‘It’s market day,’ Jimmy observed. ‘We’ll go there and ask around.’
Eveleen smiled at him. ‘That’s a very good idea.’
Mary raised her head and looked across at Jimmy. ‘There, you see, Eveleen. I knew Jimmy would look after me. He’ll look after us both, won’t you, love?’
Eveleen did not know whether to laugh or cry.
It was raining the following morning; a fine, steady drizzle that looked innocent enough but by the time they arrived in Grantham had soaked them. But the two youngsters, so intent on finding work, were oblivious to the cold seeping through to their skins as they wove their way among the farmers milling round the livestock pens in the market.
‘There’s Ted,’ Jimmy said suddenly and darted off.
‘Jimmy, don’t—’ Eveleen began but Jimmy had gone. Sighing she followed him.
‘Hello, Evie,’ Ted greeted her with a smile, but concern showed in his eyes.
Eveleen greeted him but then said, ‘Come on, Jimmy, we must speak to as many farmers as we can.’
‘He’s just been telling me why you’re here,’ Ted said. ‘Try old man Johnson. He’s always looking for someone.’
Jimmy pulled a face. ‘Aye, an’ we all know why, don’t we? He treats his workers that badly, no one’ll stay with him long.’
Ted grinned. ‘He treats his animals well though. To him, his animals are more important than people.’
‘We’ll leave him ’til last,’ Eveleen said. ‘We’ll see how desperate we get.’
By mid-afternoon, they were indeed desperate enough to seek out Mr Johnson.
‘We’ve no one else left to ask,’ Eveleen said. ‘Everyone I’ve spoken to won’t take the three of us together. They’ll take you or me or even both of us. But not Mam.’
Jimmy scuffed his foot on the ground and muttered, ‘Same here. I could have had three jobs easy. And there was lodgings. Just for me, of course.’ He looked up at Eveleen. ‘Why don’t I take one of ’em? It’d be better than nothing, wouldn’t it?’
‘We agreed, Jimmy. All or nothing. We stick together.’
‘You agreed, you mean. I don’t remember having much say in the matter.’
‘Well, if that’s how you feel—’
‘Don’t start, Evie. It’s just that it seems daft to be turning down jobs. Why don’t I take one and you and Mam get a little cottage somewhere.’ His face brightened suddenly. ‘Or I could go to sea, just like I’ve always wanted. I’d send you money each week.’
Eveleen glanced at him sceptically. ‘Aye, an’ pigs might fly.’ She grasped his arm. ‘Come on, let’s go and find old man Johnson.’
The old farmer was climbing into his pony and trap as they approached.
‘Mr Johnson,’ Eveleen called. ‘Could you spare us a minute, please?’
‘Eh? What?’ The man, bent with age and hard work, frowned at them from beneath bushy white eyebrows. ‘What d’you want?’
Eveleen licked her lips nervously, while Jimmy stood beside her, silent and morose, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.
‘We wondered if you needed help on your farm.’
‘I allus need help,’ the old man snapped. ‘But the beggars allus want paying. They want their keep and paying an’ all.’ He glowered down at Eveleen as if she were personally responsible. ‘You young folks don’t know the meaning of hard work. Why, when I were a lad, I had to be up at four every morning . . .’
She stood patiently, listening to the old man’s grumbling while Jimmy fidgeted beside her and kicked small stones, sending them rattling along the road.
‘All we need is somewhere to live, Mr Johnson. My brother and I could work for you on the farm and my mother can even take a turn in the dairy.’
‘Ain’t no dairy,’ Mr Johnson muttered. ‘I keep pigs. And me harvest’s all in. Don’t need no extra help. Not now.’
‘My mother’s a good cook,’ Eveleen tried again.
‘So’s me wife. Don’t need no cook. And I ain’t got no cottage, neither.’ He picked up the reins and flicked them. The pony began to move, but Eveleen grasped the side of the trap.
‘Please, mister. You knew our dad, didn’t you? You know our family. We’re good workers. Reliable and—’
She was still hanging on to the trap and moving along with it.
‘I heard you’d been turned out of your jobs and your house. If the Dunsmores don’t want you, then neither do I. Good day, young woman.’
He raised his whip and brought it down across her hands. More shocked by his unexpected action than by the pain, Eveleen let go at once. As the trap moved away she was left staring after him, rubbing her stinging hands.
Jimmy swore loudly and shook his fist after the old man. ‘Keep your job, you miserable old bugger.’
‘Come on, Jimmy,’ Eveleen said forlornly, noticing for the first time how cold and wet and hungry she was. ‘We’d better go home.’ Then she added sadly, ‘While we’ve still got one to go to.’
‘I’m sorry, Mam. We couldn’t find anyone to take the three of us.’
‘I didn’t think you would.’ Mary was sitting exactly as they had left her early that morning. There was no supper set ready and the fire, though not quite out, was very low. Eveleen wondered if Mary had moved from her chair at all during the day.
‘I could have got a job,’ Jimmy put in and glowered at his sister. ‘But Evie says we must stick together.’
Mary leant back and closed her eyes. Wearily she said, ‘You’d do better to find yourselves a job and put me in the workhouse.’
‘We’re doing no such thing,’ Eveleen snapped. ‘And I don’t want to hear another word about the workhouse.’ She looked down at her mother, trying to rouse her from her apathy. ‘Have you any suggestions, Mam? I mean, sensible ones.’
Slowly Mary raised her gaze to her daughter. ‘We’ll have to go home.’
Eveleen caught her breath. Had her mother’s mind really turned? ‘This is our home, Mam, and – and we’ve got to leave it.’
Mary shook her head. ‘No. Back home to Flawford. To my family.’
Mystified, Jimmy gave a wordless shrug. Out of sight of his mother, he tapped the side of his head indicating that he, too, thought she was losing her reason.
Anxious not to upset her further, Eveleen bent closer to Mary. ‘Mam,’ she began carefully, ‘is that where you came from? Flawford?’
Mary nodded.
‘And – and have you still got family living there, then?’
‘Dunno.’
‘But you think you might have?’
‘Shouldn’t think my parents are still alive, but Harry might be.’
‘Who’s Harry?’ Eveleen asked gently.
‘My brother. My brother, Harry. Maybe he’s still there. And his wife, Rose.’
Eveleen and Jimmy exchanged a glance. An uncle and an aunt, maybe even cousins, they were both thinking. All this time they had had these relatives, close relatives, and they had never known a thing about them. They had not even known they existed.
‘Right then,’ Eveleen said firmly, standing up. ‘That’s where we’ll go, Mam. Back to your folks.’
But Mary was shaking her head yet again. ‘They’ll not want us. They turned me out once, disowned me. What makes you think they’d help us now?’
‘They’re family, Mam. Your family – and ours. Surely they will help us? Surely your own brother won’t turn his back on you?’
‘Huh!’ Mary at last let out a sound that had some spirit in it. ‘He was the worst of the lot of them. Very religious, is our Harry. Hell and damnation, that’s where he said I was headed. Aye . . .’ Once more she began to sink back into self-pity. ‘And if it hadn’t been for your dad, that’s where I would have ended up.’
‘That was years ago. Surely, he won’t still feel – well – that way towards you. Not now.’
‘Oho, you don’t know Harry. He’s the “if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off” type. So,’ she added simply, ‘that’
s what he did. He cut me off.’
Eveleen took her mother’s hand. Softly, she asked, ‘Was it so very dreadful? What you did?’
Slowly Mary raised her head and looked straight into Eveleen’s eyes. ‘Oh yes. It was very dreadful. At least, in his eyes. And in the eyes of the whole community. Everyone shunned me. Everyone.’
Tears spilled down Mary’s face and Eveleen patted her hand. ‘Don’t, Mam. Please don’t cry.’ Once more she silently gave heartfelt thanks that she had resisted Stephen’s pleading and his sweet words. She understood her mother so much better now.
With renewed resolve, Eveleen put her arm about her mother’s shoulders and glanced towards Jimmy. ‘We’re going to take you home, Mam. Back to your family. Surely, after all this time, they will have forgiven you.’
‘I doubt it,’ Mary murmured.
Well,’ Eveleen said, ‘whether they want us or not, they’re going to get us. Watch out, Flawford, here we come.’
Fourteen
‘Have we got everything, Mam?’ Eveleen asked, taking a last look around all the rooms. ‘Are you sure you’ve got everything you want? We don’t seem to be keeping very much. Our trunks and boxes have only taken up half the length of the dray.’
Her mother stood in front of the cold range. It was the first time that Eveleen could remember not seeing a fire burning in the grate. The whole house seemed chilly because of it. Mary glanced about her. ‘I’ve got everything I can take,’ she said pointedly. ‘It’s no good taking a lot of furniture. There’ll be nowhere to put it.’ Then her face crumpled. ‘Oh Evie, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave here. It’s the only place I’ve ever been really happy.’
‘Weren’t you happy as a child? Before – before your trouble?’
Mary pressed her lips together to stop herself weeping and shook her head. ‘My father was a hard man. He ruled us all with a rod of iron, and the men that worked for him, an’ all.’
‘Worked for him? Your father employed people?’
Mary nodded and said airily, ‘Oh yes.’
‘What doing? I mean, was he a farmer?’
‘No. He was a stockinger.’
‘A what?’
‘A hosier. He ran a workshop making socks and stockings and other knitted garments.’
Eveleen stared at her mother.
‘I ’spect it’s all still there,’ Mary mused, more to herself now than to her daughter. ‘I ’spect Harry’s got it all now.’ She stood for a moment as if the memories of her childhood were crowding in on her. Then she shook her head again. ‘I don’t want to go back, Evie. I really don’t. I love the countryside. I love Lincolnshire. Even though I wasn’t born here, it’s my home and I don’t want to leave it. Oh, Evie,’ Mary held up her arms and wailed, ‘I don’t want to go.’
‘Mam.’ Eveleen enfolded the older woman in her embrace. ‘We have to go. You know we can’t stay here. They won’t let us. And we have to go somewhere.’
‘But they won’t want us either. They’ll turn us away and where will we go then? The workhouse?’
‘I told you, Mam,’ Eveleen tried to make her voice playfully stern. ‘You’re not to mention that again. I promise you, you’ll never have to go into the workhouse. Don’t even think it.’ She hugged Mary harder, noticing with a pang of regret how thin her mother had become even in the short space of time since Walter’s death. ‘And one day I’ll bring you back to Lincolnshire. I swear to you that I’ll bring you back home.’
It was a solemn vow, but the young girl, only seventeen, could not possibly know just how difficult that promise would be to keep.
Together they took a last look around the house. They were having to leave so many of their possessions.
Mary smiled pensively as she ran her fingers along the back of Walter’s wooden chair and, seeing her, Eveleen had to swallow the lump that rose in her throat. In the parlour, Mary nodded towards the cabinet where her best china tea service was still displayed on the shelves. ‘That was our only wedding present, you know.’
‘Who from?’
‘Your dad said it was from Mrs Rachel Dunsmore, but I reckon he bought it himself, just to make me think that someone, other than him, thought enough about me to buy us a gift.’
‘We ought to take it with us,’ Eveleen said, but Mary shook her head firmly. ‘No, we’ve got everything we need. Someone else can have it.’
As Eveleen led her mother towards the door she noticed that Mary took one last lingering look at the sparkling willow-patterned cups, saucers and plates that she had so lovingly washed every week of her married life.
‘I just hope someone will take good care of it,’ Mary murmured.
Eveleen locked the door and slipped the key beneath the loose brick beside the doorstep. Taking her mother’s arm, she led her towards the farm dray. Jimmy was already sitting on the back, swinging his legs and chewing on a piece of straw. Ted was standing awkwardly beside him, kicking aimlessly at loose stones while Bill stood near the two huge black and white shire horses. He had been given time off to drive the family to their new home.
‘You’d best be back by the next evening, else it’ll be the worse for you,’ Eveleen had heard Josiah Jackson telling him.
‘I’ll do my best,’ Bill had replied in his deep, placid tones.
‘You’ll do better than that, else you’ll be following them next week.’
Bill had faced the farm bailiff and said steadily, ‘And who would manage the horses, Mr Jackson, if you sack me?’ At which the bailiff had thrust his gaunt features close to Bill’s face and muttered, ‘No one’s indispensable, Morton. Just you remember that.’
‘Oh I will, Mr Jackson. I certainly will.’ Bill kept his tone deferential but his expression implied, No, no one is indispensable, Josiah Jackson. Not even you.
Now the day had come to take the Hardcastle family to their new life. The kindly man feared for them. More than anything he pitied the young girl who seemed to have such a burden of responsibility resting on her young shoulders: a mother who was not quite stable, especially since the death of her husband, and a youth who had the makings of a real rascal. Here, in this community who knew, liked and respected the family, Jimmy might have been kept on the straight and narrow. Lord alone knew what would happen to a lad like him turned loose on city streets.
‘Now then, missis,’ Bill moved forward to help Mary on to the front of the dray. ‘Where is it we’re headed? Nottingham, is it?’
Mary did not answer. She was holding a handkerchief to her face and sobbing.
Eveleen glanced helplessly at Bill. Her mother was making as much fuss as if they were indeed heading for the workhouse. The girl forced herself to be patient with the unhappy woman. Mary had suffered a most grievous loss with her husband’s death and to be cruelly deprived of the only home where she had been truly happy was a devastating second blow.
Eveleen was suffering too, and not only for the same reasons as her mother. Added to her misery was Stephen’s callous rejection of her. She glanced back one last time at the farmhouse. In the pale light of early morning the dwelling looked lifeless and lost as if it, too, did not want to see the Hardcastle family leaving. Her gaze flickered around the yard, taking one last look.
The previous evening she had gone alone to the beck. ‘Goodbye, Dad,’ she had murmured to the place where she had found him. ‘For now. But I’ll bring her back to you one day. I promise.’
Then she had lifted her gaze. In the far distance to the left, she could just see the spire of Bernby church where her father now lay, high on the hill overlooking his beloved fields. His grave was beside those of his father, mother and his adored stepmother. Walter was at peace and she knew he would have been content with the resting place they had chosen for him, even though it would not have been his wish to leave his family so soon.
As her gaze came closer to home, to the trees of Bernby Covert, the lump of sorrow and disappointment in her throat had threatened to choke her. Her emotions were in
chaos. She loved and hated Stephen Dunsmore all in the same moment. She had turned away to walk slowly back to the farmyard. Already the place had a deserted air. There were no pigs snuffling and grunting in the sties. No hens scratching and complaining in the yard. Even the cows in the neighbouring field had been taken away. Bill had come to the farm early that morning, an embarrassed flush on his ruddy face. ‘I’m sorry, Eveleen, but Jackson’s ordered me to take all the livestock up to the big house.’
In the strange silence, Eveleen had leaned on the gate and looked towards the western sky to watch the red glow of the sinking sun silhouetting the ramparts of Belvoir Castle on the distant hills. It was a sight she had always loved, one that her beloved father had always relished and they had often stood together on this very spot and watched the glorious sunset of a late summer evening. No wonder, Eveleen thought, that her mother had found refuge in this place and could not bear to leave it.
As the sun sank below the skyline, Eveleen had leant her head on her arm and shed tears for her deep sense of loss and loneliness. When at last she raised her head again, a velvety dusk had fallen. Then she glanced back, just once, to the dark shape of trees and tall chimneys of Fairfield House.
‘I’ve shed my last tears over you, Stephen Dunsmore,’ she vowed, but as she turned to go into the house, to spend the last night under the roof that had been her only home, the misery was like a leaden weight inside her.
Now, in the cold light of morning, she took a final look round.
‘Evie.’ Ted came towards her, his face unusually solemn. ‘I just wanted to say – I mean, I know me dad and me mam have said it all – but . . .’ He was gauche and clumsy, but Eveleen knew he meant well. ‘Don’t forget us, will you? And if you need any help, well, just send word and we’ll come. Wherever you are, we’ll come.’
She was touched by his genuine concern and, impulsively, she put her hands on his shoulders and reached up to plant a kiss on his cheek. She was surprised at the colour that suffused the young man’s face. ‘Thanks, Ted. I don’t know what we’d have done without you all these last few days. And no, I won’t forget.’ Then she forced a smile and punched him playfully on the shoulder. ‘And don’t you forget us either, ’cos we’ll be back. One day, we’re coming back.’
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