So Long At the Fair (3 page)

Catching sight of Abbie passing by, Lizzie, still rhythmically twirling the rope, called out: ‘Oh, look at Miss Fancy Drawers!’

‘You shut up, our Lizzie,’ Abbie called back.

‘Where you goin’, Abbie?’ Iris yelled. ‘To Eversleigh?’

‘In a minute.’

‘Can I come too?’

‘You know you can’t.’

‘Can
I
?’ Lizzie said.

‘No, you can’t.’

‘I’m older than our Iris.’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘It’s not fair.’

Abbie gave a superior smile, shrugged and went on.

Knocking at the door of the third of the greystone cottages in Tomkins Row, Abbie found it opened to her by Mrs Carroll, Jane’s mother, a round-faced, jolly-looking little woman with fading red hair pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck.

‘Oh, thank God you’re ’ere, Abbie,’ she said with a little laugh. ‘Come and take the girl away, will you? She’ll just about have me down Devizes at the rate she’s goin’.’ Devizes, a nearby town, bore the dubious distinction of possessing the county’s insane asylum.

Laughing sympathetically, Abbie entered the sunlit kitchen to find Jane sitting on a chair, fastening her right boot, her long, fair hair hanging down and obscuring her face. She wore a dark-blue cotton dress with a fine lace collar made by her mother. ‘I thought you’d be ready,’ Abbie said.

‘Ready!’ said Mrs Carroll. ‘The girl was ready an hour ago, and would be again if she could make up her mind what she’s going to wear!’

Jane said through the curtain of her hair: ‘You make it sound like I’ve got no end of choice, when it’s a matter of finding what I look the least dreadful in.’ She finished fastening her boot and straightened, revealing a flushed face with a high forehead, short, straight nose, rather long, pointed chin and wide blue eyes. She spread her hands in a gesture of hopelessness. ‘Look at me! This is the only thing that’s half decent and it’s too small. I can hardly move my arms!’

‘For goodness’ sake,’ her mother said, ‘you’re a growing girl. You can’t expect your clothes to fit you for ever!’

Jane groaned, having heard it all before, then turned to a looking-glass with a cheap gilt frame that hung on the wall. After fussing with her hair for a minute or two she began to tie it with a pale-blue ribbon.

‘If you don’t leave soon,’ her mother said, ‘there won’t be any point in your goin’. Anyway, I heard as Mrs Curren was looking for a maid, not for a Queen of the May. You go there lookin’ too vain and she won’t think you’re capable of scrubbin’ a pot.’

A minute later Jane decided to wear her hair in braids and she sat down while Abbie stood behind her and wove her long hair into two neat plaits, which she then coiled around and pinned to the crown of her head.

While the girls were so engaged, Mrs Carroll got out a loaf of bread and a basin of lard. ‘You better take summat to eat with you, Janie,’ she said. ‘It’s a fair way to Eversleigh and you’ll get ‘ungry.’ She looked at Abbie. ‘You takin’ some dinner with you, Abbie?’

Abbie had not thought of it; neither had her mother. ‘No, I didn’t think,’ she said.

‘Well, you better ’ave some too, then.’

Three minutes later the girls, each holding a little package containing a slice of bread and lard and another of bread and jam, were ready to leave.

Mrs Carroll followed them to the gate. ‘Now you be careful,’ she said, ‘and remember to be polite to the lady.’

‘Of course I’ll be polite.’ Jane sighed wearily and pulled a face at her mother across the gate. Abbie, watching, envied their closeness.

‘And,’ Mrs Carroll said, ‘don’t forget to wipe the dust off your shoes before you go in.’

A sigh. ‘All right.’

‘And don’t go talking to no gypsies nor other vagabonds.’

Turning, assuming an expression of patience tried to its limits, Jane said, ‘Is there anything else I should remember?’

‘Yes,’ her mother said, grinning, ‘remember not to lift up your arms.’

Jane gave a cry and dashed towards her, and with a little shrieking laugh her mother turned and ran back into the house.

The village of Eversleigh was seven miles to the northeast, between Trowbridge to the north and Westbury to the south, and as there was no convenient railway station – even supposing they had the money for their fares – the girls had no option but to walk.

The day was very warm, the sun shining from a clear blue sky, and as the time wore on the girls grew increasingly hot and uncomfortable. Eventually, however, there lay before them at the foot of a hill the cluster of buildings that was Eversleigh village. As they drew nearer they glimpsed the church tower with the hands of its clock pointing to ten to one.

‘We’d better wait for a while,’ Jane said. ‘We mustn’t call when the lady’s having her dinner.’

They stopped in the shade of a small copse not far from the road, sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, took off their bonnets and ate their sandwiches. Afterwards they found a little fast-running brook where, hitching up their skirts, they knelt down over the bank, dipped their cupped hands into the stream and quenched their thirsts and cooled and refreshed their faces.

‘It’ll be wonderful if we can get situations in the same house, won’t it?’ Jane said, sitting back in the grass.

Abbie nodded enthusiastically. ‘Oh, it will.’ She was silent for a moment, then she said, ‘We’ll be friends for ever, shan’t we?’

‘Yes, of course! Oh, Abbie, why ever shouldn’t we?’

Abbie shrugged. ‘My mam said friendships never last. She said one person ends up going one way and the other goes another. In the end, they always forget.’

‘Well, I shan’t forget,’ Jane said emphatically. ‘That won’t be the case with me.’

‘No.’ Abbie shook her head. ‘Not with me, either.’

‘I wonder,’ Jane said, ‘what we’ll do. Later on in our lives, I mean. When we’re older. D’you think we’ll get married and have babies?’

Abbie shrugged. ‘I don’t fancy getting married. I wouldn’t mind havin’ a baby, though. Just one. You could make nice clothes for her and dress her up and all that.’

‘You’d want a girl, would you?’

‘Oh, I think so. Boys are so rough.’

‘Anyway,’ Jane went on, ‘if you want a baby you’d need to get yourself a husband first.’

‘Why? Aggie Tarrant’s got a baby and she doesn’t have a husband. And Esther Strange, too. She hasn’t got a husband and she’s got two little ’uns.’

‘
And
she’s as big as a barn.’

Abbie laughed. ‘Anyway, although a baby would be nice I don’t think I’d want to do what’s necessary in order to get one.’

Jane shook her head. ‘Oh, no. Me neither.’

The previous summer the two girls, on walking to White’s farm near Flaxdown to buy butter, had come to an enclosure where a stallion was about to mate with a mare. The farmer and some of his men were there, overseeing the process. Abbie’s brother Eddie, who worked at the farm, had been in attendance too. Neither he nor the others had been aware of the girls’ presence, and Abbie and Jane had stood watching, fascinated, as the stallion, hugely aroused, had mounted the mare and gripped her neck with his strong teeth. Being country girls they had witnessed the mating of various animals, but that time with the horses had made a strong impression on their blossoming awareness. When the act was over – so quickly – the horses had been led away. It was then that Eddie had turned and seen the girls.

‘What you doin’ ’ere?’ he had asked.

‘We came to get some butter for Jane’s mam,’ Abbie replied, then, ‘I hate it when they do that,’ she added.

‘What you on about?’

‘The stallion and the mare. The way he treats her. Doing that and biting her like that. I’m surprised she stands there and puts up with it.’

Eddie reddened slightly. ‘Well – she’ve got to, ain’t she? If she wants a foal she don’t ’ave no choice.’

And suddenly realization had come. Those other matings they had witnessed, they had been a part of the process of life, had been necessary for life to begin.

On the way back to the village she and Jane had discussed the matter. ‘And people, too,’ Jane had said, though not really believing it. ‘Men and women do it. I suppose they’ve got to.’

‘I s’pose so,’ Abbie agreed. Then she had added, laughing, ‘Though whoever done it to Esther Strange must have needed good strong teeth!’

They had shrieked with laughter all the way home.

Now, sitting beside the stream, Abbie took up the piece of newspaper that had wrapped her sandwiches and began to fashion from it a little boat, the way Eddie had taught her. Thinking of the meeting ahead with the prospective employer, she said, ‘Oh, I wish we didn’t have to go away.’ Then she went on with a sigh, ‘Course, if we were rich we wouldn’t have to bother about working for other people.’

‘If you want to be rich, then you must marry a rich man,’ Jane said.

Having finished one paper boat, Abbie took up the sheet of newspaper that Jane had discarded and began to make a second. ‘I told you, I’m not getting married at all.’

‘You will when the time comes. All girls do if they get the chance. You’ll probably get wed before I do.’

‘I shan’t.’

The second paper boat was finished, and Abbie plucked a buttercup from the grass and stuck its stem into a fold of the paper of one of them. Into the other boat she stuck the stem of the ragged robin.

‘Here you are – here’s yourn.’ She handed the boat with the ragged robin to Jane. ‘Come on – let’s sail ’em in the water.’

On the bank of the brook they hoisted up their skirts once again, then reached out with the little paper boats. Jane turned her head, looking along the stream to where, some distance ahead, a weeping willow hung its branches over the water. ‘Whoever’s boat gets to that willow first will marry a rich man,’ she said.

‘No,’ Abbie said, ‘there’s no rich men for the likes of us.’

‘All right then . . .’ Jane pondered briefly. ‘The first one to get to the willow will be the first to get married – for richer or poorer.’

Abbie laughed. ‘All right.’

They lowered the boats into the current, pointing the prows downstream.

‘Ready . . . steady . . . go!’

With Abbie’s final word they let go. At once the little vessels were taken by the current and the two girls watched as they sailed smoothly along, Abbie’s on the right bearing the flag of the golden buttercup, Jane’s with the little red flower of the ragged robin.

Taking up their bonnets, the girls moved along the bank, following the progress of the vessels. On the current of the stream the boats bobbed up and down, keeping more or less abreast, first one nosing slightly ahead and then the other. But then, slowly, the boat with the buttercup began to draw ahead.

‘It’s going to be you!’ Jane said, then added, giving a little wail, ‘Oh, look – my boat is losing her flag!’

The ragged robin in Jane’s boat was now trailing its blossom in the water. As the girls watched, it fell free and began to drift along in the boat’s wake. Hurrying to keep up, the girls found their way blocked by a mass of brambles that grew to the water’s edge, forcing them to find a circuitous route around it. They returned to the bank close to where the willow stood. Nearby, the two boats had been halted, caught up in the reeds. Now neither bore its flower flag, for Abbie’s buttercup also had gone. Further, one of the boats had fallen apart, the folds of its waterlogged paper collapsed. Even as they gazed it began to sink beneath the surface.

‘Was that yourn or mine?’ Jane asked. ‘You can’t tell without the flowers.’

‘We’ll never know.’ Abbie shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter, anyway – neither one of ’em got there.’

They turned and began to walk back through the copse towards the road. ‘We’d better get a move on,’ Jane said. ‘At this rate Mrs Curren’ll be having her supper before we get there.’

Chapter Three

Marylea House stood on the far side of the village, a large building on three floors, at the front a lawn with colourful herbaceous borders. Approaching by the side gate, Abbie and Jane entered a paved yard beside stables where a young man grooming a mare directed them to the rear door. They rang the bell and a minute later the door was opened to them by a young maid who at once went away to fetch her mistress.

Mrs Curren was a slightly built woman in her thirties with a thin face and prominent teeth. After dismissing the maid, she ushered Abbie and Jane into the kitchen.

‘So,’ she said, smiling, ‘which of you is looking for a position?’

‘Please, mum,’ Jane said, ‘both of us. We heard as you wanted
two
maids.’

The woman shook her head. ‘Oh, no, there isn’t the work to warrant two. There’s only my husband and myself, and not all the rooms are used, and I do most of the cooking. No, dear, I only need the one.’

She then asked how old the girls were. Twelve, they replied in subdued chorus, and she nodded and began to outline the daily duties that would be required, the work starting at six in the morning and going on until nine at night. She would need her new maid to begin in two weeks, she said, adding that she would supply caps and aprons. To everything she said the two girls nodded and said, ‘Yes, mum.’

‘Now,’ she said, ‘that leaves us with a little problem, doesn’t it? Which one of you should we have . . . ?’ She gave her rather horsy, warm smile. ‘As far as I can see you both seem like capable girls. I don’t want to be the cause of any friction between you. Perhaps you’d like to decide which it will be.’

‘Yes, mum,’ they said in uncertain unison. Then there was silence. Mrs Curren looked from one to the other, then Abbie turned to Jane. ‘You, Jane,’ she said, in spite of her knowledge that her mother would be furious. ‘You take it.’

‘No, Abbie,’ Jane said. ‘You take it. You heard about the position first.’

‘Perhaps’, Mrs Curren suggested, ‘we should toss a coin. Shall we do that?’