Rosemary Aitken

by Flowers for Miss Pengelly

  ‘And what do you tell him?’

  ‘The truth – that I have been out walking with a friend, although,’ she giggled, ‘I let them think that it’s a girl. That’s bad enough, to hear my Uncle Joe go on, grumbling that I haven’t brought my money home that week.’

  She didn’t say so, but he was fairly sure that her aunt and uncle scolded her to death every time she ‘wasted’ an afternoon like this. She did make a contribution to the family purse, he knew – and no doubt they were concerned if that was late.

  ‘Why don’t I come out with you? Then you could do both – spend some time with me and see your Pa and give the money to your aunt at the same time. Anyway, I’d like to meet your relatives.’

  Effie laid the violet with the rest and looked at him scornfully. ‘Get along with you! You don’t know what they’re like.’

  ‘Well, whose fault is that?’ he said, half-jokingly. ‘You keep them from me, though I go on asking you about them all the time.’

  That was true. He often asked her questions, though she didn’t notice it, just to start her prattling about her life at home. It seemed so entirely different from his own. That tiny cottage – he had seen it once, of course, when he went with Sergeant Vigo to interview her Pa, and he still retained a vivid picture in his mind. All that crowd of people packed in like sardines! He’d often tried to visualize living in that way, but imagination failed. Effie said that when she was living at the house, the other children all slept head to tail – one bed for the boys and another for the girls – and ate in relays if someone came to call, because there weren’t sufficient stools and settles to go round.

  Perhaps that’s why she shook her head at him. ‘Couldn’t take you out there. You don’t know what it’s like. Proper mayhem sometimes. You’re not used to it.’ She coloured, in that pretty way she sometimes did. ‘You were brought up with pianos and fancy ornaments. It’s different out the Terrace: earth floors in the kitchen and wet washing everywhere and always someone squabbling somewhere in the house, mostly because wherever you sit down and start to sew or draw, within five minutes you’ve got to move because somebody wants something the other side of you.’ She paused and went on in an altered tone. ‘And Uncle Joe would give you such a time of it – he doesn’t care for policemen and he’d very likely call you rude things to your face. I would be ashamed to take you there.’

  He looked down at her. ‘Meaning – really – that you’re ashamed of me?’

  Her eyes flashed hotly. ‘Of course I aren’t! Don’t be so bally daft!’

  It was not like her to speak so sharply, and he realized that, although he’d only meant to tease, his remark had genuinely touched a nerve. He put his hand out to her, but she pulled away.

  ‘It’s just – I can’t explain it – you’re from a different world. You must know what I mean. Would you feel comfortable if you took me home and had to introduce me to your Ma and Pa?’ She shrugged him off and went back to looking for her flowers.

  He said, ‘But that’s quite different, Effie. You know it can’t be done – not while we’ve only got an hour or two to spare. It would take us all that time to get there – let alone get back.’ He saw the look that she was giving him and he added, rather lamely, ‘Anyway, I’m sure my parents would like you very much.’ But it lacked conviction and he knew it did.

  Secretly, he was aware that she was right. Mother would be charming, as she always was to guests, and would take pains to make Effie feel at home – no doubt offering sandwiches and tea. But afterwards, he knew, it would be a different thing.

  He could almost hear his mother saying, outraged and aggrieved, ‘What can you have been thinking of, Alex, to bring that poor girl here? Can’t you see that you’ve embarrassed her? Didn’t know what on earth to say to us. And talk about a lack of breeding! Can’t hold a tea-cup properly and when offered sandwiches helps herself to a whole handful at a time! I can’t imagine what your father’s going to say!’ But Alex could, and he was squirming at the very thought of it.

  Effie seemed to read this in his face. ‘There you are,’ she said triumphantly. ‘It’s clear as daylight that you know exactly what I mean!’

  But he would not admit it, not out loud at least. ‘Well, I’ll have to meet your people sometime,’ he said stubbornly. ‘If we’re going to . . .’ He tailed off in dismay.

  She was looking at him strangely, raising her head so that her bonnet slipped right back. ‘If we are going to . . . what?’

  ‘Go on walking out,’ he said lightly, realizing that he’d nearly said something far more serious. ‘And move on to doing this.’ He leaned over and brushed his lips against her hair. ‘I can’t be on kissing terms with just anyone, you know.’

  ‘Get off, you great lummox.’ She ducked away and laughed. ‘Whoever said you could be on kissing terms with me?’ But she didn’t seem displeased and – although she did not allude to it again – she kept on smiling at him all the afternoon, as they wandered down the lanes collecting violets.

  They had gathered quite a number by the time they turned for home. ‘Going to bunch and sell them?’ He knew that people did, to earn a few pennies from the townsfolk on a market day. He wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d planned on doing that – though their walk together seemed a funny time to choose.

  But she simply laughed. ‘Never make my fortune, will I? I never thought of that. No, I generally pick something, when I’m out with you. I like to take it back with me – remind me of our walks – but violets are too fragile to carry in my hand, or put into the pocket of my shawl like I b’long to do . . .’ She flushed and turned away.

  He put a hand beneath her chin and turned it gently so that she was facing him again. ‘Do you really do that? I’ve seen you pick a piece of something now and then – ferns and berries and that sort of thing – I never thought about you keeping them. Anyway, I shouldn’t have thought they’d last above a day or two.’

  ‘I’ve kept a bunch of wildflowers for better than a week!’ she protested with a grin. ‘I put them in a jam jar right beside my bed, and look at them to cheer me up whenever Madam’s cross as sticks with me – which seems to be happening more and more these days. Anyway,’ she shook the basket of violets at him, ‘even when these are wilted I’ve got a use for them. I’ll put them in the rinse-jug when I wash my hair. It takes away the smell of vinegar.’

  ‘Vinegar?’

  She giggled. ‘I always use it when I wash my hair. Mother used to say it made it shine.’ She gave him a playful push. ‘Though I can see I’ll have to give up doing that, if it’s going to make you start taking liberties, like you did just now.’

  ‘Like this?’ he said, and bent to kiss her hair again, but as he did so she turned her face to his and almost accidently he brushed against her lips.

  It was a fleeting moment but he realized that it embarrassed her. She would not take his arm again, even on the field-paths, and she talked nineteen to the dozen all the way back to the town, about Mrs Thatchell and the cook and anything at all – except themselves. Even when they parted she did not look at him.

  Effie did not mean to lie awake that night and think about that kiss, but she found she could not dismiss it from her mind. Of course he hadn’t meant to – it was half an accident – but it was the first real kiss that she’d ever had, if you didn’t count a peck from the Kellow boy next door when they were six.

  Well, except that Alex had brushed his lips against her hair, this very afternoon – but that hardly counted now, though it had seemed sufficiently exciting at the time. And that had been no accident at all!

  She was both excited and alarmed – there were stories about girls who let themselves be kissed – but there wasn’t anyone that she could tell. It was moments like this that she missed her mother most. It was not the sort of thing that you could say to Aunty Madge; you certainly would not want Uncle Joe to know, and it was difficult to get to talk to Pa alone. She could try confiding in her cousin Peg, who had always been
the friendliest of the family, though she’d done that once before and it had not altogether turned out as she had hoped. They’d been upstairs together wrapping Christmas presents in December-time, and Effie had mentioned the ‘real nice policeman’ she had met.

  But Peg was not especially impressed. ‘A policeman! You can’t mean you’re sweet on him? My dear life, Effie, have you got no sense at all! You know what Fayther thinks about the police – never had time for them since that lock-out at the mine.’

  Effie nodded; she had heard that story many times from Uncle Joe himself. The miners had been threatening to strike, after a dispute about the cost of candles for their hats, and in the end the owners locked them out. Then, after having no work or wages for a month, a party of them came clamouring at the gates demanding to be let in and listened to: so the owners called the constables, who baton-charged the men – including her uncle, who’d been tumbled to the ground. Of course it had all been settled in the end – in fact the miners had won a sort of compromise – but Joe had been wary of policemen ever since. ‘Knocked down by some young bugger in a uniform, simply for trying to get what should have been me own in any case,’ as he never tired of telling everyone.

  Effie shrugged. ‘I know. But that was years ago. Alex didn’t take any part in that. Besides, if someone came and burgled Uncle Joe he’d be the first to want the police to help.’

  Peg looked scornful. ‘If someone stole from Fayther he wouldn’t call the police. He’d go and find the culprit for himself, and knock the living daylights out of him.’

  Effie had to own that this was likely to be true, but she did not give up the argument. ‘But supposing that he couldn’t find out who the culprit was? That’s where the police come in. They’ve got all kinds of modern ways of finding criminals. Alex spends hours looking out for clues – I’ve seen him do it outside on the street – and he can make a plaster cast of footprints and all sorts. He’s very good at it, apparently. He says his sergeant is impressed with him, and he’s hoping to be made up to the second grade.’

  ‘Well, so he may be, but what use is that to you? It wouldn’t work out, Effie. Surely you can see? No doubt he really likes you, but it won’t be serious. It will be years and years before he even thinks of settling down. Take him all his time to work his way up through the ranks.’

  ‘It isn’t like that,’ Effie muttered in dismay. She hid her misery by folding a piece of tissue paper round the knitted socks she’d made for Uncle Joe. (By saving a penny from her wages every week she’d managed to buy wool enough for gloves or socks all round. She wasn’t as good with knitting as she was with stitchery, but it was easier to manage when you worked by candlelight and by doing an inch or two each night she’d done them easily.) ‘I’m sure that he’ll go far. His family have a lot of influence. The father was some sort of hero in the cavalry. And you should hear him talk about his home – gardens and stables and cook and everything.’ She tied her parcel with a piece of coloured string and picked up the gloves for Pa. She had embroidered a pocket-handkerchief with ‘A’ to give to Alex, but she hadn’t brought that here.

  Peg put down the pot-holder that she had made for her Ma, and whirled round with a frown. ‘Well, Effie Pengelly, you’re more fool than I thought. Never thought this constable of yours might be halfway to gentry! Not a bit of good you mooning over him. Don’t you go letting him lead you into anything!’ She must have seen the hurt on Effie’s face, because all of a sudden she leaned forward with a smile. ‘You’d be better off finding some young fellow from the mine – like that nice Peter Kellow who used to live next door, when you lived down the Narrows with your Ma and Pa.’

  Effie turned away. ‘Don’t be so bally daft!’

  ‘I mean it. I see his elder brother now and then, and I know that Pete’s been mad about you since the pair of you were small. I never see him without he asks for you and I’ve even met him sometimes moping in the lane – though he’s got no other reason to come up this way. How don’t you talk to ’im? He’s on men’s wages now and he’d have you like a shot, give you a home and family as soon as he’d saved up. Proper man’s job too. Not like this poli—’ She broke off as her father came clattering up the stairs and stuck his head around the bedroom door.

  He was scowling at them, as he often did. ‘What’s all this whispering? And what are you two doing, hiding yourselves away upstairs like this? We don’t have secrets from other people in the house.’

  Peg looked at Effie. ‘I was saying to Effie about . . .’ But Effie cut her off.

  ‘Only wrapping Christmas presents, Uncle Joe.’ She waved the little parcel at him as she spoke. ‘I’ve just done one for you. Don’t look at the others or you will spoil the surprise.’

  Her uncle glanced at the unwrapped pile remaining on the bed, then gave a grumpy ‘Harrumph!’ and went away again.

  Peg turned to Effie. ‘Good for you! That was a close-run thing! I only hope he’s satisfied, otherwise he’ll wait until you’ve gone and chivvy me till he gets it out of me.’ It was obvious that, if he did, she would soon spill the beans and there and then Effie made a private vow that she would not confide in cousin Peg again.

  Perhaps she could find a moment to be alone with Pa, if he was there next week – though it seemed a long, long time to wait. And what would she tell him? That she had been kissed, and by a member of the police? The same one that had come out to the house to question him? What would he say to that? Tell her the same as cousin Peg had done, most like – to smile at Peter Kellow and have done with it.

  She tried to think of Peter as a potential beau, but she could not manage it. Poor Peter with his ginger hair and gently baffled look. He was a pleasant-enough fellow, hard-working and sober and honest as the day, and she’d known him all her life (he was the one who’d stolen that kiss when they were young) but there was nothing in him that would stir the heart. He wasn’t bad-looking, though his teeth stuck out a bit, but his stocky frame could not compare to Alex’s tall, athletic grace. Of course, she knew what cousin Peg would say – romantic love was very fine in books but it did not pay the rent. And that was true, of course.

  Among the bal-maidens at Penvarris mine, Peter would be regarded as ‘a catch’. He’d make someone a splendid husband, Effie had no doubt – it was just that she did not want it to be her. Tied down in a tiny cottage with a herd of little ones, washing and scrubbing all the hours God sent, fretting about stretching the purse to pay for food and worrying all the time in case the mine-alarm went off and there had been some sort of accident. Surely there must be something else in life?

  But what? Generations of her family had done exactly that, and she could hardly suppose that she was different. She sighed. As she’d said to Alex, they came from different worlds and that was all there was to that.

  She punched her bolster-pillow as though it were at fault, and pulled the bed-clothes firmly up around her nose – but it was no good. She was far too restless to settle down to sleep. She got up in the darkness and pulled back the blind. The moon was up and bathing everything in an unearthly light.

  It reminded her of something that she’d read once in a book. ‘A cold moon was floating in a milky sky, and the trees had turned to silhouettes against the silver night.’ Some lovely picture that painted, didn’t it? She’d thought so the first time that she’d seen it written down – in one of those unwanted stories of Miss Caroline’s, that Lettie had lent to her.

  Lettie! Why had she not thought of it before? Lettie would listen – she knew about these things, and she would be certain to have some good advice. Effie shivered and pulled her thin nightdress round her knees: the room was rather draughty and the night was chill, but she went back to bed with a much lighter heart. On Tuesday she would linger at the Westons’ shop again and have a talk to Lettie, if she could.

  Ten minutes later she was fast asleep.

  Walter Pengelly was also lying sleepless in his bed. He had spent the evening a disappointed man. All that walk to go
to Madge’s house for a meal – only to find that Effie wasn’t there. That was the second time since Christmas, and he’d worked doublers specially to be there tonight.

  The thought must have affected him more than he supposed because he was unwise enough to mention it to Joe, when they were sitting together on the settle after tea. Madge and the older girls had gone upstairs, putting little ones safely into bed, and for a brief ten minutes the two men had the kitchen to themselves.

  Joe was on about the meetings at the mine about setting up a Union. ‘There’s a group of us meeting at the Worker’s Institute tonight. That fellow from London is going to talk about the benefits of setting up a branch.’ As he spoke he was filling his evil-smelling pipe with his peculiar brand of Virginia tobacco – what he called his ‘little weakness’ – and tamping it down firmly with his thumb. He cocked an eye at Walter. ‘You want to come and all?’

  Walter shook his head. ‘I don’t hold with all these unions and their “workers’ rights”. Likely to stir up trouble as far as I can see. Look what ’appened last time. Damned near starved us out.’

  ‘But we won a concession from them in the end.’ Joe could be downright cussed when he tried: earlier he had been grumbling about the London man, himself. ‘And the Union’s only about trying to get a decent wage.’

  Walter stood his ground. He could be as stubborn as anybody else. ‘We tributers have always had a contract with the mine – so much per ton for what we bring to ground. These blighters are urging that we get a settled rate – so much an hour – where’s the skill in that? What do these London Johnnies know about it anyway? Bad enough they’ve got us paying for that dratted stamp, when we already pay our Friendly dues.’ Joe was looking ready to argue half the night, so he added peaceably, ‘Different for you fellows up to ground, working in the sorting sheds, p’rhaps, but I got better things to do than sit in draughty meetings at this time of night. No, I’m going home early, seeing Effie isn’t here.’