The Blacksmith's Girl

by Rosemary Aitken

  ‘Oh!’ Constance had rummaged in a pile of clean, washed rags and laid one on the table. ‘I thought I’d vexed him earlier, with quoting scripture back. But if it’s only Verity, I needn’t fret. Let me have the child.’ She laid Faith on the table, stripped off the dirty cloth, sponged the little bottom and pinned on a clean new rag. ‘There now, that’s better, isn’t it? We’ll find some milk for you. You got it ready, Ma?’

  Martha nodded. ‘I’ll put a bit of tea and sugar in, to help her sup it up.’ She went out to the scullery and brought back the metal feeding cup. It had a clever sort of spout that let the infant drink. Toby had made it when their firstborn came and all the girls had used it in their turn. She filled it with the mixture and handed it to Constance, who gave Faith her feed. ‘You’re some good with babies, Constance,’ she said, gathering up the dirty cloths to boil. ‘Better than I am myself, I think.’

  Con turned pink with pleasure at the compliment but she answered with a laugh. ‘Better than Verity in any case. I’ve seen her feeding Faith. Forgets what she is doing, and half drowns the little mite. “Never make a proper mother” – that’s what Grandpa says – always got her mind on something else. Wonder if she likes it down that factory?’

  Martha said, ‘I ’spect so’, but her thoughts were somewhere else. For some reason it had popped into her mind to wonder what Ned Chegwidden was doing as they spoke.

  Ned Chegwidden was crawling through the mud. He and Davy Warren had been sent out to mend the wire. There was too much mist for snipers, but there was always random fire and the possibility of falling into craters in the murk, so they were wriggling their way back to the safety of the trench. To add to their misery it was raining solidly.

  Davy snagged himself on something and Ned heard him curse. It still shocked him sometimes, the language Davy used, but there were things round here that would make a saint blaspheme. The dratted mud, for one. Ned had been raised a country boy, of course, so he was better off than some – there were lads who had never so much as walked across ploughed land until they volunteered. But this wasn’t honest farm mud, or bog – like on the moors – this was horrid French mud and it got everywhere: down your neck and in your boots and even in your tea. And it stank to high heaven – though no wonder, perhaps, considering what got sucked down into it. There was half a corpse emerging from it just outside their trench – legs which still had boots on, sticking sideways in the air. Just legs, very rigid, but no body visible. Ned was not even certain if the owner was attached or had been blown to pieces on the way to Kingdom Come. The sight had made him almost sick at first, but now – like everybody else – he had got used to it.

  A shell went screeching overhead and he flung himself face down, trying to drive himself deeper in the mud. It hardly mattered, he thought bitterly. He could not be more muddy than he already was. The shell exploded somewhere far away, sending up a sullen red glow that pierced the gloom. A form rose, white and eerie in the mist from a crater nearby.

  Ned felt his blood run cold, but it was not a ghost. It was a mud-caked soldier, struggling with a limp. ‘Are you B compa—?’

  Suddenly the rat-tat of machine-gun fire rang out. The solider gave a cry and fell back in his hole. Then there was silence and the day was still again, except for the distant moaning of some poor fellows further up, whom the stretcher- bearers had not managed to collect. And this was what the Major called a ‘lull’ and ‘a quiet portion of the front’. Ned had overheard him making a report.

  Another shell went shrieking and Dave gave a shout. ‘The mist is thinning and they’ve got our range. They’re going to start bombarding – we’ll have to run for it. Bloody Huns!’ And he was on his feet, half-crouching, half-slithering and running for the trench. Ned waited for a moment, wondering if he should go and help the soldier in the hole – he shouted, but there was no answer from the man. The machine gun spoke again. Dave was right. Another minute and Ned would be sniper-fodder, too. He chose his moment, squatting, till the light had passed, then set off scampering, bent double at the waist.

  Twice he lost his footing, once tripped across a corpse, but finally he made the entrance to a trench. He was not sure it was his own, but he dived into it – just as a bullet pinged beside his hand. He sank down on a sandbag, wiping mud out of his eyes and rubbing his leg where he had gashed it nastily.

  ‘Cocoa, soldier?’ Someone handed him a mug – and mud or not, it seemed the best drink that he’d ever tasted in his life.

  It was the right trench, but the other end of it, and it was a long, stooping scuttle down to his own outfit, trying to keep his head down all the way. He reported to the Major, a young, bluff, hearty man, who was sitting in a widened portion of the trench with what they called a GI cover over it – meaning a piece of galvanized iron serving as a roof. It was big enough to take a table, like a proper room, and the Major had an oil lamp and an inkstand close at hand.

  He looked up from his writing. ‘Well done, Chegwidden. I hear you fixed the wire. Glad to see you safe. Private Warren said he’d lost you in the mist.’

  So Dave was safely back. Ned gave a weary smile.

  The Major looked at him more closely. ‘Very well, Chegwidden, permission to stand down. You are excused from sentry duty for today. Get yourself cleaned up and have a meal, then get yourself some rest. You look done in and we’ll be moving at first light.’

  ‘Yessir! Thank you, sir!’ Ned saluted and made his way along the trench. He saw Davy Warren, sitting on a fire step with a little group of other off-duty Tommies. Someone had a ukelele and they were singing bawdy songs. Dave waved to him to join them, but he shook his head.

  He’d have to get up and join the others later on and heat up a ghastly meal of lukewarm stew (you couldn’t warm things properly on the mess stove in your kit, and Maconochie was horrible in any case – tinned lumps of something disgusting that they claimed was beef and unrecognizable vegetables in a sort of gravy soup). There was no mess kitchen this far up the line. They’d brought the only water in old fuel cans, too, so things tasted of petrol – even tea, unless you put your rum ration into it.

  He grinned. What would they say at chapel if they knew that he had rum? Not that he ever drank it on its own – it was too strong for that. And he didn’t touch his cigarette ration at all – though he always took his share. You could swap it with people who were dying for a smoke. Sometimes they’d even give you chocolate – or a piece of a cake that somebody had sent.

  He was glad to retire to his allocated space – what they called a dugout: just a hollow in the wall, where you wrapped your coat around you and did your best to sleep. He took out the tin in which he kept his things, found a candle and a pencil stub and wrote his daily letter to his ma. (They only got posted now and then, of course, but he knew his family were reading them to Vee – and writing a bit daily made him feel in touch.)

  ‘Dear Ma and everyone,’ he wrote, ‘I hope this finds you well. I am doing well and in good health. Thank you for the parcel with the home-made vest and socks.’ He broke off as a rat went splashing through the mud and disappeared beneath the duckboards which were all the floor there was. He watched it out of sight, then sucked his pencil and began again. ‘Both very welcome as it is sometimes damp at night …’

  He grinned as he folded up the note and put it in his box. Probably the censor would cross that last bit out. It didn’t really matter. No one at Rosvene could imagine this mud hole anyway. Just as well, perhaps. Because, surely, this must be what Hell was like? Wouldn’t it surprise the chapel folks at home, he thought, if they discovered that Hell was made of mud, and wasn’t a fiery furnace after all?

  And then he didn’t think anything at all, because he was so weary that – despite the mud and the shells which were falling nearer now – he’d dropped his pencil and was fast asleep. Dave had to wake him later to come and warm his tin of stew.

  Three

  Vee washed her hands with carbolic in the big white cloakroom sink. She
took off the new overall and cap that they had issued her and hung them on the hook where they had written up her name. She was copying her sister Prudence, who had just done the same, so she didn’t show herself up, first day, and get teased like new girls did.

  ‘How did you get on then?’ Pru was asking, in a friendly offhand way.

  But Vee didn’t answer. She had caught sight of Sergeant Jeffries through the open door. He was standing at the gate, leaning on his heavy policeman’s bicycle. He was pretending to watch the other girls as they streamed through the gate, but Verity knew at once that he had come for her.

  Her heart sank to her neatly mended boots. Drat that Mrs Dawes, she muttered inwardly. ‘Drat’ was the strongest word she knew, but it was well deserved. All smiles and promises, that policeman’s wife – and now look what she’d done! There was the Sergeant – everyone would see, and the news would be all over the factory next day. Verity would be lucky if she kept her precious job!

  Not that it had been as much fun as she’d hoped, packing pats of butter into tins for hours with someone breathing down your neck if you so much as spoke a word – but there was the prospect of that pay packet in a little while. True it was only half the normal rate – she’d be on ‘trainee wages’ for a month at least – and most of that would have to go to Mother for her keep, but Vee had never had money of her own before. Of course they stopped a little for your uniform, until you’d paid for it, so that was another three or four pence gone, but suppose she had a penny or a ha’penny left each week – even allowing for the collection plate on Sunday and paying for things like mending her own boots – it could add up to sixpence in a month or two.

  She was already making plans about what she’d do with it. Spend it on a notebook and pencil, perhaps – or there was a paper magazine that was published just for girls, with letters and stories and all sorts inside. The teacher at her school had shown her, so it was respectable. Even Grandfather could hardly disapprove. Course, it came out monthly and she couldn’t run to that, but she might save up and buy the Christmas issue, perhaps? No end of reading there would be in that.

  And now here was Sergeant Jeffries, come to ruin it all! Mr Grey would never keep you on, if you were thought to be in any kind of trouble with the police. And news would reach him, sure as eggs were eggs. What was worse, she’d brought it on herself. What had possessed her to go rushing off to the police station like that, just because she’d seen that fellow signalling? Though, of course, she’d meant to speak to that nice young PC Dawes, who might have had some tact – not awful Sergeant Jeffries with his whiskers and his sneers.

  ‘Here, Verity, what on earth’s got into you? Packed your senses up in one of the butter tins, or what? Aren’t you coming home? Or are you going to stand there staring like a witnick half the night?’ Pru gave her a sharp nudge with her elbow as she spoke. ‘What is it that you’re looking at, in any case?’ She poked her head in front of Vee to look out of the door. ‘Oh, I see. That Sergeant. Wonder what he wants? Bringing bad news for some poor soul, I ’spect – probably an accident down Penvarris mine.’

  Verity brightened. ‘You think it might be that?’ She felt instantly ashamed of being pleased.

  ‘That’s what brought him last time,’ Pru said, with a shrug. ‘Though I never heard the siren this time, come to think, so there can’t be many dead. Still, if it’s your pa, I suppose it’s as bad to you as if there’s dozens killed. Now, are you going to put on this shawl and come home, or what?’ She was shaking it in front of her sister as she spoke, like a housemaid with a tablecloth.

  Vee allowed herself to be wrapped in the warm plaid. ‘Aren’t we going to wait for Patience?’

  Pru gave a little laugh. ‘I shouldn’t think she’d like it if we did. Wants to stop and talk to someone, I expect.’

  She said it in such a peculiar tone of voice that Vee whirled round at once. ‘You don’t mean a man?’

  Pru laughed. ‘I didn’t say that, did I? And don’t you go saying anything at home. In any case, suppose it was a man? Where would be the harm? Patience is eighteen, near enough. Lots of girls of her age are married, with children of their own.’

  ‘So it is a man? A Strict Adherent?’ Verity was torn between amazement and a kind of shocked delight at being entrusted with this secret. ‘Pa would not allow it otherwise!’

  ‘Don’t ask so many questions – and you won’t be told no lies. What Pa don’t know he can’t complain about,’ Pru said. ‘Besides, there aren’t that many Strict Adherents, especially not our age – wait for one of those you could be waiting all your life.’

  ‘Or end up with some frightful widower like old Ephraim Tull,’ Vee said. ‘Terribly holy but never known to smile. Though I’ve thought he had an eye for Patience once or twice.’

  ‘More than that. Came round once to ask Pa could he offer for her hand!’ Pru gave Vee a wicked little nudge. ‘Can you imagine! Patience was horrified, of course, and couldn’t answer him. Pa had to say she was too young to marry yet – and when she was he wouldn’t force her to marry anyone. I was on the landing and I heard it all – though no one knows I know. So Ephraim went away. But I think he still has hopes.’

  ‘Here! You don’t suppose that’s what she’s frightened of – and that’s why she’s busy looking out for someone else?’

  Pru laughed. ‘Don’t be daft. You’re spinning stories in your head again. This is nothing. Just a bit of chat. Now, come on home – forget I ever said. Patience will catch up with us along the road.’

  So Verity jammed her old grey bonnet onto her head and followed her sister outside. But she knew in her heart that there wasn’t a mining accident down at Penvarris mine. Sergeant Jeffries had come to talk to her.

  The Sergeant was doing his best to look ‘avuncular’. (It was the word the police commissioner had used, during his training, and it had stuck with him. ‘Like a kindly uncle’ – that was what it meant, and it was desirable when dealing with young ladies, it appeared, provided you did not suspect them of a crime.) And Verity Tregorran was in employment now, so she was a young lady – not a wayward child.

  He bestowed his best kind-uncle smile on her. ‘Miss Verity Tregorran? Could I have a word?’

  She did not seem pleased to see him, despite his best attempts. ‘Sergeant Jeffries!’ she mumbled with a frown.

  The pretty dark girl with her looked appalled. ‘Lummy, Vee, what have you gone and done!’ That would be her sister Pru, Will realized. He had not seen her for a year or two, and she’d turned out handsome. Martha would be proud. And wasn’t there another, older girl, as well? Though there did not seem to be any sign of her.

  Verity was pushing back the curls which strayed out from her hat. ‘It’s all right, Pru, I know what it’s about. Just something I said to Constable Dawes’s wife the other day.’

  The girl called Prudence dug her in the ribs. ‘And now you wish you hadn’t, by the look of you!’

  ‘Well, are you surprised? Everybody’s staring!’ Verity’s cheeks had turned a flaming pink. She turned a pair of furious eyes on Will. ‘If we’ve got to have this conversation, let’s go down the road a bit where we won’t be on view – though I suppose, it’s too late now. There, Mr Grey has seen us – now I’ll lose my job I ’spect. How could you be so daft as to come and find me here? Too late, he’s coming over!’

  The girl was right, he realized. Everyone in the factory yard had turned to stare at them, including a stout man in a dust-coat and incongruous bowler hat, who was hurrying towards them with a ledger in his hand and was clearly a person of some authority. ‘Now then, young lady, what exactly is going on?’

  ‘I need to question Miss Verity, that’s all!’ Will tried to sound important.

  Grey looked at her again. ‘Why it’s that new girl that I took on yesterday! Wanted for questioning? Well, young woman, you can see me afterwards. I’ll give you what’s owing, but that’s the end of it. We can’t have our employees bringing policemen to our door. It creat
es a bad impression for our customers!’ He gestured to the courtyard where a horse and dray was being loaded with crates of butter tins, milk powder and cheese. The driver and assistant – like everybody else – had stopped to watch the little drama at the gate. ‘And Miss Prudence, I’m surprised at you. Letting your sister bring us into disrepute.’

  Will cursed himself for being such an idiot. Now one of Martha’s girls was likely to lose her post and another had a scolding – and Verity was right, it was all his silly fault. He’d only thought of finding her alone – without her father breathing down his neck – and (admittedly) of giving her a fright, so that she wouldn’t come bothering Mrs Dawes with foolish tales. He hadn’t meant to get her into trouble with her boss. Well, he’d have to do his best to get her out of it.

  ‘Mr Grey – I understand that is your name? You are quite mistaken in your attitude. Miss Verity is, if anything, an ornament to your establishment. She has – quite rightly – tried to contact me because she saw something that she thought suspicious on the cliffs. Exactly what any citizen should do in time of war. You would not wish to punish her for doing that, I’m sure?’

  Grey clearly held the police in gratifying awe. He took his hat off and turned the brim between his hands. ‘Well, officer, if you put it that way, I suppose! But couldn’t you have interviewed her somewhere else? What do you imagine our customers will think?’

  Will put on his most important face. ‘I’m sorry about your customers, but it was particularly convenient for me to come and find her here. This factory is not far from where the incident occurred. I am hoping she can show me exactly where it was, so that we can launch a search and full enquiry.’ He was improvising wildly – he hadn’t really intended to waste more time by going out there at all – but Grey seemed to be impressed.