one exception was Christmas Day, when the men of the family might light up after tucking in to whatever Mrs Hamlyn’s generous seasonal gift to her tenants had been. This year, each household had received a haunch of venison from the estate; it had been a good shooting season.

  Granny Smale had positioned herself near the chapel door, with Annie, once again eclipsed by the sheer bulk of her grandmother, trying to appear inconspicuous. Granny Smale obviously thought that, as near neighbours and possessing children of a similar age to Annie, Leonard’s was a family that should be especially introduced.

  He joined the queue to leave the chapel and muttered, ‘Good day,’ as he and his siblings were named by Granny Smale in turn, in strict order of their age.

  Annie looked at her polished button boots and twisted her fingers awkwardly.

  ***

  As the war took 1915 in its grasp and played with people’s lives as a cat will with a hapless mouse, Leonard’s routine remained largely unchanged. Sometimes he caught sight of Annie, hanging dishcloths on the line, wiping down the tea-room tables, or struggling down the street, burdened with shopping bags. In half-forgotten pre-war holiday seasons P & A Campbell’s steamers had brought hundreds of day-trippers from Ilfracombe, or even South Wales. Tourists were tolerated. They spoiled the solitude, the silence and the regular rhythm of the fishing year. Yet with them came colour, diversion, bustle, excitement. Moreover, their pennies, their shillings, their florins, were secreted in the pockets of boarding house owners and dropped in the wooden drawers of tea-room tills. The sight of the white funnels on the horizon sent the fishermen scurrying to their boats. Passengers in their finery had to be ferried from steamer to land and many a coin could be earned rowing a boat that was acting as a tender. A day’s fishing might yield a bumper sea-harvest or it could bring nothing more than hands calloused from the oars but P & A Campbell landed a certain catch. The war, of course, meant fewer visitors to Clovelly. It was said that White Line steamers would soon be required for use as troop-ships and now Clovelly’s harbour no longer thronged and hummed with jostling sightseers.

  Even in peacetime, the winter was never busy for tea-rooms and boarding houses but there were always those who travelled to the balmy south-west for their health and the occasional artist or writer who found inspiration in the sea air, the crashing waves and the quaint cobbles. True, the lodging houses more often than not displayed cards in their windows that read “Vacancies” but the businesses had limped through the early months of the hostilities. This was testament to the tenacity of Clovelly’s residents, who were able to adjust to changing circumstances and to turn their hands to finding different ways of putting food on the table. So the tea-rooms stayed open and as the year stretched towards Easter, the girl remained with her grandmother, smiling shyly now whenever she saw Leonard.

  Spring beckoned, mufflers were left off and Clovelly stirred from its winter slumbers. The gales abated, rain and mist retired gracefully to their lair and the weather turned unseasonably warm. Hibernation was over, boarding house rugs were beaten and tea-room silver shone. Leonard, with the restless energy of youth, found inactivity irksome. When no one needed an extra hand on a boat he was reduced to running errands for his mother. Anything to get out of the house, where his two small sisters squealed and Nelson’s absence echoed. He had been up to the woods to collect branches to split for next winter’s kindling when he spotted Annie on a similar mission. Cheeks besmirched with earth and her hair uncharacteristically untidy, she was attempting to drag a large branch behind her.

  ‘Baint no good for firings ’til it be seasoned,’ he remarked, conversationally. The past weeks of Granny Smale’s home cooking had filled Annie out and although she was still not much taller than Violet, she no longer looked like a child. She was, Leonard noticed for the first time, even quite pretty. Undaunted by her lack of response, Leonard tried again.

  ‘Can I help you carry that down?’ he asked.

  ‘If you like,’ she shrugged. Then, more graciously, ‘Thank you.’

  It wasn’t a very auspicious start and their journey back down the street was accompanied by long silences that were none the less companionable. As Leonard and Annie reached the tea-rooms Granny Smale came out.

  ‘Youm busy boy?’ She asked Leonard.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘Not ’til father comes back to shore.’

  ‘Could you help Annie here move the tables out into the yard so she can spring clean?’ she asked. ‘’Tis too much for me with me rheumatics.’

  There were three solid pine tables, scrubbed and scarred, in the tea-room. Lacking their starched, white tablecloths they looked vulnerable and unloved. Leonard glanced from the large tables to Annie’s slim frame and lifted his eyebrows slightly.

  ‘Us can give it a try,’ he said.

  Annie took hold of the edge of the first table and with a strength that belied her stature, began d
ragging it backwards towards the door. Sunlight streamed in from the yard and aura-like, specks of dust flickered round her. Leonard grabbed the other end of the table and began to lift, trying to take the greater share of the weight as Annie, silhouetted against the brightness of the late March day, deftly manoeuvred herself through the doorway.

  Once the tables were outside, the pair returned for the chairs and upended them, placing their wooden seats on the table tops. As they went back and forth to the yard, they could hear Granny Smale banging pans and slamming shut the door of the Bodley.

  ‘Pasty boy?’ she asked gruffly as the room, empty now, echoed to the sound of their footsteps.

  She waved Leonard into the back kitchen and he sat at the small table. He took his first bite of the savoury pasty, pastry flaking on to his plate as his teeth sunk through the crust and the flavoursome, hot gravy oozed into his mouth, scalding his tongue. He was aware of the silence and Granny Smale’s disapproving stare. Her pasty, like Annie’s, still lay intact and unblemished in front of her.

  ‘Grace,’ she barked.

  Leonard hastily returned his pasty to his plate and was glad that Annie’s bowed head meant that she could not see his scarlet cheeks. Grace muttered, Granny Smale poured strong tea from a large brown pot into the waiting enamel mugs and spooned in generous amounts of sugar. She was eyeing him speculatively as he thanked her and resumed his feast.

  ‘Could you wait tables boy?’ she asked.

  Wait tables? That wasn’t work for a lad. Did she really want him to take dainty plates of scones to expectant visitors?

  Seeing his hesitancy, Granny Smale elaborated, ‘Annie does the serving but could you take the heavy trays from the kitchen to the dresser, help stoke the Bodley, fetch and carry some? Just on a weekend mind, when it is too much for one to manage. I be in the kitchen brewing up and I can’t lift the trays no more.’

  Leonard thought swiftly. It didn’t sound like much of a job. The lads would rib him and say he’d turned into a maid. He caught sight of Annie’s eager expression, she seemed to be holding her breath. She really was very pretty. Perhaps that would go down well with his chums, that he was spending time with a girl, even one as young as this. Jerked back from his musings, Leonard was aware that Granny Smale was talking.

  ‘I can’t pay you more than a shillin’ a day but there’s a good dinner and tea in it for you and mayhap a pick of any left-over cakes that won’t keep ’til Monday.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Leonard; Annie exhaled visibly.

  ***

  Easter was early that year and those whose incomes depended on the annual influx of rich folk from up-country were confident that, despite the war, there would still be visitors. Surely those who wanted cheering up, as the international news worsened, would make their usual westward journey. Others, who were eager to escape the food shortages of the towns, would travel to enjoy the countryside’s plenty. At Granny Smale’s there were gradual adjustments being made. The once brisk, bustling wife of Harry Smale, was, in widowhood, diminished. No longer vigorous and stout, she had lost the appetite for life. As Annie settled in, she shouldered more and more of the work of the tea-rooms. The baking still needed Granny Smale’s own light touch but the old lady’s hands would not always obey her and she was becoming unsteady on her feet, making carrying pots of hot tea hazardous. Annie undertook her increasing responsibilities with equanimity. As the season got underway, Leonard hauled lobster pots during the week and heaved trays at the weekends. Once their initial shyness had worn off, he and Annie drifted into a comfortable friendship.

  One morning, when the village was painted bright with early May sunshine, Leonard found Annie unusually downcast.

  ‘What’s the matter maid?’ he asked.

  ‘’Tis me ma,’ she said. ‘She’s in the family way, she’s old to have another baby and she’s lost four. Hettie’s a year old now and she’s fine so far but I’m worried.’

  With six younger siblings, Leonard was not ignorant of the risks associated with child bearing. He was acutely aware of the impact that the loss of a child could have. Thinking of his mother’s failure to cope with Nelson’s death, he wondered how on earth she would be if she’d lost four. Annie was explaining that her brothers and sister had all been infants when they’d died. Leonard supposed the fact that Nelson had been older, with a proper personality all of his own, might make a difference but he didn’t know.

  ‘It was so awful,’ Annie was saying, ‘she didn’t have another baby for seven years after we lost Norman and then there was Hettie. Who knows what will happen this time?’

  ‘I’m sure ’twill be fine,’ said Leonard, knowing full well that this was a platitude and that all might be far from fine. Then a thought struck him.

  ‘Will you have to go back to help?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Granny can’t manage without me and Fanny will cope back home with ma.’

  A sense of relief seeped into Leonard’s consciousness and surprised him with its force. He was used to his new weekend routine in the tea-rooms and it dawned on him that he would miss this quicksilver girl, if she had to disappear back to the town. They sat unspeaking, waiting for the heavy kettles, hissing and sizzling on the Bodley, to come to the boil. Leonard broke the silence.

  ‘How do you think Granny Smale’s managing without Mr Smale?’ he asked. ‘She seems to have got… I don’t know, old I suppose.’

  ‘At least he had been ill,’ said Annie, ‘and he was old. So it wasn’t a shock, not like when my granfer died young and she was left with children to look after. That’s why the tea-rooms were so important, when she hadn’t got his wage.’

  ‘He was lost at sea wasn’t he?’ said Leonard, trying to recall the tales he’d heard about the demise of Annie’s grandfather, Granny Smale’s first husband, Captain William Pengilly.

  ‘Well,’ said Annie, huddling closer and lowering her voice. ‘In a way. It was all years before I was born of course but I’ve heard my mother gossiping about it. I don’t think I am supposed to know the details.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Leonard, enjoying this moment of intimacy.

  ‘He had an accident,’ went on Annie, conspiratorially. ‘His ship docked somewhere called the Isle of Wight. He went in to town on the train and then missed the last connection home to the ship. He was walking back along the railway line when he fell through the viaduct.’

  She paused, obviously hoping for a reaction. Leonard managed to assume a suitably surprised expression, although, now she mentioned it, he did recall having heard something of the sort.

  ‘He had to be buried there of course. Granny sometimes talks about how she went all the way there for the funeral. She told me he’s buried in the middle of the island. It worries her that she can’t visit the grave. I always said I’d like to go and pay my respects one day but I don’t see how I could ever make the journey.’

  ‘How did he manage to fall?’ queried Leonard.

  Annie dropped her voice even further, so that Leonard had to strain to hear her.

  ‘They say he was drunk,’ she whispered. Now, Leonard was genuinely astonished, surely Captain Pengilly had been a Methodist.

  ‘Is that really true?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Annie. ‘Ma never talks about it. She was living with her grandparents when it happened.’

  Granny Smale’s footsteps could be heard coming in from the tea-room, where she had been inspecting Annie’s table-laying efforts. Leonard hurriedly changed the subject.

  ‘’Tis going to be a fine day,’ he said, ‘we should be busy.’

  ‘Yes,’ the old lady agreed. ‘There’s dozens of scones baked and plenty of cream in the cold safe. They’ll all be wanting cream teas.’

  Leonard and Annie exchanged a glance and Leonard felt that somehow their relationship had moved on a stage, in the light of the confidences and concerns that they had shared. Annie had shrugged off her despondency and his attempts to distract he
r from her worries about her mother seemed to have succeeded.

  The tourists emerged in the sparkling spring sunlight, eager to relax and forget the enormity of the news from the front. Leonard and Annie were kept busy serving the iconic cream teas for which Devon was famous. Normally, Granny Smale would help in the kitchen but deflated, she dozed in the worn, wicker chair by the Bodley and did not stir as the two young people rushed in and out to fulfil all the orders. As the afternoon wore on, the last few visitors straggled down the street, replete from pasties and scones and Annie turned the sign on the tea-room door to “Closed”. Leonard had barely kept pace with washing the dishes in the scullery and a tottering mound of crumb-filled plates and tea-stained cups awaited attention.

  ‘Let’s sup some tea,’ said Annie. ‘We deserve it.’

  She poured Leonard a cup of well stewed tea and knowing his preference, added three teaspoons of sugar. As they sipped the steaming liquid, they were alerted to sounds of Granny Smale moving about in the kitchen. They heard the banging of a door, followed by a loud exclamation.