by Lynch, R J
Sometimes it is not the mother or the father who dies, but the children. This same parish register shows it in almost every one of the two hundred years since it was first kept. Diphtheria comes, or influenza, or smallpox, or scarletina, or simply dysentery, and there is nothing to be done as it sweeps through the family. Doctors have no answer. Three children from a single family die in as many weeks. Sometimes more.
There are those who counsel the poor not to love their children until they have reached at least the age of five, and thereby given some assurance that they may grow to adulthood. Really, it is such nonsense. First, because children are as like to die at the age of ten as in the first weeks of life. Second, because the children of the rich die almost as often as the children of the poor. And, finally, because it is impossible! A child brings its love with it, and the most miserable curmudgeon must feel a softening at the sight of a new borne babe.
And now I must to bed. Mistress Wortley’s drawers are in my mind and I cannot get rid of them. The good widow may come to be not the only possessor of drawers in this parish. I must examine my feelings, and plan with care.
Kate’s reading was progressing well, and the time for her sixth lesson was here.
‘You are glum, child,’ said Mistress Wortley. ‘What troubles you?’
‘The Overseers of the Poor came to see me,’ said Kate. ‘They wanted to know why I was learning to read when we are receiving money from the parish because my father is ill. They say this must be my last lesson, and I must be put to work.’
‘They say that, do they? And you? Do you want this to be your last lesson?’
‘No, Miss. I mean Mistress Wortley. But...’
‘Then it shall not be. You may leave the Overseers of the Poor to me. I shall send them about their business. Now take the old vellum sheet you will find on the table and cover it in the first four letters of the alphabet while I work at my sewing.’
Kate could not prevent herself from looking up from her exercise to watch the widow’s fine work with the needle. ‘That is beautiful cloth, Mistress Wortley. What is it you are making?’
‘A frock for my sister’s son. She has not had my good fortune in avoiding the more sordid aspects of matrimony, and she has three children already after only five years of marriage. The boy is three and I promised to make something for him to wear on Sundays when better weather arrives. But attend to your own work and not to mine. You will not form letters a lady would be proud of unless you pay attention to what you are doing.’
Kate bent her head to the vellum.
‘You are right about the stuff, though,’ said Mistress Wortley. ‘This is the finest cotton, from Galilee. The French have the Levant trade to themselves. They bribe the merchants in Egypt, and it is the Egyptians who buy and sell the cotton from the Holy Land. The most tiresome thing about being at war was having to buy cotton from the Americas and the Indies. Such coarse stuff.’
Kate smiled. She revered Mistress Wortley as a woman of great kindness and she loved hearing her talk about Society, fashion and the world beyond Ryton, but Kate was a girl of common sense and she knew that, sometimes, Mistress Wortley spoke the most complete tripe. Kate loved to tease. But how would her benefactress respond to being teased? Casually, she said, ‘Lady Isabella has fine cotton petticoats. I believe the cloth comes from Manchester, though I do not rightly know where Manchester is. But Rosina told our mam...’
‘Katherine!’
‘Mistress Wortley, I am sorry. Rosina told my mother...’
‘Katherine!’
‘Rosina told Mother that the cotton was from the Indies. Though I don’t rightly know where the Indies are, either.’
‘They are far from here,’ said Mistress Wortley, folding her sewing and putting it aside. ‘And I can see that colonial cotton spun by some Manchester jade as she sings to keep her six starving children quiet might be very fitting for ladies who holiday in Harrogate. One would not wish to see such provincials challenged by anything of excessive quality. Show me the vellum. You are doing well, Kate. I shall not let the Overseers of the Poor come between you and your wish to read. Take this book in your hand. Now. Let us see what you can make of the first sentence.’
Kate went home with the light heart that was her normal way of being. After supper she cleaned the cottage while Florrie did her best to ease the pain of her husband’s illness and descent towards death. She was conscious throughout of Lizzie’s distant manner. When the work was done, she went outside and sat on the wall beside her sister.
‘Lizzie. I want to cry when I see you this way. Is there anything I can do?’
She had made these approaches before, and been rebuffed, so it was with pleased surprise that she felt Lizzie turn to her and bury her face in Kate’s neck. ‘I’m so worried,’ Lizzie said. ‘Joe. Whatever is to happen to Joe?’
Whatever Kate had expected, it was not this. Their brother Joe—full brother to Lizzie and Kate’s half-brother—was a blacksmith at Crowley’s Ironworks in Winlaton. He was single and childless. So far as Kate knew, there was nothing in his life to worry him. ‘But what is the matter with Joe?’ she asked.
‘He killed Reuben Cooper. I’m sure of it.’
‘Joe? But how…Lizzie. How do you know this?’
‘The old man was horrible to me. He made disgusting suggestions.’
‘I did not know that.’
‘There was no reason why you should. But Joe did, because I told him. And he looked so angry, and he said someone should deal with Reuben. And now Reuben is dead, with a hole in his head and his body burned.’
‘Oh, Lizzie. What are we to do?’
‘Nothing!’ Lizzie took Kate’s shoulders in her hands and held her at arm’s length. ‘We will do nothing, because anything we do will risk Joe’s neck. I should not have told you. Now you have to bear this worry as well as me. Swear you will say nothing of this. Not to our Mam, not to anyone. Swear it.’
And Kate did. But the fear that Lizzie had for Joe’s safety was now in Kate’s heart, too. And, at a deeper level, she felt something that Lizzie, it seemed, did not: the fear that Joe had gone against God’s will, and that she and Lizzie were party to this sin, and that only dreadful things could come of it.
Chapter 13
Tom Laws had admired Lizzie Greener for some time. Lying in bed, dreaming of what might be, he had finally worked up the courage to speak to her of his feelings. She would be old enough in a year or two to think of marriage, and he was a sober and hard-working young man who could make up in devoted attention what he could not offer in money or security. He went to her cottage straight after breakfast for fear that his valour would desert him if he delayed. When Florrie answered his insistent banging on the door, he asked to see Lizzie. Florrie was unsure, for she said that she thought Lizzie was being sick. Then Lizzie herself came from the outhouse and scowled at Tom in what was clearly a foul temper. Tom decided very quickly indeed that he had been wrong, that she was not the person he had thought, that he could never love a woman like this. ‘No,’ he said when Florrie told Lizzie he was here to see her. ‘No. I was mistaken. It was nothing,’ And off he went at speed—to walk straight into Blakiston, who clearly wished to speak to him.
‘Tom Laws,’ said Blakiston. ‘How are things at home?’
‘Well, sir, they are well.’
‘And your father? He is in good health?’
‘For a man of his age, sir, yes.’
‘Good. Excellent. I must come and see him. And now, Tom, I have a question I must ask you.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Do not look so anxious. It is a question I have been asking many people. Six weeks ago, a man was here who hailed from Hornsea. Joseph Kelly was his name. He looked like a vagrant but was not, for he had money in his possession. Did you see this man?’
‘Sir, this is indeed a question you have been asking, for you asked my mother and she asked me.’
Blakiston put his hand to his head. ‘By God, Tom Laws, you are right. Your mother was the first of all the people I have asked. So you did not see this man?’
No, sir. At least, I do not think so.’
‘He would have been some time on the road. He walked here from Swalwell, by way of Winlaton.’
‘Master, if I saw him I do not remember it.’
‘Well, then, we must assume you did not. But, Tom. I have been hearing other things about Reuben Cooper. And, come to think of it, one of them was from your mother, too. That Cooper was a man who would attack women. Do you know anything of this?’
Tom shook his head.
‘Strange. There are so many things about this dead man that present themselves, wafting before my eyes like wills o’ the wisp, and then are gone. Well, Laws, my felicitations to your mother and father.’ Then Blakiston slapped the reins firmly across his horse’s back and the animal, so much finer than anything New Hope had to offer, set off down the road. Tom watched him go. The Overseer was a good man, and friendly considering the difference in their stations. What strange variety life offered. Blakiston, of whom Tom would normally be so wary, treated him as a fellow human being. Lizzie, to whom Tom had longed to speak, behaved as if he were the most despicable creature alive.
Of course, she had been sick. He knew from the rare times it had happened to him that to be sick in the morning was not pleasant. When he had watched her in church, she had never seemed aloof or ill-tempered. Perhaps the sickness had made her behave as she would not usually.
He wondered where the sickness came from, and hoped there was no dreadful plague on its way to Ryton.
Tom’s excuse for being out so early—for he had certainly not told his mother or his brother of his feelings towards Lizzie, a caution for which he was now devoutly pleased—had been that he wished to ask Ryton’s only bootmaker to put new fastenings on his boots and he now made his way in that direction.
It pleased him when he met Matthew Higson on the road, for Matthew and Tom were the same age and had always been friends. Matthew was courting the eldest daughter of Chopwell Garth farm and would presumably take over the tenancy when her father died, for she had no brother living. Although Tom had reservations about Matthew’s skill as a farmer, he felt no animosity towards him for the good fortune he would have and Tom would not. If he felt any envy at all towards the man, it was that Matthew had found a woman who returned his love while he, Tom, had just been rejected in a most unpleasant way by the one he had yearned for. But that was not Matthew’s fault.
‘I saw you talking to yon Overseer,’ said Matthew.
‘Aye, I’m surprised he didn’t want to talk to ye.’
‘Oh, he’s got no time for me, man. I’ve known that ever since he came here. Everyone thinks when I wed Catherine I’ll get the farm when her father dies but I don’t believe he’ll let me have it. I’m thinking of going to the colonies when we’re married and try me hand there.’
‘What does Catherine say about that?’
‘I haven’t mentioned it to her yet. And don’t you. What did Blakiston want, like?’
‘He asked, did I know about Reuben Cooper attacking women?’
‘Hah! Who does not? What did you tell him?’
‘I said I did not know.’
‘You did not…but, Tom. There cannot be a man in this parish who has not heard these tales.’
‘No, nor a woman who has not been leapt on by Cooper, if every story is to be believed. But Blakiston asked what I knew, and hearing stories is not knowing.’
‘Well, but…’
‘What’s he going to do with anything I tell him? Cooper had his way with Ann Foreman, and if two of Cooper’s sons hadn’t been there, Caleb Foreman would have killed Cooper. Instead of which they damn near killed Caleb.’
‘That was ten years ago, man.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I’m not telling Blakiston so he can make Caleb’s life a misery unless I know he did it. And Ann Foreman is not the only woman Cooper’s tried it on with over the years.’
‘And that’s all Blakiston wanted?’
‘No. He’s still looking for this Joseph Kelly that no-one’s seen.’
‘Joseph Kelly?’
‘Has he not asked you, too?’
‘Blakiston doesn’t talk to me.’
‘Well. This man looks like a vagrant. Comes from a place I never heard of and cannot remember. He walked here from Swalwell six weeks ago. He might be Reuben Cooper’s murderer. Have you seen him? Blakiston will want to know if you have.’
‘Well, I haven’t. And I’m not sure I’d say if I had. Not unless they’re planning to take up a subscription for the man. Whoever killed Reuben Cooper deserves a reward, not hanging.’
‘My word, Matthew, but I’d not like to be an enemy of yours!’
‘There’s no reason why you should be. And now I must be off, for I have something I want to tell the curate. It has troubled me for a while and I would have it off my shoulders.’
Chapter 14
When Kate learned from the Overseers of the Poor that she would not, after all, be required to give up her lessons, she felt so grateful to Mistress Wortley that she wanted to give the widow a present. But what? A basket of painted eggs would be ideal, but Easter Sunday that year was not until the third of April which was still three weeks away. Like everyone else, the Greeners had a spinning wheel, and it was in constant use, but they had no money for the sort of stuff that could be turned into something that would grace such a home as Mistress Wortley’s. Nor was there ever time for the kind of crafts indulged in by ladies whose circumstances gave them leisure. In the end, she decided to put to work the skill she had learned. After her last lesson, Mistress Wortley had given her three pieces of card and a pencil on which to practice her letters at home. She took one of the cards and laboriously wrote out the words, “Thank you Mistress Wortley.” It astounded her that she had already learned enough to complete this. She walked to the widow’s house, went to the back door and handed the card to the manservant. He examined it closely and though she said nothing, and allowed no smile to appear on her face, it amused Kate that he did so while holding it upside down. Then he told her to wait. A few moments later, he returned and ushered her into the house and to the drawing room.
‘Katherine,’ said Mistress Wortley. ‘You should really have used a comma after Thank you. But we’ll get to punctuation one day soon. Am I to take it that the Overseers of the Poor have behaved with sense?’
‘Yes, Mistress Wortley. And thank you. I am so glad.’
‘My dear. I have nothing to do till midday. Would you like a lesson now?’
‘I cannot, Ma’am. Lizzie is sick again this morning and I must get back to help...Mother.’
‘Sick? Again? Is she ailing?’
‘I don’t know. When I ask she says she’s all right, but she seems to be sick every morning.’
‘Does she? Has Lizzie a beau?’
‘What is a beau?’
‘A man who courts her. It is a French word. You should cultivate it.’
‘Oh. No, Mistress Wortley. She has not. But why do you ask?’
‘Oh...no reason in particular. Has she ever had one?’
‘No. Never. There are men who I think are interested. In fact, one of the Laws boys was at the house and we think that is what brought him, although Lizzie was rude to him and he ran off without saying so. But, no, she has never shown an interest.’
‘Well, some girls take longer than others. Very well, Katherine, I shall let you go back to see how she is.’
After lunch, which she took a little earlier than usual, Mistress Wortley called on Lady Isabella, who wrote
about the visit in her Journal.
Monday 14th March,1763
Mistress Wortley called on me today with unwelcome news. She is sure that Lizzie Greener is with child. This would be an awful thing for poor Florrie, who is already at her wits’ end with Robert ill and like to die. Really, I do not know what to do. I suppose I should tell Thomas, but Thomas is not always the most sensible person. He would want to start a bastardy examination in the hope of finding that the father is settled in another parish and then the Vestry would want to despatch poor Lizzie there before the birth so that this parish does not bear the costs of the child. No doubt there will have to be such an examination, but let us wait until we are sure of the facts.
I have said to Thomas before now that it ill behoves a minister of Christ’s church on earth to drive out the people in greatest need, but when I say such things there appears on his face that long-suffering smile that is meant to tell me that I, as a woman, can not understand matters of governance and that that is why God in his infinite mercy gave the rule of law into the hands of men. One day I shall tell him, for I shall have no choice, that I simply do not believe that God intended any such thing. Men have this power because they are stronger than we are and they have taken it by force and keep it in most dishonest ways. Thomas loves our daughter. I know he does. But I wonder what he would say if, when she is old enough, I suggest that she should have the sort of education that would fit her to take her place in the world. The sort of education that any son we may have will certainly receive. In fact, of course, I wonder no such thing. I know what he would say. Knowledge leads to power and little Catherine must be kept free from the pains that power brings. This is, of course, for her own good. And who is to decide that? Not her mother, certainly, for her mother is a woman and therefore unfit to make decisions of such importance. Those who may decide whether women can be equal partners with men in this life are, of course, men. And they have already decided that we may not. Of course, they make this decision in our interest and not in theirs.
