The River Folk (5 page)

Sarah stepped forward and bent to speak to the girl, who was acting like a truculent child. ‘Cook’s just taken a batch of scones out of the oven. Maybe she’ll let you have one, thick with lovely butter and strawberry jam.’ She held out her hand. ‘You come with me, pet.’

Mary Ann stared up at the maid for a moment and then very slowly put out her hand to take Sarah’s. Then she looked back at Bessie. ‘You won’t leave me here? You won’t go home without me?’

‘Well, I’ve come to see about you going to school somewhere, love, but I promise not to leave you here without telling you first.’

Mary Ann pouted. ‘I don’t want to stay here. I want to go home to my mam. I’ve got to see if my mam’s all right. You know I have.’

For the first time, Bessie saw a side to the girl that she had not seen before. Suddenly, Mary Ann seemed much older than her years. With a shock, Bessie realized now that that was what she had seen in the depths of those brown eyes, experience and knowledge beyond her years. This child had seen things that no twelve-year-old ought to have witnessed.

Bessie patted Mary Ann’s hand. ‘You go with Sarah, love. Everything will be all right.’

‘Promise?’

‘I promise.’

For a long moment she stared into Bessie’s eyes, gauging if this woman was to be trusted. Satisfied, Mary Ann turned and allowed herself to be led from the room.

As the door closed behind them, Bessie let out a huge sigh. ‘If ever I needed help, Miss Edwina, I need it now.’

The two women regarded each other solemnly across the desk and then the younger one reached out with both her hands and Bessie put her own into them. ‘Oh Bessie, you know I will do anything – anything I can – to help you. I owe you such a debt of gratitude I’ll never be able to repay if I live to be a hundred and fifty.’

They smiled at each other, but the anxiety that was in Bessie’s eyes was still there, just like the sorrow that never quite left the blue eyes of the young woman sitting opposite her.

‘I’ll never forget what you did for our family, Bessie. And for me, especially.’

Bessie’s thoughts went back to the dreadful time when Edwina’s brother, Arthur, had been killed on the Somme. Only a week later, Edwina had learnt that her fiancé, Christopher, had been killed too.

‘I thought my world had ended,’ Edwina murmured softly. ‘And I couldn’t be any help to poor Mother, grieving over her firstborn.’

‘She was always very kind to me.’ Bessie smiled fondly, remembering the time Edwina’s mother had come to live at The Hall as a young bride. For a time, Bessie had been her personal maid, until she had left service to marry Bert. ‘She even seemed to understand why I was so homesick for the river.’

At fourteen Bessie had been forced to find employment ashore. ‘I could’ve been mate for me father aboard his ship, but I had a younger brother and me dad wanted him.’ Bessie looked mournful for a moment, recalling the time when she had hated the fact that she had been born a woman. But her life in service had been made all the easier by the young Mrs Marsh.

‘So,’ Bessie went on, ‘when I heard about Arthur being killed – such a lovely little chap, he was, as a bairn – and then you losing your young man too, well, I had to come to The Hall. Just to see if there was owt I could do. Though,’ Bessie sighed heavily, ‘what can anyone do in such circumstances?’

Edwina closed her eyes for a moment as if feeling again the searing grief. ‘You did more for us than you can possibly know, Bessie. I was so glad to see you that day.’

They glanced at each other and Bessie knew their memories were the same. Edwina’s mother had been hysterical with grief. Her father had locked himself in his study to deal with his sorrow in his own way and her brother, Randolph, had disappeared for several days. Even now, no one knew exactly where he had gone.

‘There we were,’ Edwina said, with a trace of bitterness in her tone. ‘Supposed to be pillars of Elsborough society. Father, a leading businessman in the town. Mother, with her charitable works. And what happened? We all went to pieces. Countless other families were losing fathers, husbands, sons and . . . and fiancés and managing to get on with their lives, yet we couldn’t cope. Do you know, Bessie, I truly believe that without your strength, I wouldn’t have come through it.’

‘Oh Miss Edwina, ’course you would. You’re strong. You’d have come through right enough.’ Bessie was flattered by the compliment and knew her cheeks were glowing pink, but she felt she didn’t deserve it. She squeezed Edwina’s hands, then released them and sat back in her chair. ‘How is your mother now?’

‘Bearing up, as they say. But I don’t think she’ll ever get over it, Bessie. I don’t think any of us will.’

‘No, lass,’ Bessie said softly, ‘you don’t get over a thing like that, you just learn to live with it and carry on as best you can.’ Briefly her thoughts flitted to Amy Hamilton, locked away in her house in Waterman’s Yard. She hadn’t seen her for two days, Bessie realized with a jolt. She really must . . . But Edwina’s next words were dragging her back to her present problem.

‘Now, tell me about Mary Ann.’

By the time Bessie arrived back home, she felt a lot happier. Edwina had offered to take the girl, at least for a few weeks, without payment and Mary Ann, won over by cook’s buttered scones, had agreed to stay for the rest of the day, provided that Bessie promised to fetch her home in the late afternoon.

‘I’ll be able to assess her, Bessie, and even if she has to go to another school, it’ll make the transition easier for everyone,’ Edwina had said. ‘There won’t be so many awkward questions asked about where she’s been before. The less anyone knows about the poor child’s home circumstances, the better.’

Bessie had looked at the sweet face in front of her. Edwina’s golden hair was piled high on her head and soft curls fell on to her forehead. She was a pretty girl, with delicate features that belied an underlying strength of character. But in the blue eyes, there was always a sadness now that Bessie knew only time could heal. Was this lovely young woman destined to fill her lonely life educating other people’s children?

‘You’ll meet someone else, one day,’ Bessie had said aloud, gently.

Edwina had shaken her head. ‘Even if I wanted to, Bessie, a whole generation of fine young men –
my
generation – has been wiped out. There are going to be a lot of war widows and spinsters, who’ll never find a husband. They simply won’t be there.’

With that Bessie had not been able to argue.

Bessie’s contentment with her morning’s work was short-lived. No sooner had she sat down in the armchair near the range, and eased her feet out of her shoes to rub her bunion, than there was a knock at the door.

‘Come in, whoever you are,’ she called out. ‘Can’t a body have five minutes’ peace around here?’

Minnie Eccleshall popped her head around the door leading into Bessie’s kitchen. ‘There you are, Bessie. Where’ve you been?’

‘That’s for me to know and you to find out, Minnie Eccleshall. What do you want?’

Minnie, small and thin with sharp features, came and sat down opposite her. ‘Any tea on the go, Bessie?’

‘If you make it, Minnie. I’m fair whacked out. I’ve walked nearly to the bridge and back . . .’ And I’ve got to do it again this afternoon, she thought to herself.

‘Whatever for?’

‘I’ve just told you, that’s—’

‘All right, all right.’ Minnie jumped up again, reached for the kettle and went out into the scullery to fill it. She set it on the fire and then busied herself setting cups on the table and fetching tea, milk and sugar. Then she set the teapot to warm on the hearth.

Again she sat down. ‘Have you seen Amy, ’cos neither me nor Gladys have seen her for two days?’

‘No, Minnie, I ain’t, so let’s have this tea you’re making and then we’ll go across. That’s if I can get me feet back into me shoes,’ she added wryly.

Half an hour later the two women were banging on the door of Amy Hamilton’s house.

‘I didn’t see a light on last night, either, now I come to think of it,’ Minnie whispered, though exactly why she was whispering she could not have explained. It was as if she had a sudden foreboding. She clutched hold of Bessie’s arm. ‘Oh Bess, you don’t think we’re going to find her hanging from the ceiling, d’you?’

‘Don’t talk daft, Minnie,’ Bessie snapped, but for a brief moment even Bessie’s usual confidence deserted her.

Amy had been so depressed, and although all the neighbours had rallied round when the dreadful news had first come through that poor Amy had lost not only her husband but, later, her son too, there was a limit to their goodness. Time had passed and their patience with the grieving woman was exhausted. Only Bessie still waddled across the yard most mornings, to knock on Amy’s door to make sure she was up and about and facing the day.

Bessie sighed. Even she was beginning to think that it was high time Amy pulled herself together. Nevertheless, as she felt under the loose brick near the door to retrieve the key, Bessie couldn’t help thinking for the second time that day, ‘It’s not happened to you, Bessie Ruddick, so don’t judge others till you know how it feels.’

As she turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door, she found she was holding her breath and praying silently, ‘Please let her be all right. Don’t let her have done anything daft.’

‘You there, Amy?’ Bessie called.

They were creeping through the gloomy house like a couple of criminals.

‘What if she’s taken a bottle of pills or summat and she’s lying in bed,’ Minnie, close on Bessie’s heels, whispered. ‘Dead for two days and not one of us knew.’

Or cared enough to know, Bessie’s conscience smote her, so that once more she snapped back, ‘Give it a rest, Minnie. You should have been a writer with that imagination of yours.’

Huffily, Minnie said, ‘I’m only trying to warn you, Bessie. That’s all. I don’t want you to walk into her bedroom and get a nasty shock.’

‘All right, all right,’ Bessie said testily. In truth, she was beginning to get even more anxious. The grate was cold, the ashes not even cleared out, and on the table stood a jug of milk, turning sour, and a loaf of bread with green mould on it.

‘Come on, we’d better look upstairs, Min.’

‘You can go first, seeing as you think me so fanciful.’

Outside the door of the front bedroom, Bessie, her hand on the knob, paused and exchanged a glance with Minnie. ‘Here goes,’ she murmured and pushed open the door. The room was in darkness but, nevertheless, they could see a mound beneath the bedclothes.

Behind her, Minnie let out a piercing shriek, startling Bessie so that every nerve in her body jumped.

The mound of bedclothes too seemed to leap in the air, bounce and then sit up with a cry of its own.

Bessie recovered the quickest and lumbered across the room to drag open the curtains. Then she turned to look at the woman in the bed. ‘Oh, so you are still in the land of the living, Amy Hamilton.’ She eyed her sceptically and then sniffed. ‘But by the look of you, only just! You ill?’

Amy clutched at her chest and flopped back against the pillows and pulled the covers up to her chin. ‘What have I got to get up for?’ she said piteously and allowed the tears that filled her eyes to trickle down her temples and into her matted, unkempt hair. ‘Go away and leave me alone. I just want to die.’

‘Really?’ Bessie said dryly. ‘Not if I have anything to do with it. We can’t afford flowers.’ She pushed her sleeves up her arms and then turned to heave the sash window upwards. The morning air blew freshly into the stale room. Shivering, Amy burrowed beneath the covers.

‘Come on out of it.’ Bessie grasped the bedclothes and flung them back, revealing the thin woman curled up into a ball. ‘Just look at the state of you! What would your George say if he could see you now?’

‘Oh Bess, that’s cruel.’ Minnie’s eyes were round, whilst Amy started to wail.

‘Sometimes, Minnie Eccleshall, you’ve got to be cruel to be kind. Now, are you going to help me get her out of this bed or do I have to do it on me own? Because, mark my words, Minnie . . .’ Bessie wagged her finger across the bed at her friend and neighbour. ‘Out she’s coming, whether she likes it or not.’

Minnie sighed and shook her head. ‘You’re a hard woman, Bessie. A hard woman.’

‘Aye, but I’m right, aren’t I? If we let her lie here . . .’ Bessie said no more as with one accord they grasped hold of Amy and dragged her bodily out of the bed.

‘’Ere, wrap this blanket round her and tek her downstairs. In fact, tek her across to my house. It’s warm there. Make her a cup of tea and there’s some porridge on the stove. Get some of that into her. I’m going to strip this bed . . .’

Ten minutes later, Bessie waddled into her own back scullery, scarcely able to see where she was going above the mound of washing she was carrying. ‘Good job I was planning on lighting the copper in the wash-house today.’

There was a communal wash-house in Waterman’s Yard and every week, usually on a Monday, the women gathered together to boil, wash, rinse and mangle their washing and exchange gossip. All except, in recent weeks, Amy Hamilton.

‘Mind you,’ Bessie was grumbling, ‘with all that’s been going on this morning, it’s a bit late on in the day for starting a washday now.’

Minnie sniffed unsympathetically. ‘Well, if you will go off on secret missions – so secret you can’t tell your best friend – then . . .’

Bessie’s eyes twinkled. Poor Minnie didn’t like being left in the dark about what was going on in the yard. ‘I’ll tell you, Min. All in good time, but . . .’ She lowered her voice. ‘Let’s see to poor Amy first, eh?’

Minnie grinned at her friend. ‘Right you are, Bess. Whatever you say.’ She paused and then asked, ‘Er . . . what, exactly, are we going to do?’

‘There’s plenty of hot water in me back boiler, so you fetch me tin bath out the wash-house and . . .’

‘You’re not going to give her a bath in the middle of the day, Bess. And it’s not even Friday.’

‘And how many Fridays in recent weeks do you reckon she’s given ’ersen a bath? Did you see ’er feet? Black, they are.’

‘Oh but, Bess . . .’

‘Don’t “Oh but, Bess” me. And another thing. Have you got any clothes she could borrow while I get all hers washed? Dear oh dear, I’ve never seen a body in such a state in all me born days.’