Cowards Die Many Times

by Peter Hey

  Hi Jane

  I’ve been doing some digging around into Thomas Ramsbottom aka Ramsden. It was a great bit of work tracing his DNA relatives, by the way – seriously impressed. And I have to concede he doesn’t come out smelling of roses.

  So, the first thing is that I don’t think it’s his grave in upstate New York like his American descendant believes. I’m pretty certain that belongs to a different Thomas Ramsden who also came over from England, albeit a few years earlier. He ended up living close to where he’s now buried.

  If our man didn’t die in 1900, what happened to him? As yet, I don’t know, but I do think he made a return visit to England. I say visit because there’s a record of a Thomas Ramsden, New York photographer, coming over first class – it was before the three class system, so it was either that or steerage – to Liverpool in 1884 and then sailing back a few weeks later. He’s confusing things by using his new name, ie Ramsden, but giving his real age.

  So why did he come over? As this point we can only speculate. It could have been business related, though I’m not sure what form that might have taken. It was a long time before globalisation, and photographic technology and techniques in the States were on a par with those in the UK. Maybe he was sounding out a permanent return, but I can’t find any record of another crossing.

  Maybe, of course, he came to see his family. But would they have welcomed him back after what he appears to have done to them? It seems unlikely. Perhaps he tried to buy his way back into their lives. That photograph of his eldest son’s gravestone in Blackwell Holme doesn’t look like it was paid for by a widowed housekeeper scraping a living on a meagre farmstead. And then, of course, there’s Guy Ramsbottom’s original question of how his ancestor paid for his medical education. One conclusion is that Thomas offered them blood money and then went back to his successful life in New York.

  I’ll keep digging and let you know what I find.

  Tommy

  PS Please find attached links to all my sources.

  Jane read the email twice. Thomas’s return to England seemed telling. They might never know for sure why he made the journey, but it was probably enough to go back to Guy and offer him a likely answer to the challenge he had set. There was no other money in his ancestral background. He and his immediate antecedents owed their status and careers to a man who had cheated, lied and reputedly killed to achieve his own elevation in society. But as doctors, the later Ramsbottoms had no doubt saved and enhanced countless lives. Good had come from evil. The circle of hell to which Thomas had been condemned might not be as unrelentingly grim as it could have been.

  Jane scanned Tommy’s words once more. This time she was looking for signs of her own forgiveness hidden between the lines. He was still talking to her, still wanting to help, but had she caused irreversible damage to their relationship? There was something missing in the text, something it took her a while to spot. But then, there it was. Or wasn’t. The solitary ‘x’, the kiss he habitually put after his name when writing to her at least, had been omitted.

  It was a trivial nothing, but it played on her mind. Did it signify affection replaced by distrust and resentment? She realised she needed his friendship more than ever.

  The leaving of Liverpool

  The station hotel was by no means the grandest in Liverpool, but it was a world away from the louse-infested doss-house where he and Henry Pickup had spent the night, sharing a room with a dozen other men of the lowest classes. Half of them had been blind drunk and they stank of alcohol, toil and unwashed filth as they snored, scratched, belched and farted through the hours of darkness. In many ways it was worse than the later confines of steerage, though it didn’t roll nauseatingly on heavy seas. Was it possible that foul atmosphere had been the miasma that had infected them with the fever to which he and his travelling companion had later succumbed?

  Early the following day, the two emigrants had lugged their limited baggage down to the waterfront and boarded the ship that was to take them to their new lives. Henry’s had been pitifully brief, and whilst Thomas had recovered, his was newer and ultimately sadder than he could have imagined. He had changed his name, his age, his past. And now he was deserting that past once more. He would travel in comparative luxury but without the warmth of expectation that had sustained him on that previous journey. He was a man lost, and a part of him wished for a mighty storm that would lash the great steel steamship and drag it onto jagged rocks on some lonely, unreachable foreign shore.

  Thomas sat at the desk in the window of his room and looked down on the busy street below. It was named for the mediaeval tithe barn that stored farmers’ contributions to the Church, but that practice and structure had long since gone and the scene was unrelentingly modern. It was as busy as the Lower East Side and bustling with noise: men, women and children talking and shouting; clanking horse trams ringing bells to clear their path; and iron-shod cartwheels rattling over the cobbles.

  The glass panes did little to block out the din, and he tried to focus his thoughts as he dipped his pen into the ornate brass inkwell. Sarah, his first and only true wife, had refused to listen to his pleas. Ashworth, the man who had taken his place, had bodily thrown him out. Now Thomas’s only recourse was to commit his case to writing. He had thought of addressing her directly, but doubted she had learnt to read in the years since he had patiently, and fruitlessly, tried to help her overcome that hurdle. He needed an intermediary, someone who might act as advocate as well as simply verbalising the inadequate words he would commit to paper. There was only one person who had always championed his cause.

  But how much of his true story should he reveal? Despite all his sins, he was tired of lying.

  The Dennis

  Duff’s natural attire was a suit, shirt and tie; Jane had never seen him in overalls before. Even then, he carried off the look with some aplomb. The dark-blue boiler suit was crisply pressed and paired with a raffish cravat made him look like a character from a 1950s Ealing comedy, a gent maintaining his veteran car or a vicar about to take the controls of a museum-piece steam locomotive. A rag hung from his breast pocket like a handkerchief and a smear of oil across his forehead completed the picture of an enthusiast at work on things mechanical. He was talking to two other men who were more prosaically dressed in grubby old jeans and T-shirts. Their attention was focused on the rear of the large red fire engine parked at the side of the house.

  ‘Hi, Duff!’ shouted Jane.

  He turned and immediately began walking towards her. ‘Jane, darling, you’re looking as gorgeous as ever. That’s a very striking shade you’ve got on. Would you call that magenta?’

  Jane looked down at her blouse. ‘Reddy, purpley, mauvish maybe?’ she suggested.

  ‘Well it’s delightful. Forgive me if I don’t give you a hug.’ Duff displayed his palms. ‘I’m a regular grease monkey at the moment. Oh, how rude of me – let me introduce the chaps.’ He twisted and pointed in the direction of his two associates. ‘On the left you have Jimmy, heavy goods driver extraordinaire, and alongside him Kevin, wizard of the spanner and of the torque wrench.’

  Jane waved. Jimmy responded in kind and Kevin gave a thumbs-up.

  ‘It looks very technical, Duff,’ she said, a slight question in her tone implying she was surprised to see him getting his hands dirty.

  ‘Devilishly, so,’ he agreed. ‘I met the chaps at a rally. They know their onions and reckon we can get the old pump working. Imagine that. We can go to fetes and fairs, roll out the hoses, crank up the pressure, hang on for dear life and squirt a torrent of water across the village pond. The kids will love it!’

  ‘So no regrets about buying the thing?’

  ‘The Dennis?’ Duff shook his head rapidly. ‘Absolutely not. Made some smashing new chums, and it’s the most fun I’ve had in images.’

  Jane almost asked who Dennis was and then spotted the name spelled out in large chrome capitals across the bonnet. Here was a vehicle manufacturer who hadn’t hidden be
hind an obscure logo.

  ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt you,’ she said. ‘I’d better let you get back to it.’

  ‘Indeed. And I’ll let you go and see my dearly beloved.’ Duff paused and a naughty glint appeared in his eyes. ‘Look, Jane. I don’t suppose you could suggest to old Ginge that she adds a teeny-weeny bit of tint to her hair. It would be a wheeze if she really did match the engine. Personally, I think it would go down a blinder.’

  Jane looked at him like a schoolmistress admonishing a wayward child. ‘No, Duff, I don’t think that would go down well.’

  ‘Pity,’ he said, his sincerity almost convincing.

  He bowed, gestured to lift his non-existent hat, and returned to his fire engine. Jane continued to the front door and rang the bell.

  Five minutes later, she and her friend were sat at the heavy oak table in Sarah’s large farmhouse kitchen. Before Jane had been to her mother’s bungalow in Sandbanks and then Guy’s Ramsbottom’s near mansion in the Derbyshire countryside, this room had been the most impressive she’d seen. Duff and Sarah’s home was a converted barn and one end had been almost completely glazed, offering a stunning view over the farmland behind. On the floor above was the master bedroom; at this level was the kitchen cum living area. The architect had somehow blended wooden-beamed rustic with a futuristic wall of glass. It shouldn’t have worked, but it demonstrably did.

  They were drinking their coffee out of elegantly plain Wedgwood mugs. Jane had just related her brief conversation with Duff, omitting his proposal for his wife’s hair colour.

  ‘Did he introduce to his new friend Kevin?’ asked Sarah.

  ‘Only at a distance.’

  ‘’You were lucky. God, the man can bore for England. Drones on and on about gaskets, whatever they are. Still Dennis the fire engine keeps Duff out of mischief,’ said Sarah, raising her eyebrows. ‘Though I’m beginning to think he loves the thing more than he loves me.’

  ‘Not possible. Duff adores you.’

  ‘Mmm, perhaps. So, tell me about your life, loves and otherwise.’ Sarah had lifted her mug but had second thoughts about taking a sip and continued speaking. ‘Look, I’m sorry I couldn’t talk when you messaged me. It was just a girly chat you wanted, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Kind of. Believe it or not, Dave phoned out of the blue and sort of pointed me in the right direction.’ Jane’s head dropped. ‘But then I went and messed it all up.’

  ‘Messed what up?’

  ‘Well… I’ve a horrible feeling I’ve made Tommy hate me.’

  ‘Tommy?’ Sarah reached across and gently lifted her friend’s chin. ‘Not possible. We both know what he thinks of you. You’re his Dennis the fire engine, though in somewhat more attractive female form.’

  Jane winced. ‘But what if I accused him, wrongly, of being a perverted stalker who broke into my house and spied on me? That feels like suitable grounds for hatred to me.’

  ‘Jane? I know you had that break-in, but are you saying you thought it was Tommy?’

  ‘No. Well, sort of. Not really.’

  Sarah’s brow furrowed. ‘You’re being a little opaque, darling. Start from the beginning.’

  ‘I knew I would upset him. I lost sleep over how to say it and then blundered straight in and did exactly what I was afraid of.’

  ‘Jane, sweetheart, that’s not the beginning. It may be the middle. It may be the end, but it’s not the beginning.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Jane tilted her hands upwards at the wrist in a gesture of surrender. ‘So, the supposed burglar took my TV, but then dumped it. Because what he actually wanted to do was get at my crappy old laptop and hack into my emails. And spy on me using the stupid camera that’s built into the thing.’

  ‘Jane? Seriously?’

  ‘Yes, seriously. And Mrs Metcalfe, nosey Mrs Metcalfe across the road, saw someone who looked like Tommy, albeit with a haircut, hanging about. Now, Tommy’s been working too hard lately. Round the clock. It’s not good for him – I’ve been worried he’s making himself ill. So I thought, I‘ll phone Tommy, see that he hasn’t been to the barbers, and that’ll put my mind at rest. And I can nag him to take it easy. But he had cut his hair. It was short and I went all peculiar.’

  ‘So you confronted him?’

  Jane shuffled uncomfortably on her chair. ‘Not immediately. In my heart I knew it wasn’t Tommy, but I had to say something or it would have eaten away at me. So I tried to attack it in a roundabout way. But he’s no fool. He’s the cleverest person I know. And I’m the stupidest. He saw what I was getting at and now he must hate me.’

  Sarah stroked her mug thoughtfully. ‘I can’t imagine Tommy doing anything like that either. But just to be sure, you’re 100% convinced it wasn’t him? I mean, all that computer wizardry is very much his area of expertise. Like gaskets are to Kevin the bore. Sorry, I don’t mean to be flippant.’

  ‘It’s okay and yes, I’m 100% convinced,’ replied Jane. ‘Tommy breaking into my house to hack into my computer is like Kevin fixing an engine by hitting it with a sledgehammer.’

  There was silence as Sarah considered the analogy. Eventually she responded. ‘Did you apologise to Tommy?’

  ‘About 50 times,’ said Jane dejectedly. ‘He said it was fine, understandable, that I had to say something. He still seems to be talking to me, but…’

  The sentence was left hanging and Sarah completed it. ‘But in the meantime, there’s some deviant who’s broken into your house so he can spy on you. That’s serious, Jane. Have you told the police? What does Dave say?’

  ‘I don’t want to get Dave involved. I don’t want my ex-husband rushing to my rescue. He’s already threatened, well not threatened… I’ve a horrible feeling he’s going to turn up at my house this weekend to check I’m alright.’

  Sarah wasn’t sure whether to encourage Dave’s intervention or not. Instead she settled on an alternative strategy.

  ‘We need to talk this through. And we need something stronger than coffee. I’ll open a bottle.’

  Jane looked reluctant. ‘I can’t. I’m driving.’

  ‘Leave the car here,’ Sarah said decisively. ‘You can stay the night. Or get a cab. Or Duff will drive you home – assuming Kevin doesn’t drag him down the pub like he usually does.’

  Jane found herself acquiescing. ‘Go on then. I could do with a glass of wine. Maybe two.’

  Baptist ministry

  Like the reigning queen empress, Elizabeth Richards knew she would be wearing widow’s weeds to her deathbed. But whilst Victoria’s Albert had barely lived to middle age, Reverend Harry Richards had been in his late seventies, still straight-backed and dignified, when he waded into the swollen moorland stream to rescue the young child who had lost her footing on its banks. He pulled her to safety, but succumbed to a chill that became pneumonia. Elizabeth’s marriage and near half-century of exile came to an end, and she returned to her childhood home in Somerset, now being farmed by her late brother's son and heir.

  Her own health was failing but Elizabeth had one task to complete before she was reunited with her husband. In his later years he had determined to record his memoirs and had enlisted his wife as scribe and editor, her command of the written word being at least equal to his own and her eyesight latterly far superior. He had assiduously kept a lifetime of documents, letters and sermon notes. Elizabeth was now seated alongside a trunk of paperwork and was scanning the final draft of ‘A Baptist Ministry in the Barren Hills of Lancashire’. She would use their remaining savings to finance the publication of a few hundred copies. Neither of them ever expected it to reach more than a small select audience.

  One of the later sections was still causing her concern. In it, her husband had mused on the nature and limitations of human versus divine forgiveness. He related a story of a weak and pitiful man who had sailed to America, abandoning his wife and family, returning prosperous and successful many years later. He had visited his wife, but she had understandably sent him away without listening to his
litany of excuses. As a result, he composed a letter putting forward his case. Because his wife was illiterate, he wrote to the minster and asked him to act as go-between. That Revered Richards did, but his judgement and advice were suitably damning. He was not taken in by the lies and self-justification and saw through them to the full wickedness of the crimes that lay beneath.

  As Elizabeth Richards read her husband’s account, she again questioned whether anger and intolerance had started to colour his temperament in his final years. Had a once ambitious and driven man looked back on a career and seen only stagnation and waste in a desolate corner of nowhere? She also knew that she played a larger part in this chapter than was suggested by the words on the page. Thomas had written to her, not the minister himself. She had interpreted her one-time protégé’s story with compassion. She had seen weakness and error certainly, but not premeditated malice.

  She reached into the chest and retrieved the letter. Looking at it once more, her thoughts initially dwelt on the beautiful handwriting. Thomas had always had an artistic temperament and flair. He had surely been corrupted by manual labour; the boy had been meant for better things. And the words flowed and his explanation appeared coherent, to her at least. Victim or villain, whose conclusion was valid, hers or her husband’s?

  Elizabeth pondered her own recollection of events prior to Thomas Ramsbottom’s journey to America. She remembered him as a gifted and sensitive child, bullied by his envious peers for being different. She remembered how he had been chased by oh-so plain Sarah and how she had been with child at their wedding. Elizabeth could see Sarah’s father, an angry and drunken thug of a man and could only think how he would have reacted at the knowledge of his daughter’s pregnancy. And then there was the hideous mill explosion that had killed that beautiful child 15 years later. The inquest had blamed the engineer, but outside the courtroom the whisper was that Sarah saw her husband as being culpable. Was it then those tongues first began to wag at her closeness to the burly farm labourer who would eventually become her second husband in all but the eyes of God and the state?