So Long At the Fair (5 page)

Beatie, however, was completely enamoured of him, that much was clear. On the pretext of a matter concerning some clothing, she got Abbie to go upstairs with her and, as soon as the bedroom door was closed behind them, turned and whispered, all eagerness and anxiousness, ‘Well, Abbie – what do you think? Isn’t he fine? Isn’t he good-looking?’

Abbie wrapped her arms round her sister’s waist and hugged her to her. ‘Oh, Beatie, yes. Yes, he certainly is.’

But even as Abbie spoke there were reservations in her mind. Notwithstanding that Tom Greening was a handsome young man with a fine figure, and with good prospects into the bargain, he appeared, for Abbie’s tastes, a little too quiet and somewhat lacking in personality. With his slow smile and rather self-conscious manner, he seemed to her a little withdrawn and short on humour. Certainly he had about him nothing of Eddie’s exuberance. Still, she reminded herself, she didn’t really know him, and as Beatie herself was somewhat shy and retiring, they were probably well suited to one another. And anyway, what did it matter what she, Abbie, thought of him? It was no crime to be dull. It was only really important what Beatie felt, and Beatie was clearly very taken – just as Tom Greening appeared to be completely taken with her.

Later, as they all sat chatting downstairs, Lizzie and Iris burst in noisily, breathless from having run all the way home, and Abbie watched as her elder sister kissed and hugged them and gave them the little gifts she had brought.

Eventually the clock struck five and Beatie reluctantly rose, saying they had better be starting back. Abbie and the others followed her and Tom outside. There Tom shook hands with Beatie’s parents and they kissed Beatie goodbye. A minute later, with Beatie calling back, ‘I’ll try to see you in a month or so,’ the young couple started away.

At seven o’clock, soon after high tea, the Pattisons – Jack Pattison and his wife Agnes – came round for the evening.

Frank Morris and Jack Pattison played chess every three weeks, turn and turn about visiting one another’s homes. They played from about seven until nine thirty. If a game was still in progress at the end of the evening they would write down the positions and resume it at their next meeting. These chess games had been going on for more than two years now, and were among the few things in Frank Morris’s life in the way of a pleasurable pastime. When he was not out at work helping in the construction of some building, he was normally working on the allotment or the small cottage garden. And, whereas many men from the village went regularly to the pub, he went very infrequently. When he did go it would usually follow some disagreement at home; then he would take off for the Harp and Horses and sit with a few of the other villagers, making a couple of pints of ale last for two or three hours. So his chess and his books were the real sources of his relaxation, and with regard to the former he looked forward to his meetings with Jack Pattison. They might have had little in common outside of the game, but within it they were a good match and that was what counted.

Pattison and his wife, a childless couple, ran the post office on the far side of the village. Abbie found them an ill-matched pair – not only in physical attractiveness but also in their personalities. Mr Pattison was a tallish, handsome man of forty-five with thinning dark hair, a spare, wiry frame and a bright, ready laugh. His wife Agnes was a little wisp of a woman two years his senior, with spectacles and an out-of-date wardrobe, which Abbie’s mother often said she wouldn’t be seen dead in. To Abbie, Mrs Pattison always seemed to be weighed down by cares and tribulations which, with grave, ill-hidden relish, she described in low tones to Abbie’s mother as they sat facing one another across the range, Mrs Pattison knitting, Mrs Morris mending. The subject of Mrs Pattison’s weary tales was, as often as not, her aged mother who lived in Westbury and enjoyed very poor health, and had done so for many years.

Sometimes, if Mrs Pattison was a little off colour, or visiting her ailing mother, Jack Pattison came alone. He seemed more relaxed at such times. Usually, however, his wife was with him.

On the Pattisons’ arrival Lizzie and Iris would be sent up to bed while Abbie put the kettle on for tea and then ran down to the Harp and Horses to get a jug of ale. In the meantime the two men would take their seats facing one another across the kitchen table on which Abbie’s father had already set out the chess pieces, while the two women sat down to have a quiet chat – enjoyed by Mrs Pattison and suffered by Mrs Morris. When Abbie returned she would pour a mug of ale for each of the men and make tea for the women and herself. That done, she would sit at the other end of the table where she read or sewed and listened to the women’s conversation while occasionally looking up as the men murmured to each other in the progress of their game. Eddie would keep well out of the way at such times.

‘So I said to her,’ came Mrs Pattison’s hushed, lugubrious voice to Abbie’s half-attentive ears, ‘“Mother,” I said, “you got to remember that you ain’t a young woman no more, and you can’t do what a young woman does.”’

‘That’s right,’ said Abbie’s mother, barely looking up from her mending.

‘Right, indeed,’ said Mrs Pattison, knitting needles clicking between her swiftly moving fingers. ‘But she’s a wilful woman and stubborn as a mule. “Leave the curtains,” I says to ’er. “Leave ’em for now, and Jack’ll come over next week and hang ’em for you.” But no, she wants ’em up then and there, and if I won’t ’elp ’er, she says, she’ll get up on the chair and hang ’em herself. “Drat the curtains!” I says. I wish I’d never brought ’em over in the first place.’

‘It must be difficult for you,’ said Mrs Morris, while Abbie smiled inside herself – like her mother, giving nothing away.

‘So, of course,’ Mrs Pattison continued, ‘I’ve got no choice but to climb up and hang the dratted things meself. Let Mother start trying to do it and she’d only ’ave a fall. And she ain’t got over the last one yet. That was terrible that time. Did I tell you about that afternoon when she . . .’

Her voice went on.

Mrs Morris occasionally, if half-heartedly, complained about the Pattisons’ visits – though more specifically of the visits of Pattison’s wife. ‘
He’s
not too bad,’ she would say to her husband. ‘And when it’s just the two of you I can relax, concentrate on a bit of reading or something. But when
she
comes too, it’s goodbye to any thoughts of relaxing, that’s for sure.’ Then she would sigh, as if relenting. ‘Still, I suppose I can put up with it now and again. Just thank God it’s not every week, that’s all.’

As far as Abbie knew, Mrs Pattison was about the only person in the village who ever engaged her mother in conversation – if such it could be called – and even that was forced upon her. As for Mr Pattison, Abbie observed that her mother rarely exchanged more than a good evening and a good night with him.

Tonight the chess game finished just on ten past nine and as Abbie’s father put the pieces away after his victory he asked Pattison and his wife if they’d like to stay for another cup of tea and another drop of ale. While Pattison gratefully accepted the offer of ale, his wife declined the tea, saying that as much as she’d like a drop more, it was inclined to give her insomnia, so if it was all the same she’d join her husband and have a little drop of ale too – which would help to settle her stomach.

What little ale was left Abbie, getting a nod from her father, shared between the visitors. For the next fifteen minutes or so they sat and chatted, the conversation coming mostly from the men. Abbie listened fascinated as her father spoke of a book that he had recently been reading, which had apparently caused considerable disturbance in the outside world. Written by a man named Darwin, she learned, it was called
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
and all boiled down to the idea that there had never been any special time of creation; that there never had been that week in which God had created the world and everything in it – in fact, it appeared that God had not created the world at all, but that all the living things had somehow developed from other living things.

‘Well, I never did!’ said Mrs Pattison. ‘Who ever heard of such a thing! That’s blasphemy. And what about
us
, then? Where did
we
come from, I’d like to know?’

‘Well,’ said Abbie’s father, ‘according to Darwin we’re like every other living creature – we developed from lower forms of life.’

‘Lower forms of life?’ Mrs Pattison said. ‘What d’you mean by that?’

‘Well – other animals.’

‘Other
animals
, indeed!’

‘That’s what Darwin says,’ Frank Morris went on. ‘And going by what I read in the papers there’s a lot that agrees with him.’

‘Papers,’ said Mrs Pattison contemptuously. ‘People read too much in the papers, if you ask me. I never heard of such a thing. What kind of animals? Pigs and horses and such, I suppose.’

‘What do you think, Mrs Morris?’ asked Mr Pattison, turning to Abbie’s mother. ‘D’you think there could be anything in it?’

‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ she said shortly, barely glancing at him. ‘Though looking at a few of the folks in this village I wouldn’t be in the least surprised.’

The two men, and Abbie, too, laughed at this, laughter in which Abbie’s mother did not join – as neither did Mrs Pattison, who only clicked away with her needles, lips compressed.

And then it was nine thirty. The ale was finished. Mrs Pattison put away her knitting, and she and her husband got up to go.

‘In three weeks, then, Frank, yes?’ said Pattison to Abbie’s father as they moved to the door. ‘And your turn to come to us.’ He chuckled. ‘I’ll have my revenge then, you’ll see.’ He turned to Abbie’s mother. ‘And you’ll be along too, will you, Mrs Morris?’ he asked, adding with a smile, ‘Aggie’s always glad of the chance of a chinwag.’

‘Well,’ Mrs Morris replied almost ungraciously, ‘we’ll see.’

When the visitors had gone she said, ‘And there’s another evening wasted.’

‘Pleasure shouldn’t always be seen as a waste of time,’ protested her husband.

‘Talk of pleasure’s all very well,’ she said. ‘But you want to try sitting with that stupid woman for an evening. I don’t think you’d call it pleasure.’

‘Maybe not – but while they’re here I think you might try to enter into it a little more. When Jack asked you round you barely answered the man.’

‘He’s
your
friend, Frank,’ she said. ‘And though I’ve nothing against him I’ve nothing much to say to him, either.’ Turning, she caught sight of Abbie at the table, her open book before her. ‘And you, Abigail,’ she went on sharply, ‘sitting there with your ears flapping like cabbage leaves – get on up to bed.’

Chapter Four

When Abbie got up the next morning her father had already left for Bath – which meant that she would not see him again until the weekend. Once she had finished her morning chores, she sat and wrote a letter to Mrs Curren in Eversleigh, confirming that she was pleased to accept her offer of the place and would be there on Saturday, 9 August. That done, she got her mother’s permission to go and visit Jane for a while.

When she reached the Carrolls’ cottage she found Jane mopping the floor while Mrs Carroll sat at the window, working on a piece of lace. Abbie stood to one side, talking to them as they worked.

‘I’ll bet your mam was pleased, wasn’t she?’ Jane said. ‘About your getting the place at Marylea House?’

‘Yes,’ Abbie replied. ‘She’s pleased well enough.’

‘And your father too? What did he say?’

‘Oh, well – if he had his way I’d still be at school. Still, I told him that per’aps I can go back to my studies in a little while.’

‘Pr’aps you can,’ said Mrs Carroll. ‘You’re a clever enough girl. There’s them that says girls haven’t got the brains that boys have, but I don’t hold with it meself. The trouble is though, Abbie, once you gets into something – like going into service – it’s not always easy to stop, to break out. You’ve seen it yourself – girls go into service and they don’t come out till they retires, or dies or, if they’re lucky, gets married. Mind you, there’s them that say women only swap one kind of service for another once they get wed – although most women wouldn’t have it any other way.’ She paused. ‘I certainly wouldn’t have.’ Her eyes moved, resting on a photograph in a cheap tin frame on the mantelpiece. In sepia tones it showed her as a younger woman, sitting with Jane, a small child of four, on her knee. Her husband, solemn as his wife and wearing a uniform of the Infantry, stood stiffly at her side. He had been killed fighting against the Russians at Sebastopol. Abbie could still remember Mrs Carroll’s grief.

‘Oh, there’s no doubt,’ Mrs Carroll said, ‘it’s a hard life for the likes of poor people. But if you can share it with the right one it makes all the difference in the world.’ She bent again over her lace. ‘Anyway, you decide what you want out of life and try to get it. And if you want to study you must make up your mind to do it.’

As the days passed Abbie thought more and more of what Mrs Carroll had said. It was true, she would need to set her mind to it if she really intended to study and do something with her life. But going into service would be only a temporary thing, she was determined on that; she had no intention of spending years and years making beds and cooking and cleaning for other people, no matter that it was what so many other girls did. There had to be something better.

Frank Morris came back from Bath again at the weekend, and following midday dinner on Sunday afternoon he and Abbie walked together with Lizzie and Iris to Sunday school. After seeing them inside the little church hall they continued on, leaving the village behind and taking a footpath through the fields.

The afternoon was warm with a brilliant sun shining out of a cloudless blue sky. They walked through a pasture where cattle grazed, and then beside a hedgerow where hazelnuts, blackberries and elderberries were ripening. On the other side of the hedge grew a field of wheat, its gold splashed here and there with the scarlet of poppies. Reaching the far side of the field they came to a little thicket and sat down in the shade of an oak. As they did so three white doves, momentarily alarmed, fluttered up on rattling wings and then descended to settle again on their perches. Out in the grass of the meadow a blackbird was feeding its young.