The Fleethaven Trilogy Page 3

  The carrier’s mouth dropped open. Sam Brumby was actually laughing! It would be a talking point on the carrier’s rounds for weeks to come.

  Esther saw Sam shake his head wonderingly. He took off the cap he always wore and scratched his balding pate, then pulled his cap on again. ‘Well, Ah never!’ he muttered again. Esther knew she had, for the moment, earned Sam’s grudging respect. And that, she guessed, was not an easy thing to do.

  ‘Ah’ll tell you summat else, Will. She got the better of me gander last night. Now, I ain’t ever seen old Wellington beat afore – not by anyone.’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you, Sam, didn’t I tell you she’s a rare lass?’ the carrier said delightedly.

  Will Benson was a dapper little man, dressed more smartly than the farmer. He wore trousers and a striped jacket and matching waistcoat, and the toes of his sturdy boots shone. He sported a ginger moustache which drooped at the corners hiding to some extent the shape of his mouth. Some days he wore a cap and on hot summer days a kind of boater-shaped hat. Esther knew him well for he lived in the same village where she lived – or rather had lived, she reminded herself. She smiled as she saw Will take off his cap. He had a good head of hair for a man of his age, she thought, seeing it smooth and glinting ginger in the sunlight. She liked Will. He had always treated her kindly and even on occasions boldly outfaced her aunt on her behalf. There weren’t many who dared to do that, Esther thought ruefully, yet Will Benson always seemed to get away with it.

  He was speaking again now. ‘She’s a good lass, Sam, I can tell you. Treated rough, she’s been, by that shrew of an aunt of hers. Mind you, she’s raised Esther alongside her own bairns, you can’t deny, but only out of a sense of – of duty. She never showed the poor lass any affection.’ He shook his head and added bitterly, ‘She could show it to her own, though. She made the difference between them very obvious, I can tell you.’

  Sam said nothing whilst the carrier chattered on. ‘She’s a hard worker,’ and he added a little ruefully, ‘she’s had to be, with Hannah for her aunt! The lass deserves better. She ought to be given a chance.’ Esther felt a blush of embarrassment creep up her face. She had never before heard herself so praised.

  ‘What happened to her folks, then?’

  ‘Her mother, Hannah’s younger sister, died giving birth to her,’ Will replied briefly.

  ‘What about her father?’

  ‘How should I know?’ As if to cut off any more of Sam’s questions, Will climbed down from his seat. ‘I can’t sit here chatting all day. I’ve me rounds to do. I’ll just have a word with the lass an’ I’ll be on me way. Where is she?’

  From the pigsty, Esther saw Sam jerk his head in her direction. Even from this distance, Esther heard Sam’s dismissive sniff. ‘Wasting her time wi’ me sow.’

  As the conversation between the two men ceased, Esther hung over the half-door of the pigsty. ‘’Morning, Mr Benson,’ she called.

  ‘Eh, there you are, Esther lass.’ He gave a wave in greeting and came towards her. ‘You settling in all right, then?’

  ‘Ah ain’t said she’s staying yet,’ Sam Brumby raised his voice before Esther could reply.

  She grinned at Will. ‘He’ll find he’s a job on ’is hands to get rid of me though, won’t he, Mr Benson?’

  The carrier laughed, whilst Sam Brumby growled, ‘There’s nowt Ah want today, Will Benson. You can be on your way.’ And with that parting shot, Sam hobbled off.

  ‘Well, lass,’ Will said softly. ‘Are you all right?’

  Esther pulled a wry face. ‘I ain’t managed to make him see he needs me yet, but I’m working on it.’ She grinned suddenly. ‘I’m banking on Curly here to help.’

  Will Benson poked his head into the sty and a doubtful expression flitted across his face. Esther leant closer and lowered her voice. ‘She usually turns nasty with her litter and kills ’em. I’m trying to save ’em.’

  Will’s expression cleared and he smiled. ‘Oh, so that’s it – I wondered what Sam meant. Well, lass, it might work. Dun’t let that grumpy old beggar get the better of you. Good luck and tek care of yasen. I’ll be calling again on Thursday as usual. Tuesdays and Thursdays I come out to the Point.’

  ‘I’ll be here,’ Esther told him with far more confidence in her tone than she felt.

  He turned away, raised his hand in farewell, and went back to his cart.

  There were ten strong, healthy piglets by the time the sow had done. The eleventh, a poor, thin little reckling, did not live. Esther bit her lip. She knew the piglets ought to be suckling now. They needed nourishment, particularly that first fluid from the mother’s teats, and they needed the warmth of their mother’s body, but Esther wasn’t sure even yet that the sow’s proper maternal feelings had replaced the wild pain.

  When the cleansings came away, Esther allowed the sow to eat these. Perhaps that would assuage her unnatural desire, Esther thought. She’d seen it done before and it had worked then. As she watched, the animal seemed to relax. The sow’s eyes seemed calmer and she struggled to her feet and went to the trough. Esther smiled. The signs were good.

  When the mother returned to the corner and lay down again near the tea-chest, Esther picked one piglet out and placed it to the sow’s teats. With inborn sense, the tiny creature nuzzled at the teat to make the fluid come and then began to suck greedily. The sow’s eyes closed in contentment and she lay still and quiet whilst Esther placed all the piglets one by one to feed. They’d be all right now. Once the mother had suckled her young, it was unlikely she’d turn on them.

  Esther slipped out of the sty and latched the door taking one last look at the now placid scene.

  Suddenly, she felt weary. She sank down on to a square of hay and leant back against the rough brick wall and closed her eyes. Already the sun was slanting deep shadows across the yard. She’d been most of the day with the sow without realizing how the time was passing, so intent had she been on saving the piglets. She had not eaten all day.

  ‘All dead, are they?’

  Her eyes snapped open to see Sam standing over her.

  ‘Take a look,’ she invited and watched as he moved to the door of the sty and looked in. He glanced back at her and then swiftly away again, back to the sow and her litter.

  ‘One of her tits is a windy one,’ Esther told him. ‘But with only ten young, she’s plenty to feed ’em all. One didn’t live, but not – ’ she added pointedly – ‘because she ate it!’

  Sam stood looking at the litter as if weighing the piglets she had saved for him against the milk she had lost. He made no comment but as he turned towards the house, over his shoulder he said gruffly, ‘Like a bite o’ summat, would you?’

  Esther grinned as she levered up her tired limbs to follow him. It was the closest a man like Sam Brumby would ever come to a ‘thank you’.

  Four

  ESTHER spent another night in the hayloft, but the following morning, she made sure she was up very early. She had already brought the two milking cows to the byre by the time Sam appeared in the yard.

  ‘’Morning, Mester Brumby,’ she called cheerfully. His only reply was a sniff and a deepening of his permanent scowl. But at least this morning he hadn’t told her to ‘clear off’. Instead he seemed to be leaving her to do the milking, for she saw neither Sam Brumby nor Matthew the rest of the morning.

  After finishing the dairy work, she attacked the dust and grime of years in the kitchen. She found a long-handled broom and swept the ceiling and then she washed down the walls. As the dirt came off she found the plastered walls were painted a deep red.

  Next she scrubbed the wooden table and one by one she cleaned the pans from the hooks on the wall. Then she washed the piles of plates, cups and saucers from the two shelves at one side of the kitchen. There were four huge hooks in the ceiling for hams, but only a storm lantern was hanging from one of them. Perhaps the half-grown gilt was being fattened for killing?

  A torn lace curtain was the only covering on the
kitchen window and Esther took it down carefully, spluttering as the dust tickled her nose and throat. She would wash and mend that later.

  If I’m still here, she thought ruefully.

  It was dinner time before she had finished this one room and there was still the huge black range to tackle. She surveyed the clean kitchen with satisfaction. The back scullery and the range would have to wait. Now she would try to find something to make Sam Brumby a midday meal.

  She went out of the house and turned to the right. Adjoining the main house was a low building constructed in the same brick and roof tiles. The first door she opened was the wash-house. She sniffed the damp, mouldy air.

  ‘Sam hasn’t done much washing in ’ere lately,’ she murmured, wrinkling her nose. I’ll attend to that later, she promised herself, leaving the door open to let in the fresh air. Beyond the wash-house, on the corner, was the privy. Esther turned again to the right, round the corner of the building and stepped on to grass. To her left was a pond with a beautiful weeping willow tree straggling its graceful fronds in the water. Five green-headed ducks, wriggling their tails, waddled round the edge then flopped into the water. Hens wandered freely about the yard and the grass, scratching and pecking. At the far side of the pond the gander and his geese paraded up and down. The gander held his head proudly and pretended not to notice Esther.

  She moved on beyond the end of the house and round to the front. She found herself in what must once have been a well-tended front garden and orchard, but now the weeds were trying to strangle the few surviving flowers. Fruit trees grew up out of the long, unkempt grass but to one side she found a small vegetable patch which showed signs of recent digging. She fetched a fork from one of the small sheds and dug up a spring cabbage and a few leeks. She even found a turnip that had been left in the ground.

  Back in the kitchen she washed and sliced the vegetables and put them together with some of the cooked bacon into a clean cooking pot on the fire in the range. Soon the aroma of a kind of stew filled the kitchen. It was a warm, inviting smell which Esther guessed – and rather hoped – had not welcomed Sam Brumby for some years.

  Esther was bending over the fire ladling stew into three bowls when Sam entered the house with Matthew behind him. Wordlessly, she placed one bowl on the table in front of the chair where Sam had sat the previous day. She placed another for Matthew and sat down before the third herself.

  ‘By gum, this is good – a good cook as well as pretty!’ Matthew grinned.

  Esther hacked off a piece of bread for herself making no outward response to his compliment, though she felt a glow of pleasure.

  Sam Brumby concentrated on his bowl; he neither spoke nor looked at either of the other two. Esther rose and poured each of them a mug of tea.

  As they finished the meal, Matthew stood up. ‘I’ve to go to Mester Willoughby’s after dinner today. Shall you be wanting me tomorrow, Mester Brumby?’

  Esther saw Sam glance quickly at her and then look away again. He sniffed. ‘Aye,’ was all he said.

  Matthew grinned at Esther, picked up his cap and, whistling jauntily, left the house. Esther cleared away the dishes and carried them into the back scullery. She drew hot water from the tap in the range. As she poured it into the sink in the scullery, she felt Sam Brumby’s presence in the doorway behind her and smelt the sweet-sour smell of tobacco smoke as he methodically packed his clay pipe and lit it.

  ‘There’s a room –’ he spoke in short bursts between each puff as he drew deeply on his pipe to get it fully alight – ‘above ’ere.’ He prodded his pipe stem towards the ceiling of the kitchen. ‘You can get to it by a ladder in yon corner. It’ll – be warmer – than the hayloft.’

  He turned away without waiting for her to speak and went out of the back door.

  Esther leant on her knuckles in the bowl of hot water and closed her eyes. Two tears of thankfulness plopped into the washing-up water.

  The room above the kitchen was no more than an attic boxroom. When Esther climbed the narrow ladder from the corner of the kitchen and poked her head through the trap door, she was met by the musty smell of rotting apples. To one side, spread on newspaper, were apples from the previous autumn; maybe even the one before that, she thought, by the look of some of them. Several were aged to a brown pulp and covered with a thick blanket of dust.

  The small, oblong room with a sloping ceiling was littered with bits of broken furniture, a trunk of old clothes and the general clutter of a family who had lived in the same house for generations. In one of the corners, tied up with binding, was a rolled mattress.

  Esther surveyed the chaos grimly but by nightfall when she lay down on the mattress, the room was clean and sweet-smelling.

  The following morning, as soon as she and Sam had breakfasted and the latter was away out on the farm, Esther went into the back scullery. She sighed as she stood surveying the scene of neglect. It was the same in the wash-house. A mangle stood in the far corner festooned with cobwebs, and tubs and dolly pegs and washboards had been pushed into an untidy heap. On a shelf above stood four irons, a line of cobwebs linking one to another. In the corner opposite the door was the large brick copper with its wooden lid covering the deep bowl. There was evidence that Sam – or someone – had washed a shirt and a sheet which were hanging on a piece of rope strung between two hooks across the room. But in the copper lay a mound of mouldering, dirty clothes.

  ‘Well, Mester Brumby, there’s enough work to keep me here a while yet,’ she murmured aloud and bent down to rake out the dead cinders from under the copper. Suddenly she felt a smart smack on her rump which was sticking immodestly in the air as she bent double to her task.

  ‘Ouch!’ she cried and, coming up suddenly, banged her head on the fire door of the copper. She turned and saw Matthew standing over her, grinning.

  ‘Oh, it’s you again, is it, boy? I might’ve known!’ And she turned back to her chore.

  ‘Aw, come on, Esther, ’ow about a little kiss for a feller in a morning?’

  ‘I got better things to do wi’ me time,’ she snapped and raked vigorously at the ashes, sending up clouds of grey dust so that she coughed and spluttered as it prickled her throat and stung her eyes. She was forced to draw back and stand up.

  Matthew only laughed. ‘Serves you right for being so unfriendly.’ But he pulled out a spotted kerchief from his pocket and wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘Don’t cry, sweet Esther,’ he said mockingly. At his words she slapped his ministering hand away.

  ‘Cry? Me? You’ll never see me cry, Matthew Hilton, I’ll promise you that!’ They gazed into each other’s eyes, hers intense with anger, his fascinated by her loveliness.

  ‘You’ve got beautiful eyes, Esther. Green, they are. I ain’t never seen such lovely eyes . . .’ Now the playful, teasing tone was gone from his voice and with surprisingly gentle fingers, he touched her cheek. For once Esther was startled into silence.

  The moment was broken by a clatter in the yard. Swiftly Matthew turned away and shot out of the door. ‘God, he’s back,’ he muttered as he went, and Esther was left staring after him with smut on her face and grime on her hands.

  An hour later she had a fire glowing white hot under the copper and was staggering to and from the water-butt at the end of the house with heavy buckets to fill it. Each time she climbed on to a stool and tippled the cold water into the huge bowl. Satisfied at last that she had enough, she covered it with the wooden lid and, leaving the water to heat up, she came out into the yard. She glanced at the sun and reckoned it must be nearly midday. The rumblings in her own stomach told her so. There was no sign of Sam Brumby or of Matthew but she prepared a simple meal of bacon and bread and left it set on the table. Then wiping her hands down her skirt, she took a deep breath and opened the door leading from the kitchen into the house beyond.

  It led into an ordinary living room with an armchair set on either side of the fireplace and peg rugs on the floor. A table covered with a green plush cloth stood in t
he centre with four straight-backed dining chairs set around it. In the middle of the table stood a blue and white pot holding an aspidistra, long since dead, its withered leaves rotting and filling the room with a pungent mustiness. The window was covered by yellowing lace curtains which were falling into holes and two huge blue velvet curtains, lined with dust, hung from a wooden pole across the top. The wallpaper had once had a pretty green pattern but now it was faded and dirty. Around the room were several pictures – a large one depicting Jesus in the Temple, with smaller landscape paintings around it. On the far wall at the side of the window was a photograph, brown and faded, of a stern-looking woman, her black dress buttoned to the neck, her dark hair parted in the centre and drawn back severely behind her head.

  In the corner, diagonally opposite where Esther had entered, was another door leading further into the house. She moved slowly past the table, letting her fingers feel the soft fabric of the tablecloth, but it was sticky with dust. She opened the door and stepped into a small hallway. To her left was the front door which she knew would lead out into the garden and orchard and to her right the stairs climbed steeply to the floor above. Opposite was another door leading to what she presumed on entering to be the ‘best parlour’.

  The huge fireplace was ornate and bordered by a brass fender, sadly dull. Dusty velvet festooned the mantel-piece and to one side stood an embroidered fire-screen. In one corner was an organ and in front of the fireplace were chairs, a work-box and a footstool. A tall grandfather clock stood in one corner, its hands set permanently at ten to two. On a round table in front of the window lay a huge family Bible and as Esther glanced round the room it seemed that every surface was cluttered with ornaments and pictures.