No Wings to Fly (3 page)

As she went back into the kitchen her father and stepmother did not look at her but kept their eyes on one another. She had heard the murmur of their voices as she reached the foot of the stairs, but they stopped talking as she opened the door. If it had not been for the fact that their conversation ceased, she would almost have thought they were not aware of her presence. There was silence in the room but for the ponderous ticking of the clock.

‘Dora went off to sleep all right,’ Lily said. ‘She was tired tonight.’

Her stepmother nodded. ‘Yes – she would be. She’s been so active all day.’ She got up, pressing her hands together. ‘Well, this won’t get dinner, will it?’ And then, turning to Lily: ‘We’d best get busy.’ To her husband she said, ‘There’s water in the kettle, so if you want to wash now . . .’

As Lily moved to follow her stepmother, her father said, ‘When you’ve got a minute you can go upstairs and tell your brother to come down and eat.’

‘Edwin –’ Mrs Clair protested from the scullery door.

‘The boy’s got to eat,’ he said. ‘Working on the farm all day, he’s got to keep his strength up.’

As Lily went upstairs a few minutes later, she wondered why her father had relented so soon where Tom was concerned. It was not like him to be so quickly forgiving.

When the time came, the four sat down to eat the cold lamb and vegetables that Lily and her stepmother had brought to the table. Neither Lily nor Tom spoke as they ate, and there was little conversation between their parents. Their father, in particular, seemed more than usually preoccupied. Soon after the meal was finished Tom said his goodnights and went upstairs.

When he was gone, Lily and her stepmother started to clear the table, while Mr Clair moved to his chair. When all was in order and the dishes had been washed and dried, Lily went back into the kitchen. Her stepmother had taken up her darning, while her father leant back smoking his pipe. Lily took her own sewing basket from the shelf and resumed her work on the bodice she was making for a new dress. For some minutes there was silence, then Mr Clair said:

‘So, Lily, my girl, what kind of a day have you had at the Mellers’? They keep you hopping, no doubt?’

Lily, glad of his interest, said, ‘Oh, it went pretty much as
usual, Father. These days the men are out in the fields most of the time. They hardly come to the house. Mostly it’s just me and Mrs Meller and the other maid. It’s a big house and there’s always plenty to do.’

‘I’m sure there is. She’s still lending you her books, is she?’

At this, Mrs Clair gave a breathy little snort, which was enough to make Lily hesitate before replying, but then she said, ‘Yes, she is. She lets me take anything I want. She says I should read everything.’

‘Read,’ Mrs Clair said dismissively without looking up from her mending. ‘Who’s got time for reading? How some women manage to run a house with their heads stuck in a novel half the time, I’ll never know.’

‘Oh, but she doesn’t only read novels,’ Lily said. ‘She reads other things too. Last week she gave me a book about the Chartists.’

At Lily’s words her stepmother gave a contemptuous little sniff and said, ‘Chartists, hmm,’ but Mr Clair said to Lily, ‘And did you find it interesting?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Lily said, eyes wide. ‘They’re trying to make changes. Not only do they want
all
men to have the vote, but women as well.’

Mrs Clair hooted at this, and shook her head in wonder. ‘Lord almighty,’ she said, ‘if that’s the kind of thing you’re learning at the Mellers’, I should think it’s time you put your mind to something else. I thought you went there to work, not to have your head stuffed with nonsense.’

‘Now, then, Mother,’ Mr Clair said to his wife. ‘It’s nice the woman takes an interest in the girl. She knows she’s got a brain.’

‘Got a brain, is it?’ Mrs Clair said. ‘What does a girl want with politics, I’d like to know.’

‘Oh, but she thinks a girl ought to know about such things,’ Lily said, ‘especially me, seeing as how I’m
‘prenticed to be a teacher. She says there’ll come a time when girls are taught as boys are taught. For girls it won’t be all needlework and drawing and how to bake a pie. The girls should be taught grammar, she says, and physics and chemistry too, and they should –’

Mrs Clair broke in at this. ‘Enough,’ she said, flapping a hand. ‘No more. You’re going to find out, young lady, that a girl needs to learn only as much as’ll fit her for her life. Which, if she’s lucky, will mean marriage to a decent man and having a decent home. And I’d like to know where physics and chemistry and grammar come into that.’ She turned to her husband. ‘I’m tired of sitting here listening to such rubbish. I think you’d better tell her what the situation is. We’ll all be the better for it. You can’t put it off for ever.’

Lily looked across at her father. There was definitely something up.

‘Yes,’ her father said after a moment, ‘I need to have a word with you, Lily.’

Lily waited for him to go on, but he tapped out his pipe, repacked it and lit it with a taper lighted from the range. When he had blown out the taper, he laid it on the edge of the hearth. Then he raised his eyes to Lily again. She sat waiting, her needle and thread held still.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘that I’ve always wanted the best for you . . .’

‘Yes, Father . . .’

‘Yes, and I’ve wanted you to have better than I’ve had. Your brother, too. Though I’m afraid he’ll never amount to anything. Anyway – what I have to say is this –’ He came to a stop, searching for the right words, then went on again almost in a rush: ‘Listen – it’s not going to be possible for you to keep on at the school.’

Lily frowned, her mouth opening in surprise. ‘Oh, but, Father –’

Mrs Clair broke in sharply, ‘There’s nothing to say about
it. This isn’t a discussion. It’s a fact – and you’ve got to accept it.’

Lily looked at her father. ‘Does that mean – that I’m not to be a teacher after all?’ She could scarcely believe she was uttering such words.

Mr Clair cleared his throat, then said shortly, ‘Yes, it does.’ Then with a slightly softer tone, ‘I’m sorry, but it does.’

Lily frowned. ‘I’m to leave the school, Father?’ she said.

‘I’m sorry to say you are, yes.’ He paused. ‘The thing is – the situation has changed. It’s an expense – keeping you there for five years. Oh, I know there’s the grant, but that’s a pittance. It doesn’t keep you, and you know it doesn’t.’

Mrs Clair chimed in: ‘I’ll say it doesn’t.’ Then to Lily, ‘Other girls your age are in service, and have been out earning for two years or more. They haven’t got these la-dida ideas. They’re content to get to work, and start bringing in a bit of money.
I
was at your age. It was good enough for
me
.’

‘But – but I’ve finished two years,’ Lily said. ‘In another three I shall be qualified.’

‘Yes, and a fat lot of good that’ll do
us
,’ Mrs Clair said. ‘We put all the money into it, and we get nothing back. You qualify, as you say, and then you’ll be off. Whatever you earn we shan’t see a penny of it.’

‘The thing is,’ Mr Clair said, ‘the situation at the factory has changed. I was told today that –’

Mrs Clair said, cutting into his words, ‘You don’t need to go into all that. She doesn’t need to know all the ins and outs of the matter. She’s got to accept what’s what, that’s all there is to it. You’re too soft with ’em, that’s your trouble.’

Mr Clair said, a trace of anger in his voice, ‘I’m not soft with them at all,’ then to Lily: ‘But your mother’s right, you’ve just got to accept the fact.’

There was silence in the room, the only sound that from the clock. Lily said into the quiet:

‘Then – what am I to do, Father?’

He lowered his eyes, one hand going to cup his chin. ‘Well – that’s something that’s got to be worked out,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk again in a day or so.’

That night Lily lay in the bed beside the sleeping Dora, while through her mind ran over and over again the words that her father had spoken.

She could still scarcely believe it. She was to leave the school. For two years she had spent every day helping with the children’s tuition, loving every moment spent in the classroom, and only dreaming of the time when she herself would be the schoolmistress. Not here in Compton Wells, but in some place where she could begin to build a life for herself. And now it had ended. With just a few words every thread of the fabric of her future had been discarded. The future she had foreseen had been cancelled, as if it had never been.

Before her now lay nothing but emptiness. Was it possible? She had been so sure in her dreams, her expectations; so sure that she was left now with nothing to fall back on. What was to become of her? What was she to do?

Just over a week later, Lily returned home from her work at the Mellers’ and found her father in the kitchen. On Saturdays he worked only half days. He was alone in the house. Mrs Clair had taken Dora into Shearley, a village some little distance away. Tom was at the farm.

‘I’m just going down to get a few apples,’ Mr Clair said to Lily as she came in. He took up a basket, and an earthenware bowl. ‘And maybe a few blackberries too.’ He towered over her; she just came up to his shoulder. ‘You want to come with me?’

She accepted eagerly, and together they left the house, and with Mr Clair leading, went in single file down the narrow garden path. The afternoon was warm, with a fresh and fragrant breeze. Birds cheeped in the trees, and butterflies danced and tumbled over the shrubbery. In the week since her father had given her the news that she would not return to her apprenticeship at the school, he had spoken no further word on the matter. For her part, she had not dared ask more. She would learn everything in due course, she knew, though in the meantime the disappointment, the doubts and the questions had hung upon her like a cloak. All of it, the change in the family’s situation, she felt sure, must have to do with Seedley’s tile factory.

Today, as she followed her father’s broad shoulders down the narrow cinder path a little trace of her disappointment and sorrow was alleviated. It was for the simple reason that she was with him, alone. And today he
did not appear quite so stern; she had discerned a warmth in his manner that she did not often see. But there, the atmosphere around the house was always more relaxed when Mrs Clair was not present.

Very soon they came to the orchard, a narrow strip of land at the end of the kitchen garden with a scattering of fruit trees. Hardly worth calling an orchard, her father would say. Together, Lily and Mr Clair gathered a number of wind-fall apples and put them into the basket, then went to the edge of the plot where the brambles grew lushly over the weather-beaten fence. The berries were thick on the stems, and although most of them were still red, a good number were a deep, luscious black. All the ripe ones went into the bowl, except for one particularly large one, which Mr Clair held out on his palm to Lily. ‘There you are, Lily,’ he said. ‘This un’s too good for the pie.’ Lily took the blackberry and put it into her mouth. It had the sweetest taste, and for that moment, if she could have held an instant in her life it would have been this one, this moment of being alone with him, with the taste of the blackberry on her tongue.

‘When we go indoors,’ her father said, ‘we’ll make us a nice cup o’ tea. And we’ll have a slice of your mam’s apple pie.’ His words continued the music in Lily’s ears, not for the promise of the pie, but for the closeness that was there. She wanted it never to end.

She was stretching up to reach one of the bramble stems, when he said to her, ‘Leave that for a minute. I want to talk to you.’

She stopped her action and turned to him.

‘Listen to me,’ he said.

She nodded, waiting. It was like the scene of a week before, when on the hearthrug he had given her the news that had proved so disheartening.

‘I wanted a chance to talk to you,’ he said, ‘when nobody
else is about.’ He paused. ‘Now, Lily,’ he went on, ‘I told you last week that it’s just not possible for you to go back to school in September and go on training for a teacher . . .’

She nodded. ‘Yes, Father.’

‘And indeed I’m very sorry to have had to tell you such a thing. But as I said, the fact of the matter is that we just can’t afford it any more. Not,’ he added quickly, ‘that we were able to well afford it in the first place, but we got the little grant from the government, and that helped out a bit. And, as I said, I’ve always wanted the best for you, so we were willing to make sacrifices to see that you got the best. But now – well, it’s not so easy. We’ve got Dora to think of as well, and she’s growing fast. She’ll be starting school next month. And there’s your brother too, of course. He’s not cheap to keep, and he’ll be at school for a while yet. It all adds up.’ He sighed. ‘The truth is, times are hard, and are gunna get harder.’

Lily wanted to say, Is it Seedley’s that’s the trouble? but she did not dare, and kept silent.

Then her father said, answering her unspoken question, ‘There’s been talk, I know, and you might well have heard it. Fact is, there’ve been sackings at the factory. I know your mam wouldn’t agree with my telling you all this, but you’ve got to know. You’re not a little child – you’re old enough and smart enough to understand the situation. And the situation’s not the best. I’ve kept my job, thank the Lord, but at a much reduced wage, and God alone knows whether it’ll ever go back to what it was before. I couldn’t do anything about it. It was either accept it, or leave and try to find something else – which is out of the question. Times are not easy right now – anyone’ll tell you that.’

Lily stood silent before him on the grass. A dragonfly hovered for a moment by her shoulder and then darted away over the brambles. She was astonished that her father would tell her such things, confide in her so.

‘I’m lucky to have a job at all,’ he said. ‘Others haven’t been so fortunate. Ted Carwin was one of those to go, as was Mr Dilke.’ He added quickly, ‘Mind you, what I’m telling you here is not to be broadcast. It’s for your ears alone. Don’t you go telling the Mellers or any of your friends or anybody.’