The Blacksmith's Girl

by Rosemary Aitken

  ‘I can see how that was a clever thing to say,’ she remarked to Pru as they went through the gate and turned for home. ‘Except I feel a fool because it wasn’t really true!’

  Pru whirled around to face her. ‘What wasn’t true about it? Ned Chegwidden is a soldier, isn’t he? And he’s a friend of yours, and his mother has got news – you told me just the other day that she had heard from him. And of course you hope that he’ll survive the war. I never told them one word of a lie. If they made something different of it, that is up to them.’

  ‘But now everybody supposes that he’s been hurt or killed.’ Verity could not leave the subject there. ‘It’s almost like wishing it on him.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. That’s superstition, and you know that is a sin!’ Pru said.

  ‘And telling whoppers isn’t? I don’ know what Grandfather or Ephraim Tull would say. Besides, lots of folk round here know Ned – what are they going to think of me when he comes home unscathed?’

  ‘They’re going to think that I meant someone else, of course. I never mentioned anybody’s name. You ninny, do you suppose that everybody knows that you are sweet on Ned? I thought it was a secret?’

  Verity turned red again. ‘So did I,’ she murmured. ‘But it doesn’t look like it. You seem to know, for instance.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure until this moment,’ Pru said, with a leer. ‘But you’ve just admitted it, so I am certain now! So you make sure you help me with my chores from time to time, or I might forget and mention it to Pa.’

  Vee looked at her appalled. ‘You wouldn’t!’

  Pru was laughing at her. ‘Course I wouldn’t, silly goose. Although …’ She was interrupted by a shout from behind them in the lane.

  ‘Here, you two. Can’t you stop and wait for me?’ It was Patience, calling and hurrying after them, though her voice had gone peculiar and strained. She had thrown her cloak and hat on all haphazardly and her face was red and shiny as if she’d been in tears.

  Vee said, in genuine astonishment, ‘I thought you’d catch us up. Don’t you want to stop and …’ She trailed off in dismay.

  Patience was glaring at her. ‘Don’t I want to stop and what …?’

  Vee looked to Pru for guidance but her other sister would not meet her eyes. ‘Stop and talk to someone,’ she said, in misery. ‘I thought you had a friend.’

  Patience stamped a buttoned boot. ‘Well, I haven’t, so there’s an end of it. And if I haven’t, it’s no thanks to you!’

  ‘Oh Pattie!’ Prudence sounded quite upset herself. ‘He hasn’t …?’ she bit her lip and stopped.

  ‘Thrown me over?’ The older girl was bitter. ‘That what you meant to say? Well, he hasn’t – cause there wasn’t anything to throw. Not that I’d tell you anything, even if there was – you’d only go and blab to Verity. How could you go and do that, when you know what she’s like? Mouth bigger than a catfish – and you are just as bad.’

  ‘Oh come on, Pattie,’ Pru exclaimed. ‘Of course Vee had to know, once she was down the factory and walking home with us. Else she’d have been asking questions where you’d got to every night – and then there would have been proper ructions, wouldn’t there?’

  Patience tugged her cloak and bonnet straight. ‘And aren’t there ructions now?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t Vee’s fault, Pattie, she didn’t say a word. It was the policeman who started all the talk – he really came about some smugglers, and he didn’t want it known. I tried to tell you yesterday, only you were too het up to heed. So whatever Vee reported seeing on the cliffs, it wasn’t you.’

  Verity was so astonished that she blurted out, ‘Of course it wasn’t her. What would Patience be doing on the cliffs – in working time at that?’

  For answer Patience snatched her bonnet off and threw it at the stile. ‘Pru Tregorran, now look what you’ve done. Have you no sense at all?’

  Pru shook her head. ‘It’s all right, Pattie. You leave this to me.’ She took Vee by the arm. ‘The thing is, Verity, Pattie’s done some private errands for young Mr Radjel, now and then.’ She made a face at Patience who had tried to interrupt. ‘No, let me tell her, Pattie.’ She turned to Vee again. ‘Shouldn’t have asked her really – but she couldn’t well refuse, with Mr Radjel being who he is. He arranged the shift so she would not be missed and promised her a little something in return, so the other girls would only get spiteful if they knew. Isn’t that so, Pattie?’ She waited for Patience to nod reluctantly before adding, ‘And it’s certain that Mr Grey would not approve – so that’s why it’s a secret, do you understand?’

  Vee was flattered to be in their confidence. She nodded solemnly. ‘I won’t tell anyone. Cross my heart and hope to die!’ It was a vow she’d learned from other girls at school.

  The assurance seemed to work. Patience was impatient, but no longer furious. ‘Nothing to tell, now, is there? It’s all ruined after this. He can’t have people gossiping, he said, and that was that. I shan’t be going again. So let’s say no more about it, and we’ll get off home.’ All at once, her voice was quavering and there seemed to be angry teardrops standing in her eyes. She picked her battered bonnet up and jammed it on again. Then, without another word, she stormed off up the lane.

  Her sisters exchanged glances and hurried after her. Pru tried to soothe her, but she would not be soothed and they all three walked in silence until they reached the house.

  Ned was feeling something of a fraud. Or he would do, if he wasn’t feeling so peculiar – hot and light-headed and his leg was sore besides.

  It must have happened on that scamper in the mist back to the trench. He knew he’d gashed himself on something, but it hadn’t bled a lot and he hadn’t really paid it much attention at the time. He’d cut himself a score of times much worse when he was home, and at first he’d been more concerned about his uniform – though he’d been too tired to bother to sew it up that night.

  He managed to take part in the next day’s exercise, in which no ground was gained. He was not among the wounded (unlike Davy, who got a bullet in his arm) and he got back all right, but he wasn’t moving freely and he was feeling very strange.

  But next day his leg was throbbing something terrible and when he rolled his trousers up to look he was alarmed by what he saw. The calf seemed to have swollen up to twice its size and turned a funny colour overnight – and, worst of all, there was a horrid smell. With so many shot and wounded he hardly liked to go complaining, for such a tiny thing, but in the end he had to – he was swaying on his feet.

  The Major was emphatic. ‘Nothing so useless as a soldier who can’t walk. Report to the MO and get that attended to.’

  ‘I can’t believe it’s got like this so quick!’ Ned found himself saying, in the first-aid post.

  The Medical Officer took one look and shook his head. ‘Got an infection in it – I’ve seen these things before. Pity you didn’t get here earlier, I could have cleaned the wound – but I’m going to have to send you down the line to save your leg, I think.’ He was doing something to the wound by now and his voice seemed to be coming from somewhere far away, but the last words jolted Ned.

  ‘Save my leg?’ His own voice sounded strangled; the pain was terrible.

  ‘If there’s a deep infection in it – and it looks as if there is – it will need debridement or it will spread throughout the limb and I don’t have the facilities to do that properly. I’ve done what I can with it – got a metal splinter out – but the gangrene has gone deep so we’ll bathe it with carbolic and bind it up for now.’ He put something wet and stinging on the wound. ‘You’re still fit enough to travel, and there’s a relay ambulance, so we’ll see what the CCS can do with you.’ He turned away, and muttered to an orderly – though Ned was just aware enough to take it in: ‘Write down “gas gangrene”. No, nothing to do with poison gas, it’s just a kind of wet gangrene that can spread rapidly. We’ve got classic symptoms here – high fever, brown-red discharge, putrid smell. But we need to m
ove him fast.’

  The orderly murmured something. Ned didn’t catch the words. By now he was slipping sideways on the inspection bench, finding it impossible to sit upright.

  The MO turned back and took his legs and, with the orderly, moved Ned to a stretcher-bed nearby. ‘Of course we’ve got worse cases, and he’s not the only one,’ he said, across Ned to the orderly. ‘There’s so much filth and ordure in the ground – farm manure and rotting corpses, to say nothing of the rats and what seeps from the latrines – that any wound’s infected instantly. But get him on transport as soon as possible. There is some hope for him. Gas gangrene is a killer and he could be dead by dusk – but the wound is not too deep. With proper treatment this one could recover and come back to fight. But only if we’re quick. He’s already losing consciousness.’

  But he wasn’t quite sure he had heard the words. He did not really want to fight again, but it was a hope he clung to through the mists of pain as he was loaded onto the horse-drawn ambulance and jolted down the ruts to the Casualty Clearing Station, further from the front.

  Part Two

  January 1916

  One

  Something was seriously wrong. Verity realized it just in time, before she opened the back door. Somebody was getting a terrific fuss.

  She paused. Nobody was expecting her home at this hour anyway – especially with the factory working round the clock these days and keeping open all the weekend too, to meet the extra orders that poured in for the troops. But there was a fuss on there as well. Something troublesome had been found in the accounts – a ‘grave discrepancy’, whatever that might be (something to do with Penvarris churchyard perhaps?) – and people had been sent home while they looked for it.

  ‘But I thought they’d already found it?’ Vee’s neighbour on the packing-line had whispered in her ear, when Old Mr Radjel first came in and read the notice out.

  Vee had laughed and dug her discreetly in the ribs, but they didn’t laugh for long. Whatever this thing was it was clearly serious and there was a lot of muttering about the loss of pay.

  Then some brave soul asked what a ‘dishthreepency’ might be and Mr Grey himself had come, white-faced, and explained it properly. How things had been going missing, over several months – supplies which had been packed, and checked off as being sold but had not arrived at the distributors. The management had been trying to sort it themselves – at first they’d suspected the carters who moved the goods about – but now they were sure the problem was in the factory itself.

  ‘And this is not simply petty pilfering,’ Mr Grey declared, ‘though we would not have tolerated that. This is serious. All told it mounts up to several hundred pounds – all of it food which should have been sent to our brave boys at the front.’

  So now the management had called in the police and – on the advice of Sergeant Jeffries – were closing down each portion of the line in turn, while they searched the premises and interviewed the staff. The newer employees were permitted to go home, but anyone who had been there since before last July (when this had first been spotted) was to remain for questioning. That meant Pru and Patience had to stay, but of course Vee had only joined in October and – since the police had started with the packing room – she was unexpectedly free to finish for the day.

  So here she was back home, and it could not be three o’clock. She had been dreaming of a dozen ways she’d like to spend the time – calling into the Chegwiddens for news of Ned perhaps – though Ma would doubtless find some chores for her to do. But even as she put her hand upon the latch, she was aware of voices from within.

  Ma’s first, in an urgent whispering: ‘What do you mean, it’s not your fault? Who else d’you think’s to blame? You ought to know better, and there’s an end to it. No one forced you to it, from what I understand?’

  ‘No,’ came a tearful murmur in reply, so soft that Vee could not work out who the speaker was. Though it was certainly not Pa, as she’d imagined first – Ma did give him a private jawing now and then. This sounded high-pitched – like a woman or a child. Had Sammy Chegwidden let the fire go out while Pa wasn’t there to watch? That was possible. You needed a permit for everything these days, and Pa had gone grumbling into Penzance to deal with forms. And, come to think, there was no hammering or hissing from the forge, so probably he’d miss his hoped-for lift on someone’s cart and was having to wait for the horse-bus, or even walk back home. If Sammy was ‘for it’, though, she mustn’t interrupt. Better if she turned around and tiptoed off again! Bother! What a waste of a lovely afternoon!

  But somehow she didn’t tiptoe anywhere. The next words had her rooted to the spot. ‘Exactly!’ That was her mother’s voice again. ‘It’s no good blaming anybody else. You are responsible for what you do – and what you did was sin! And you raised a Strict Adherent all your life, brought up in godly ways!’

  A Strict Adherent? So it wasn’t Sammy then. It must be one of her own family – Constance, possibly? Had she been saying mocking things again? But no, it couldn’t be. Constance had taken little Faith down to her Aunt Dorcas for a treat – a special privilege for birthday girls – and was going to call in at the village afterwards and walk home with the others when they came out of school. That had been arranged for days, supposing it was fine. And today was bright and cold, without a sign of rain. So whoever was it? Grace, Joy or Charity sent home by the teacher in disgrace? Somebody sobbing, that was evident, so much that Verity could not hear the words.

  Mother’s answer, though, was clear enough. ‘You’re going to tell him what you’ve just told me. What else are you to do? And you’d better do it quick. You just wait till your father hears of this! He’ll be down that factory, sure as fire is fire, and knocking sparks off everyone in sight – that is if he doesn’t wash his hands of you!’

  Down the factory? Verity was perplexed.

  ‘You think I haven’t? I told him just today. Went to see him specially.’ That was Patience, surely? But Patience was down the factory being questioned by the police. Or was she? Vee had not seen her eldest sister since first thing – not even at the meeting, come to think – but she’d thought nothing of it because Pattie worked in the evaporator room and not on the packing-line like herself and Pru. But Patience couldn’t have been sent home with the newcomers like Vee, she had been down there longest of them all. Only – wait a minute! What did Ma mean by ‘sin’? Surely Pattie couldn’t be involved in this ‘dishthreepence’ thing?

  Vee found she was leaning forward to listen at the crack. Her sister was still speaking. ‘And you know what he said? Nothing to do with him and I couldn’t prove it was. It was my own stupid fault and I’d better hand my notice in as soon as possible. And if I didn’t go away and hold my wicked tongue he’d see that I was thrown out on my ear, at once, without a character. And then I’d never get a job again with anyone round here. Or a husband either!’ She broke into sobs again.

  ‘Is that what he told you?’ Ma’s voice was dangerous.

  ‘I tried to plead with him, but he wouldn’t pay no heed. Just rang the bell and had the clerk come in and usher me away. I was crying my eyes out by that time, of course, so I couldn’t go back and join the other girls – just told the clerk I wasn’t feeling well and came straight home to you.’

  ‘So you left without permission?’ Ma sounded scandalized. ‘As if you aren’t in enough trouble as it was!’

  ‘Well, I only said the truth. I was feeling terrible and Mr Grey was in some meeting with the police, so I couldn’t talk to him. Besides, if they turn me off for leaving without a proper chit, what does it matter now? I can’t well go back there in any case, not even to work my notice out and get what I am owed. The girls will all be wondering where I’ve gone and why, and I don’t want to tell them – though no doubt they’ll work it out. And the Strict Adherents will call me out in chapel, I suppose – and never mind my health. I shall be the talk of Rosvene, by and by.’

  Vee made a private sympathetic face. Bein
g ‘called out’ was a terrible disgrace – made to stand in front of everyone in penitential clothes while the preacher read out what your sin had been. No wonder Patience had been off her food for weeks, snappier than a dragon, and looking pale and drawn. This must have been on her conscience all that time. And no wonder! Imagine stealing from the factory – it seemed impossible. Pattie of all people! Verity was shaken to the core. Well, this was not a moment to go in and interrupt.

  She thought of popping into the Chegwidden’s house to see if there’d been word – Ned had picked up some awful infection at the front and had been very ill, so he couldn’t write himself, but the last report had said that he was rallying. But Mrs C had seen her pass, and would obviously want to know why she’d not gone in at home – and that would reach Ma and Patience, who’d guess she’d overheard. Best go somewhere else entirely until it was proper home-time and Pru was there as well.

  But meanwhile, what to do? There must be at least two hours of daylight left. Go and see her aunt out on the cliffs perhaps, and join Faith and Constance as they picked the schoolgirls up? Yes, there would be just time for that and – with it being Faith’s birthday afternoon – it wasn’t altogether an unlikely thing to choose to do.

  She turned away, trying to make as little noise as possible, and hurried back down Rosvene hill again.

  Effie Dawes was strolling back along the path across the field from the cliff. The day was gusty and tearing at her skirts but she was not sorry for the walk. She had been visiting her father and his new family, today – he’d been working night shifts so he was free this afternoon – and much as they made her welcome and pressed her to stay to tea, she’d suddenly found the stuffiness of the little cottage overpowering.

  It was just the damp washing steaming by the fire, she told herself. Nothing at all to do with Peter Kellow happening to call. He often seemed to do that when she was visiting – almost as if he knew that she was there and had somehow arranged his shifts to suit. Although of course, that wasn’t possible, she made her visits random – purposely – and you could hardly choose your hours when you were working down a mine.