Tilly Trotter

by Catherine Cookson

  "Yes, yes, I'm afraid it would."

  "That's such a pity. You being our nearest neighbours, I had hoped--" she shrugged her shoulders. "Well, what's a dinner party, I can always call."

  "Please be seated."

  She turned and smiled her thanks at Mark as he pressed a chair under her thick riding skirt and after she was seated there was a moment's silence before, laughing now, she said, "I've made the acquaintance of your charming family."

  Eileen Sopwith now turned a quick enquiring glance on her husband and he, smiling down at her, said,

  "Yes. Yes, they made their presence felt, up to some prank." His head bobbed.

  "Have ... have you any children?"

  "No, I'm afraid not. But there's plenty of time, I've only been married just over a year."

  She ended on a laugh as if she had expressed something amusing.

  Eileen Sopwith stared at her visitor but said nothing, while Mark put in quickly, "I suppose you find this part of the country very stale after London. I am, of course, taking it for granted you did live in London?"

  "Yes, yes, we had a house there, and another in Warwickshire, but he sold them both up, Billy, you know. His people originally came from this part, so I understand, a hundred years or so ago. He's always wanted to live up here, he says he finds more to do here than in London. He came up at the back end of last year in all that terrible weather just to be here for the Mansion House sale in Newcastle; there were some pieces he wanted for our place you know.

  Moreover, he's very interested in engineering; and there were some bridges going up at the time. I've forgotten the name of them." She shrugged her shoulders and glanced up at Mark, and he said, "Oh yes, the railway viaducts over the Ouseburn and Willington Dean."

  She nodded at him and said, "Yes, those are the places; I can never remember names... . The first place he took me to when I came up here was the New Theatre at Newcastle, rather splendid, and it was a great evening. I've never laughed so much for a long time, not only at the play but at the people.

  Really"--she glanced back up at him--

  "you'll likely get on your provincial high horse when I say this, but I could hardly understand a word any of them said."

  When Mark made no immediate reply to this because the word provincial had annoyed him somewhat she cried loudly, "There! there! I told you."

  "Are ... are you returning to London soon or are you making this your permanent home?"

  The quiet question from the chaise-longue cut in on her laughter and she answered, "Oh no, no, we've just come from there, well, only a fortnight ago. We were to come up much earlier but then the King died and the Queen was proclaimed and Billy had to be there. I think Billy is going to love it here, in fact I'm sure of it, but as yet I cannot speak for myself, except I know I am going to enjoy the riding, the land is so open and wild ... like the people."

  She turned her head again and glanced up at Mark and her expression invited contradiction.

  It was at this point that the door opened and the companion entered, and her hesitation and the look on her face as she stood with her hand still on the door handle showed her surprise, and also her displeasure.

  The latter was immediately evident to Mark, who, bent on mollifying her, put out his hand towards her while looking at Lady Myton, and saying,

  "This is Miss Mabel Venner Price, my wife's companion, Lady Myton."

  The title, lady, seemed to have little effect for Miss Price's countenance didn't change; her mouth opened, the square chin dropped and she dipped the smallest of curtsies as she said, "Your Ladyship."

  Lady Agnes acknowledged the salute by a mere inclining of her head, which gesture reminded Mark of the look she had bestowed on young Bentwood.

  Apparently she had a manner she kept precisely for menials, and the condescension was, to his mind, overdone.

  She was a madam all right, but a very likeable madam, oh yes, a very likeable madam.

  He watched her now making her farewells to Eileen and it was apparent that Eileen had been stirred slightly out of herself by her visitor.

  Well, that was a good thing an" all. There were times when he had his doubts about his wife's malaise, yet both Doctor Kemp and Doctor Fellows had said she must have no more children, something to do with her womb; and the man he had brought down from Edinburgh had gone further, stating that the pain she had in the sides of her stomach were from her ovaries and that there was really no cure unless nature took a hand and settled things internally, which it often did. Well, nature was a. long time ha taking a hand and he had asked himself often of late, would he know when it had?

  He missed the warmth of her body--she no longer allowed him to lie beside her at night. When he explained he could love her without taking her she had been shocked.

  How was it, he wondered, that the common woman managed to carry on. There were women in his mine crawling on their hands and knees, pulling and shoving bogies full of coal less than a week after giving birth. Often when he had gone down the mine with the manager they had come across couples sporting and more in a side roadway on the bare rock earth, and while Yarrow scattered them, crying, "I'll cuddle you! Begod, I'll cuddle you!" he himself had been filled with envy. He often thought about the word cuddle. It was a beautiful word, warm in itself.

  "Shall we be going then?"

  "Oh yes, yes."

  He hadn't been conscious of staring at her all the while he had been thinking, but he was now conscious of his wife's eyes being tight on him as he turned to her and said, "I'll be up shortly."

  When Mabel Price opened the door for them he smiled at her but her cheeks made no answering movement.

  They had reached the main hall before they spoke again.

  Looking at her, he said, "I feel very embarrassed, you have been offered no refreshment whatever," and she put out her hand and gently tapped his sleeve with two fingers as she said, "Please don't apologise, there is nothing to apologise for. The visit itself has been refreshment enough." Then her head on one side, she asked, "Can I depend upon you coming to dinner a fortnight tonight?"

  There was the slightest pause before he answered,

  "Most certainly. I shall be pleased to."

  Their eyes held for a moment longer, then she turned about, walked towards the door where the footman was now standing with her crop and gloves, and taking them from him as if she had picked them up from a hallstand she went out and on to the broad terrace, then walked down the three shallow steps on to the grass spattered gravel and to where Fred Leyburn, the coachman-cum-groom-cum-handyman was holding her horse.

  Mark himself helped her up into the saddle; then taking the reins from the coachman, he dismissed him with a lift of his head, and handing the reins up to her, he said, "Until today fortnight then," and she, looking down at him, her face unsmiling now but her gaze steady, replied, "Until today fortnight ... if not before." With that, she spurred her horse and was gone galloping along the drive, and he stood and watched her until she disappeared from his sight before turning and running up the steps and into the house again.

  At the bottom of the main staircase he paused a moment, his fingers pressed on his lower lip. He knew he should go straight to the nursery, take Matthew's breeches down and thrash him--he had promised him that the very next time he played a dirty prank on Dewhurst he would lather him--but were he to do so there would likely be screaming, and when the sound reached Eileen, as it surely would because Matthew had a great pair of lungs on him, she would either have one of her real bad turns or punish him with her weapon of hurt silence for the next few days.

  Running once more, he took the stairs two at a time. He was panting when he reached the gallery and as he drew himself to a walk he asked himself why the hurry.

  When he entered his wife's bedroom again, Mabel Price was adjusting a light silk cover over her mistress's knees and she turned an unsmiling face towards her master before walking past him and leaving the room.

  "What's the matte
r with her?" Mark looked towards the closed door.

  "She didn't like your visitor."

  "My visitor! She came to see you."

  Eileen Sopwith ignored this remark and went on,

  "She has heard rumours."

  "Yes, yes, I bet she has. If there's any rumours to be sifted out our dear Miss Price will be the first down the hole."

  "You mustn't talk like that about her, Mark, she's a very good friend to me, quite indispensable."

  "And does that allow her to be rude to guests?"

  "Lady Myton wasn't a guest, Mark, she came here uninvited."

  "She came here as a neighbour, hoping, I think, for a neighbourly response. She likely wants to make friends."

  "By what I hear she's quite adept at making friends."

  He stood looking down at his wife while she smoothed out a fine lawn handkerchief with her forefinger and thumb. "Did you know she'd been married before?"

  "No, I didn't... . But you knew I'd been married before"--he now leant towards her--

  "didn't you, Eileen, and that didn't stamp me as a villain."

  "It is different with a woman, and I'm not blaming her for being married before, but I do now understand the reason why they came here in

  rather a hurry. Her name was coupled with that of a certain gentleman in London, and her husband was for thrashing him."

  He screwed up his face now as he said,

  "You've learned all this in the last few minutes, and may I ask where Price got her information?"

  "Yes, you may ask, Mark, that is if you don't shout." There was a pause now while she stared at him before continuing, "It should happen that their coachman is a distant relation to Simes, second cousin or some such."

  "Really!"

  "Yes, really."

  His head took on its bobbing motion as it was apt to do when he was angry or annoyed, and he said, "I suppose Lord Myton challenged some young fellow to a duel because he admired his wife? ...

  Oh!"--he flung one arm wide--"why do you listen to such clap-trap, Eileen? Myton, I understand, is well into his sixties and past thrashing anyone or anything, even his dogs." He sighed, then said quietly, "Why do you listen to Price?"

  He watched her lips quiver and when she brought out in a thin piping voice, "I have no one else to listen to, you spare me very little of your time these days," he dropped down on to the edge of the couch and, taking her hands in his, he said patiently,

  "I've told you, Eileen, I can't be in two or three places at once, I'm up to my neck at the mine. There was a time when I could leave everything to Yarrow but not any more, things are critical. Come on, smile." He cupped her chin in his hand, then said brightly, "You'll never guess who is being married tomorrow... . Young Bentwood, the farmer, you know."

  "Really!" She smiled faintly at him and nodded her head as she repeated, "Young Bentwood. Dear!

  Dear! I haven't seen him for years. He... he was quite a presentable young man."

  "Oh, he's that all right. A bit cocky, knows his own value, but he's a good farmer.

  He's made a better job of that place than his father did."

  "Do you know whom he's marrying?"

  "A girl, I think." He laughed and wagged her hand now, and she turned her face from him, saying,

  "Oh, Mark!"

  "No, I don't really know anything about her."

  "Do you think we should make them a present?"

  "A present? Yes, I suppose so. But what?"

  "Yes, what?" She put her head back on the pillow and thought for a moment, then said, "A little silver, a little silver milk jug or sugar basin.

  There's a lot in the cabinets downstairs, one piece would never be missed."

  "No, you're right, and it's a nice gesture."

  He moved his head down towards her and kissed her lightly on the cheek, then repeated, "A nice gesture, very thoughtful. When I come back later I'll bring some pieces up and you can choose."

  "Yes, do that. Oh, by the way, Mark"--she put out her hand to him now in a gentle pleading gesture as he moved from the bed--"go up to the nursery and speak to Matthew but please, please, be gentle.

  I know he's been naughty. Mabel tells me she went up and remonstrated with him. He's upset Dewhurst again. But the girl is weak, she has no control over the children. I... I don't know what's going to be done."

  He turned fully about now and in a manner that swept away his easygoing kindliness of the moment before, he said, "I know what should be done, I've known what should be done for some time, and we'll have to talk about this, Eileen. That boy should be sent away to school."

  "No, no, I won't have it, I've told you.

  I won't even discuss it. And ... and anyway, boarding schools cost money and you're continually telling me that the household expenses must be cut down. No, no, I won't have it. Leave me.

  Please leave me."

  He left her with her hands thrashing the top of the silk coverlet, but he did not go up to the nursery.

  Running down the stairs once more, but his haste now conditioned by acute irritation, he burst out of the house, hurried across the courtyard and to the stables, and within minutes he was mounted and riding now towards the mine.

  He couldn't understand the woman, he couldn't. She could only bear to see the children for a few minutes each day, yet the very mention of sending them away to school upset her... . No, no; he just couldn't understand the woman. Or any woman for that matter. Lady Myton who seemed to see life as a joke, or perhaps more accurately as a stage on which to play out her affairs and the cuckolding of her husband. Women were enigmas, and botheration, the lot of them.

  "Aye, you do look bonny. Doesn't she, William?"

  "Aye. Aye, she'll pass."

  They both looked smilingly at Tilly standing straight but with head slightly bowed.

  "You should have gone to the church. Shouldn't she, William?"

  "Yes, I should have thought you would have liked to see Simon wed because there's no one been kinder to you since you first set foot in this house."

  "No, you're right there, William," Annie put in, nodding her head. "An' you would have got a ride in one of the brakes, both there and back. An'

  that treat doesn't come upon you every day, now does it?

  And I'm sure Simon would be puzzled and a bit hurt likely. I wish I'd had the chance, I do, I do."

  Tilly's chin drooped a little further towards her chest. She knew that they were both staring at her waiting for an explanation which she had refused to voice over the past days because she could not say to them, "I couldn't bear to see him married," but she knew she had to say something, so what she said, and in a mumble, was,

  "It's me frock."

  "Your frock!" They voiced the words, one after the other. "What's wrong with your frock? You look as fresh as a sprig in it."

  "Aw, Gran!" She had lifted her head now and also had caught hold of the skirt of the dress at each side pulling it to its full width as she exclaimed somewhat reproachfully, "It's washed out! It's been turned up and turned down so many times it's got dizzy an' doesn't know if it's comin' or goin'."

  At this there was silence for a moment. Then as William eased himself from his elbow and lay back on his pillows and let out a deep grunt of a chuckle, Annie put her fingers across her mouth while Tilly, her head once again drooping, joined her smothered laughter to theirs.

  As she had said, her dress was washed out. Its original colour of deep

  pink was only to be seen now under the ten rows of pin-tucks that ran from shoulder to shoulder across her flat breast. When it was bought five years ago in the rag market in Newcastle for ninepence, the sleeves had been much too long; even after the cuffs had been turned up twice they still reached her knuckles; as for the gored bell-shaped skirt, its six-inch hem had been turned up another nine inches. There had been no thought at that time of cutting off either the bottom of the dress or the ends of the sleeves because Tilly was sprouting "like a corn stalk gone mad," as Annie was
apt to exclaim almost daily. And so as Tilly grew the dress was lengthened, until the day came when the six-inch hem was reduced to three inches and the dress was now of an embarrassing length reaching only to the top of her boots; in fact she knew she would be indecent if she had been wearing shoes, for her ankles would have been entirely exposed.

  "Go on, get yourself off, lass, else you'll be late. The jollification will be over afore you get there. And look--" Annie reached up towards Tilly's bonnet, saying, "Loosen some of your hair, a strand or two to bring over your ears."

  "Oh, Gran! I don't like it fluffed around me face."

  "I'm not fluffin' it around your face. There"--she patted the two dark brown curls of hair lying now in front of Tilly's ears--"they show up your skin, set it off like."

  "Aw, Gran!"

  "And stop saying, Aw, Gran! There you are."

  She turned her about and pushed her towards the door.

  "Enjoy yourself. Take everything in because we want to hear all about it the morrow. And tell Simon again that we wish him happiness. Tell him we wish him everything that he wishes for himself, and more "cos he deserves it. Away with you."

  Tilly turned in the open doorway and, looking towards the bed, said softly, "Bye-bye, Granda."

  "Bye-bye, lass. Keep your back straight, your head up, an" remember you're bonny."

  "Now, now, now, don't say, Aw Gran or Granda again, else I'll slap your cheek for you."

  One final push from Annie sent Tilly towards the gate, and there she turned and waved her hand before hurrying along the bridle-path.

  She hurried until she knew she was out of sight of the cottage, and then her step slowed. It would be all over now; he'd be firmly wed, and to that girl! Woman. Twenty-four, he said she was, but she looked older. Her round blue eyes and fair fluffy hair didn't make her appear like a young woman. Not that her face looked old, it was just something in her manner. She had only met her the once when coming out of church and she knew she hadn't liked her. And it wasn't only because she was marrying Simon, she was the kind of woman she would never have liked. She had hinted as much to Mrs Ross.