Off the Rails

by Beryl Kingston

  She was tempted. He watched her as she dithered, fingering the lace on her sleeve. Oh come on! he willed her. Just say yes. That’s all you’ve got to do. I’ll do all the rest.

  ‘Well,’ she said at last. ‘Happen there’ll be no harm in it.’

  He started work as soon she left. By the end of the afternoon the shop was transformed. There were shelves in both windows to hold the rolls of cloth and long swathes of the boldest designs and the prettiest colours were draped over the chairs he’d purloined from the kitchen, brocades and broadcloth in one window and cotton prints in the other. Better than that, he’d gathered a crowd as he worked and when they smiled and nodded at him through the glass, he’d held up the cloth for their inspection. So much for people never look in t’windows, he thought, as his happy audience gazed and talked. If they walk into the shop too, I’ll have made my point.

  His first customers came in half an hour later, three very well dressed ladies in splendid bonnets, a mother and her daughters who’d come to see the new cottons. They bought three dress lengths, which he wrapped with a ribbon and a flourish, and departed well pleased with him and themselves.

  ‘Well, I never,’ Lizzie said when they’d gone. ‘Who’d ha’ thought it?’

  ‘This is just the start,’ he told her happily. ‘You wait and see.’

  Two days later he bought two curtain poles, gave the chairs back to Mrs Norridge and changed the window ready for the Saturday trade. He was charged with energy and full of ideas. If he went about things the right way he could get himself a new suit of clothes. Then he could have some visiting cards printed, which would put that snooty butler in his place, and go visiting his rich uncle. He meant to cultivate that worthy gentleman, now that he knew how rich he was, and he thought he could see the right way to do it. All he needed was the right moment.

  It didn’t come for nearly a month but it was worth waiting for. Mrs Bell walked into the shop after work on his fourth Saturday and actually sought him out. She had an official-looking paper in her hand and was smiling at him. Well, there’s a wonder!

  ‘If you will – um – just step into t’back parlour,’ she said, ‘I have your – um – articles for you to sign.’

  He’d forgotten the apprenticeship. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said and smiled back.

  The paper was spread out on the parlour table and held in position with a floral paperweight. He did as he was told and read it thoroughly. Articles for an apprenticeship with Nicholson and Bell Quality Drapers to the trade of draper to last seven years from the date of signature. I shall be of age afore this is served, he thought as he signed, but it was good to know that he’d passed muster. He watched as Mrs Bell added her signature. Now, he thought, for the next thing.

  ‘One of your customers has given me an idea, Mrs Bell,’ he said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. She was still smiling. ‘What – um – customer was that?’

  ‘Mr Ramsbottom,’ he told her. ‘He was thinking of buying a length for a new jacket and he said what he really needed was to see how ’twould make up.’ It wasn’t strictly true. What had really happened was that Mr Ramsbottom had discussed the cloth and it was George who had wondered aloud if it might be helpful to Mr Ramsbottom if he could see it made up. But there was no need for her to know all that. It was much too complicated.

  ‘We’re not tailors,’ she said and now her face was stern again.

  ‘No indeed, ma’am,’ he agreed. ‘We’re not. But it gave me an idea. How would it be if I were to buy a length of one of our most popular lines and have it made up – at my own expense naturally – and then we could put it in t’window as part of the display, so to speak. I would need it on Sundays to wear to church and when I go to visit my uncle.’ And he looked a question at her and waited.

  She was so flabbergasted she didn’t know what to say. She certainly wasn’t going to let him have his own way. That would do him no good at all. ‘Well, as to that,’ she said. ‘’Twill need a deal of – um – consideration. ’Tis not a thing to be rushed.’

  ‘No, ma’am,’ he said, trying not to show her what a rush he was in. ‘Course not. But happen you’ll think on it?’

  ‘How would you – um – pay for it?’ she asked. ‘Our cloth don’t come cheap.’

  He had the answer to that at once. ‘It could be took out my wages,’ he said.

  The boldness of it took her breath away. Really, there was no end to this boy. He had an answer for everything. ‘It would take months.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, I know,’ he said. ‘But then if we get any sales as a result, what I can’t promise – we can’t know, can we? – but if we do there’ll be profit from that, what we could split half and half, on account of ’tis my idea an’ I’ll be taking the risk of it.’

  That was such a preposterous suggestion she didn’t know how to answer it at all. ‘I will give it – um – thought,’ she said, eventually, and went upstairs to the safety of her nice quiet living room before he could say anything else.

  ‘That boy has the cheek of the devil!’ she said to her brother and sister as they sat at supper that night.

  ‘What’s he done now?’ Richard asked, grinning at her.

  She told him, her voice querulous with disbelief, and was annoyed when he laughed. ‘It’s nowt to laugh at,’ she told him. ‘He wants to use our cloth and put a jacket in t’window for everybody to see, as if he hasn’t put enough things there already. Mr Bell must be turning in his grave. He signed the articles quick as a flash and now this. In the very next breath. I thought I were hiring a workhorse – someone strong and dependable and willing and – um – obedient and so forth – but he’s more like a stallion, allus goin his own way.’

  ‘Give him his head,’ Richard said. ‘That’s my advice. If it works, we’ll get more trade, which ain’t a bad thing, if it don’t, he’ll learn the hard way and serve him right.’

  ‘But ’tis our cloth Richard.’

  ‘Aye, so ’tis,’ Richard said. ‘Let him earn it and wear it. He might have the cheek of the devil, I’ll grant you that, but he’s handsome enough in all conscience. ’Twill look well on him. And what looks well will sell. He’s got the right of it there.’

  So George got his cloth, which was a bold sky blue in a lightweight wool and found a tailor to make it up at a fair price – bein’ as ’tis a good advertisement for you, sir. He put it in the window as soon as it was ready to wear, carefully arranged on one of the tailor’s borrowed dummies and, sure enough, it attracted interest and trade just as he’d known it would. And the next Sunday, having borrowed a new white cravat from the stock and prevailed on Mrs Norridge to wash his best shirt for him when she had a copper full of hot water, and iron it ready for the occasion, he took his coat from the window and wore it to church.

  It was much admired, especially by the maidservants in the back pews, and there was much smiling and bobbing of heads and eye-signalling in his direction. And then just as he was beginning to wonder whether his illustrious uncle was actually going to come to church that morning, there he was, striding down the aisle with that quiet wife of his holding his arm and a new grey silk hat on his head.

  ‘Getting on, I see, young George,’ he said as he reached his nephew’s pew. ‘That’s the style.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ George agreed. ‘I do my best, sir.’

  ‘Good lad,’ his uncle said and made a heavy joke. ‘Now all you need’s the breeches, eh?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ George said again, but he was thinking and the hat and the boots and a calling card. Oh, he’d a fair way to go yet.

  It took him till the beginning of July and it needed all his skills as a salesman and considerable manipulation of Mrs Bell’s profit figures before he’d amassed enough money to be kitted out as he wished. And then he had to wait a week for the next early closing day before he could wear it. But the result was so satisfactory he was preening all the way to Monkgate. And what a happy moment it was when he handed his card to that snooty butler an
d told him that Mr Bottrill was expecting him. Now sneer if you dare, he thought.

  This time he was admitted straightaway and led in due and proper style to the drawing room on the first floor, where his uncle was waiting for him.

  ‘We’ll have our coffee now, Joshua,’ he said, and when the butler had bowed and left them. ‘Still doing well, I see, young George.’

  ‘We’ve trebled our trade in the last two months,’ George told him happily.

  ‘Aye. I don’t doubt it,’ his uncle approved. ‘I’ve been watching. And all your doing if I’m any judge.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ George said, trying to look modest and making a poor fist of it.

  ‘You’re a good lad,’ his uncle said. ‘A worker. Which is more than can be said for the others. Been here with their begging bowls only last week, so they have. Not that it’ll do ’em any good. I’ve got their measure, don’t you worry.’

  George had no desire to hear about the others but there was no stopping Uncle Matthew once he’d started and his complaints against his avaricious family went on and on until the coffee was borne steaming into the room and he had to pause from his diatribe to drink it. George watched his disagreeable face as he scowled and sneered, and those bony hands clutching the cup and that long nose dipping towards the coffee, and decided that he would endure being bored and try to look as though he were interested. If this was the price he had to pay for being the favoured nephew then he would pay it. He’d be rewarded in the long run.

  He stayed with his uncle for nearly an hour and parted with him in apparent good humour, even though he was inwardly twitching to get away. But it was a job well done, he thought, as he walked back to Goodramgate and he was eased and pleased when he began to gather admiring glances again.

  ‘Well, bless my soul,’ a familiar voice said as he emerged from the crowded arch of Monkgate, holding onto his hat. ‘If it’s not George Hudson. You do look well. Quite the swell.’

  ‘Mrs Hardcastle, ma’am,’ he said, giving her a courteous bow. ‘I trust I see you well.’ It was always sensible to keep in with the local gossip.

  ‘Visiting my cousin,’ she said.

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘Do ’ee work hereabouts?’

  ‘At the drapers,’ he told her. ‘Nicholson and Bell’s.’

  ‘And doing well, I see.’

  He laughed at that. ‘Aye, ma’am, but give me a year or two and I shall do even better.’

  She gave him her shrewd look. ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘Happen so.’ They were heading in opposite directions or she would have walked with him and discovered more.

  ‘Pray give my regards to my family,’ he said as he turned to stride away from her. And that was such a happy moment he was grinning all the way back to the shop.

  Mrs Hardcastle went straight to Home Farm as soon as the carter had set her down by her own gate. This was too good a piece of gossip not to be spread and besides she wanted to see how Philadelphia was because the poor girl had been quite ill these past few weeks.

  She was sitting in her chair by the kitchen fire darning stockings and looking extremely pale and tired but she greeted her visitor in her usual gentle way and when Mrs Hardcastle asked her how she was she smiled and said she was ‘fair to middling’ even though it was plain to the midwife’s experienced eye that she was no such thing. But she was visibly cheered when she heard how well her brother was doing.

  ‘Fallen on his feet, sithee,’ Mrs Hardcastle told her. ‘Allus knew he would. Great strong boy like that.’

  Philadelphia covered her mouth with a kerchief and coughed into it for a worryingly long time. But her mind was still on her brother and when she’d recovered her breath she questioned her visitor again. ‘He looks well, would ’ee say, Mrs Hardcastle?’

  ‘Blooming,’ Mrs Hardcastle said, but she was thinking, which is more than can be said for you, poor girl. ‘Great strong boy!’

  4

  LITTLE MILLY SMITH was a very good baby and by the time she was four months old she was delectably plump and pretty. Jane had almost forgotten that her eyes had been dark blue when she was born. Now they were pansy brown and her original mop of straight dark hair had been replaced by a head of thick fair curls.

  ‘Th’art the dearest little thing what ever was,’ Jane told her and the baby smiled as if she quite agreed. But the smile brought sad thoughts. She was still a fatherless child, however dear she was, and she still hadn’t seen her grandmother. Don’t ’ee fret, Jane thought, kissing her dear little curled fingers. I’ll be mother and father to ’ee both so I will. Tha’lt want for nowt, I swear to ’ee. And that vile George Hudson can rot in hell, what I hopes and prays he will. But what she really wanted was to see her mother.

  She’d written a letter to her on the day the child was born, naturally, but it was weeks before the carter arrived and could be asked to deliver it. And now a fourth letter was being written and there were times when despite all the good things that were happening to her, Jane wept private tears of anguished homesickness. If only Milly wasn’t such a very little baby and if only it wasn’t such a very long way to Scrayingham Church.

  September came in that year with gales and driving rain and October was no better, for now they had to endure mists and fogs. Scrayingham Church seemed even further away than ever, even though Milly was now sitting up on her mother’s knee before the fire, looking about her and as warm and sturdy a child as you could hope to see. The others weren’t faring so well in the colder weather; Audrey’s hands were so chapped and raw she said she was ashamed to put them near our precious and Aunt Tot had a rheumy cold that wouldn’t go away.

  ‘That dratted wind goes straight to your chest,’ she said. ‘You must take care our babba’s wrapped up good an’ warm if you means to take her to church come Sunday. I’ll look out a little blanket for her. We don’t want her to take cold. That’ud never do.’

  Jane was thinking fast. Was this the chance she’d been hoping for? With a blanket, the long walk might be possible. ‘Well now, Aunt,’ she said carefully, ‘as to that, I been a-thinking.’

  ‘Oh aye,’ her aunt said. ‘And what great thoughts have come to ’ee?’

  ‘What I been thinking,’ Jane confessed, ‘is I would like to go to church at Scrayingham one Sunday, if ’ee were so minded, to see my ma. I do so want to see my ma. ’Twould be a fair old trudge but I don’t mind a long walk and if Milly’s wrapped in a blanket I can keep her out of t’cold. ’Tis five months now since I saw Ma and that’s a mortal long time.’

  The longing on her face was so extreme that Aunt Tot was torn with pity for her. ‘You’ll have to face bad looks if you’re a-going there,’ she warned. ‘Scrayingham’s a different parish to ours. You’re known there.’

  ‘Aye,’ Jane said sadly. ‘I know. But I do so want to see my ma.’

  ‘I tell ’ee what I’ll do,’ Aunt Tot said. ‘I’ll see if old Jem’ll take you. He might well. He’s a good man and one church is as good as another, when all’s said and done. You’ll be warmer in t’cart than on foot, and that way you can be took straight to t’church gate and brought straight back again after t’service so there’ll be less time for t’gossips to put their knives in.’

  So two Sundays later, at long last, Jane was driven to Scrayingham Church with the baby in her arms, wrapped up snug in her shawl and her blanket. It was a lovely moment. When Jem clicked to the horse and set off, she was tremulous with excitement but after a while her heart began to crumple into misgiving. What if her old neighbours sneered at her and called her names? Aunt Tot had thought it likely. Well, if they did, she thought, trying to be valiant, she would have to face it. She did so want to see her ma and if this was the only way it could be done, then so be it.

  Luckily, she arrived a matter of minutes before the service was due to begin and only just had time to sneak into the church and scuttle into the pew beside her mother before the rector made his entrance. And oh it was so good to be with her again and to pull back the shaw
l and show her Milly’s dear little smiling face and watch as she kissed her dear little warm fingers.

  ‘She’s a pretty child,’ Mary Jerdon said under cover of the first hymn. ‘She looks as if she feeds well.’

  ‘All day long,’ Janey told her proudly. ‘Don’t ’ee, my darling.’

  ‘Lovely fat cheeks,’ her mother approved, gazing at her granddaughter. ‘Oh, it is good to see you, Janey.’

  Neither of them paid very much attention to the service and when the rector cleared his throat to begin the sermon, they simply let him get on with it and gave themselves up to baby worship and the joy of being together. It was the happiest, easiest time. When the service was over they slipped out together as quietly and unobtrusively as they could and found a hidden corner behind the cart where they could talk more freely until Jem arrived. At last Jane could tell her mother how much she missed her.

  ‘They treat you well, though,’ Mary Jerdon prompted.

  ‘Aye, well enough,’ Jane told her. ‘But they’re not you. Oh, Ma, I’ve been wanting and wanting to see you.’ She was in tears by then. She simply couldn’t help it.

  Her mother held her and kissed her and told her that they were back together now and there could always be another time; Scrayingham Church wasn’t all that far and happen she could get home for Christmas, there was always Christmas. And Jane promised to come to Scrayingham again as soon as she could and to see what could be done about Christmas. But they parted in tears despite all their commiserations because Jem was walking towards them and the rest of the congregation had begun to leave the church. The sight of them all, so gathered together, walking down the path towards her, put poor Jane into a panic and she scrambled into the cart before they could see her and nodded to Jem to start the horse. But once they were round the first bend and travelling steadily, she calmed down, comforting herself that she’d been quiet and behaved very sensibly, not gone up to take communion, nor spoken to anyone other than her parents, and only whispered to her ma at that, and they’d left the church very quickly, slipping away like shadows, so happen no one would have noticed her.