January 1887
‘January brings the snow
Makes our feet and fingers glow.’
Monday, January 3rd
Tizzie leant against the kitchen range, ears straining. Were that Jack stirring? By, she hoped her brother wouldn’t catch her still inside. He wouldn’t half carry on. She turned herself round to toast her rear and sighed. That were it, Christmas done and gone, Hagman Heigh and the First Footing over ‘til next New Year’s Eve, workaday Monday back again. And a cold one. She pressed closer to the oven door, wishing her spare frame carried more fat. She were as bony as a starved cow, so Jack always said.
A good New Year it’d been, one lightened by a rare time of neighbourliness ‘twixt the village and her brother and his wife. Grand to see Jack and Maggie join in the community celebrations. Tizzie reckoned up the New Years. Twelve it’d been since their Da died and Jack and Maggie moved onto the farm, and they’d only been First Footing for maybe four of them. It didn’t go down well this cutting themselves off from the village. When had it started? And how had it grown to so deep a divide? She hated it, missed the company, missed the chat.
The parlour clock struck six. The cows waited, and Jack’d be clattering down stairs, champing to get some milk into cans and off on the milk train to Leeds. Best move now she were warmed up. Tizzie bent to place her hands as close as she could to the fire door. At least she’d take warm fingers out to start with. Footsteps boomed overhead. Jack, already in a bate by the weight of that tread. Best keep out of his way, or he’d start her day with name calling, older brother insults, Skinny Lizzie, or Twiggy Tizzie, them being the most polite, and go on to ranting about sisters who didn’t do their duty or their proper share. Not the best way to start a day’s toil being on the rough end of a Cawthra temper storm. She grabbed her woollen hat, gloves, and scarf, flung her heavy work shawl over her homespun jacket and slid quickly out of the back door.
Aye, the weather’d jumped right into hard winter. She fumbled into her gloves and hat, wrapped the scarf around her head and face and caught up her candle lanthorn. The moonlight showed blackthorn hedges, which fair crackled under the sharp frost, and every stone in the field walls shone, iced bright as a new silver thruppence. The frost lay that thick and white, it looked like icing on the Christmas cake. It were right pretty, but bitter cold. The frost had breath, pinched and nipped her fingers and toes even through the new woollen gloves and thick knitted socks in her stout leather boots. Like an ice wind, the frost gnawed down to the bone, sang in her ears ‘til they ached. She scurried, clattering on the cobbles in the upper yard, slowing to a cautious walk when she reached the frosted mud and frozen puddles marring the unpaved part of the cow yard. She reached down the lanthorn from its peg in the shippon, lit it, hung both lanthorns, and sought the cows.
“Cush, cush, come up,” she called. “Come on, come in,” she coaxed as she opened the gate. Her cows, snug in their well strawed yard, followed her to the shippon door reluctantly, but, bless them, entered in good order. It were that cold the farm cats hadn’t venture down from the hay loft. Sensible creatures, they’d stay warm, knowing she’d squirt the first draw of milk into an old pot for them to find later. Tizzie breathed in the warm gassy-sweet cow smell, set to her task. She had reared every one of her cows. ‘Twas worth the hard work for each patiently stood for her, untethered. Puffs of cow breath hung, frozen like clouds, in the air. Tizzie huffed her own out and sang softly. Her fingers kept moving, but, ouch, her toes, little lumps of ice they’d become.
Milking done, Tizzie gave each cow a pet and pat, smoothed comforting hands along their swelling bellies, checking their growing calves. All doing fine and well, thank the Lord. She opened the shippon door. “Come then, my beauties.” She watched them sway past her into the yard. Her brother’d been narked over the depth of the straw she used in the yard. He always stinted little things that mattered, but Tizzie gathered enough bracken each summer to eke out the threshed straw. Jack never would heed that her cows, snug in the warmth, rewarded her with more milk than anyone else’s. Cussed contrary her brother was.
She could eat her hot porridge right now, but the milk must be sieved and set out for the cream to rise. The yard were empty. At least one of those lads ought to be here to help, ‘twere Mike’s task usually, but Maggie’d let him stay in and keep warm if Jack didn’t need him. She adjusted the yoke and lifted the pails. Her fingers were turning white as she pulled on her gloves. ‘Twas a pity you couldn’t milk with gloves, not even fingerless mittens. She’d just have to thole it and hope the waiting would make breakfast all the sweeter. On a day like this she’d rather freeze once, early in a day, for then she could stay inside and keep warm until afternoon dairy tasks drove her out again.
With the milk set out, she ran down the passage to the cheese room, stamping each booted foot hard to put some life back in her unfeeling toes. The cheese room, sheltered between the dairy and shippon, and sharing a double wall with the house, kept an even cool temperature. It ought to feel cold, but today it felt warmer than the dairy. Tizzie smelled each cheese, investigating the forming rind as she rubbed it with her salted cloth. She didn’t want aught to spoil her best cheeses. Still these were looking good, smelling fine and feeling right. Maggie’d be pleased, another batch of Tizzie’s specials to sell for a high price. Maggie were good at that, found markets in the West Riding, not just locally.
Came a clatter at the door, the latch snecked. Tizzie looked up. She’d wondered where Agnes had got to. There she were, hovering, wanting to slip in. What a lass.
“Auntie Tiz?”
“Now then, Agnes, what did I say about coming into my cheese room?” Tizzie made her voice a bit sharpish as her niece tried to sidle in. “Out of here, missy, you know I’ll not have anyone come breathing over my cheeses.”
Agnes halted, stepped back over the door sill, and leant against the door frame, sniffing the cheese room’s old milk and ripe mould scents. A thin and wiry nine, she had, so everyone said, a strong look of her aunt. Tizzie wished her niece better, hoped she’d grow into a softer prettiness that were more attractive to the lads. Now though she regarded the expression on Agnes’s face. Compounded of guilt and reluctance it cried ‘Here’s a problem,’ and Tizzie knew the problem was hers to sort. “What is it, lass?”
“See what I found. It’s got your name on, Auntie Tiz.” Agnes drew a folded sheet of paper from her apron pocket, then pushed vainly at the straggles of brown hair escaping from her ribbons to tickle her neck. “I’m sorry, Aunt, I had to open the page to read the name.” She looked away, eyes downcast, scuffed her feet.
“Don’t fret, poppet, I’ll not scold you for reading my letter.”
Agnes glanced back, checked Tizzie’s face, and smiled tentatively. “I didn’t read it, Auntie Tiz. ‘Twas in the pile of Christmas papers and cards in the box put aside to be burnt. Mam said I could cut out any from there for my keepsake book.” Agnes frowned, her voice rising slightly, puzzled.
“Well, I thank you for rescuing it, Agnes.” Tizzie wiped her hands on the linen towel pinned to her apron waistband and took the letter. “We’ll think naught about it, eh?” Agnes smiled her broad grin of relief. She clattered off, her boots tap-tapping along the stone flagged passage way. Tizzie hesitated. Why did she feel the need to call out and warn Agnes to say nowt? Agnes mayn’t be bonnie, but she were quick. She knew things when Tizzie didn’t have a glimmer, aye, she often set Tizzie aright, and three big brothers had surely taught her to sneck her tongue rather than wag it.
Tizzie turned the letter over in her hands. Where were the envelope? Who had opened it first, before Agnes found it? She unfolded the creased, dog-eared sheet and read the bold signature. Tom! Dear little brother Tom. It’d been hard sometimes being the one lass in a parcel of brothers, but they were family. Tizzie had a fondness for every one of them and especially for her youngest brother. She didn’t see ‘em much any more. They’d all left home bar Jack and her. Jem had gone for a soldier out in India. A Sergeant now. Harry worked with Da ‘til he’d married a lass who came into a farm of her own, away in the West Riding. Sammy bossed a lot of mill girls, working as foreman in a woollen mill over in Haworth, but Tom, he’d wanted more than a rented farm. He’d worked double shifts, saved his mill wage, and gone out to New Zealand. He’d asked her to go with him, but there’d been a young man she fancied then. Tizzie shook her head. Nearly ten years ago that would a’ been. No young men came calling now.
Of course! Tom would have put this letter in with his Christmas letter to all the family. That’s why it were open. Tizzie’s thoughts faltered, she rubbed her forehead, blinked, and looked at the page. The address were right queer, Cawthra House, Keri Keri. She near laughed out loud, Cawthra House sounded that grand. And what kind of name were Keri Keri? Slowly she spelt out the letter.
‘My dear Tizzie,’ it read. ‘Here I sit on my verandah, enjoying a sunny summer day on my farm. We have plenty of sun here in December, I’m used to a summer Christmas now. Change your mind, lass, come and join me. It’s a good place for them who can work, and I know you’re a worker. There are some fine men here need a good wife. There’s a happy future for you in New Zealand. You think on, and let me know if you change your mind. I’m well set and can pay your fare and give you a comfortable home. I need you, Tiz, someone as good as you has to teach the girls here how to look after a dairy, churn sweet butter and make prize cheeses like you do.’ He’d signed off as: ‘Your affectionate brother, Tom.’
Well, Tom always had been the kindest of her brothers, not into tormenting and bullying like Jack and Harry. Good of him to write. And looking at how things were now, her seeming set an old maid, and still living in the family home, perhaps she should have gone to New Zealand. She paused. Too late now. She were twenty-nine, long past a maid’s age and past seeking to be wed. Spinster she were in all eyes now, even her own. If only Johnnie... she stopped that memory and looked again at the address, noticed the date. Christmas, 1884. Two, no, it were three Christmases ago now. Three years? Where had the letter been? Carefully she folded it into her apron pocket, wiped her hands, and quietly shut the cheese room door behind her. Only then did she allow herself to lean against the whitewashed passage wall and try to understand why she’d never seen the letter. Who’d had it? And had there been others? Yet she’d never had but that one chance to go when Tom first set sail from Liverpool near ten years ago. Did he write other letters, asking her again to come? She’d never seen any such. Wondering why, she reached down her shawl from the hook on the dairy wall and wrapped herself in its thick woolly comfort. She’d run in now and catch Agnes over breakfast, learn more about the finding of this letter.
Catching Agnes were easy, finding her on her own proved difficult. All the family crowded the large table at the far end of the long farmhouse kitchen. Tizzie mentally pinched herself. She’d forgotten that school didn’t start until next week. The boys had been out helping their Da check the in-lamb ewes and wanted their breakfasts. Jack sat at table waiting to be served. Agnes helped her mother, carrying bowls of porridge to the table as Maggie dished up from the porridge pot, ladling generous amounts into each bowl. She allocated cream and sugar with a careful hand, all the while her eye on the frying pan, where thick slices of bacon popped and sizzled. Tizzie waited by the range, her hands and feet thawing, twinge by tingling twinge.
Bert, mindful of his duties as first born, poked his little brother. “Move along, young Mike, Auntie Tiz is here.” Mike sniffed, lifted another spoonful to his mouth. A stronger nudge from both his brothers got him moving, and the boys made space for her, hastily shifting their chairs. John-Jack nodded hello, his mouth bulging. Bert moved round, put Tizzie’s chair next to his Da. No, this weren’t the time to ask Agnes about that letter. Tizzie settled on the chair beside her brother.
“By, I can feel the cold coming off tha, Tizzie,” Jack said. “You need more than that shawl outside on a day like this.”
Maggie served her husband his porridge smothered in cream and sugar. “Double sweetening for you,” she said, placing the bowl carefully in front of him. She turned her head Tizzie’s way. “What about your woollen coat, Tiz? Do you want to use it for work now, and we’ll get you some more stuff and a new coat made for Sunday Best?” The bacon spluttered and spat, the sudden tang of burning sent Maggie hastening to the pan.
Tizzie thought about a new coat as Agnes gave her a bowl of porridge, well sugared and double creamed too. The sneaky lass had taken advantage of her mother’s absence to give herself and her aunt extra. She grinned up into Tizzie’s face and slipped onto the stool beside her, half turned towards Tizzie to shield her bowl from Mike’s eyes. Mike wasn’t looking. He was arguing with his brothers. Sheep talk again, the St Columba's Day gift of that year’s lambs.
“Good crop of lambs due this year,” John-Jack said. He looked sideways at his young brother. “Be a good year to get the lucky slice of St. Columba’s cake with the coin in it. Shame I’ve had my share.”
“You’ve both had the silver thruppence twice times, I’ve only had it one time.” Mike took the bait and missed his brothers’ winks.
“I’ve never had it,” indignantly from Agnes.
“Born unlucky you are.” Mike jabbed his sister in the ribs with a well placed thumb. Agnes shot upwards, only Tizzie’s quick hand saved her porridge bowl.
“I’m not.” She rubbed her poked ribs.
“You are. You’re a lass, that’s unlucky. Everyone knows lasses are useless.”
Maggie interrupted the argument, bringing a plate of bacon, sausage, eggs and potato cakes to Jack. “No more from you, missy,” she rapped her daughter hard upon the head, “and you’d better be extra good and work hard at school, Master Michael. It’s only the good as find Saint Columba’s silver thruppence and the lambs.”
Jack rose from his chair. “I’m away to the sheep barn again, Maggie. You ken, lads, be quick and follow when you’re through eating, we’ve more ewes to bring in. Bert, you finish the horses first.” He added his bit to the banter. “Your Aunt Tizzie is always good, Mike, happen she’ll get that lucky coin this year.”
Bert and John-Jack laughed, sneaking glances at Mike.
“Aye, maybe this time it’ll be grown ups, and they don’t count.” Bert elbowed his brother so that Mike coughed over his bacon. “Won’t be you, bad lad, but it might be Aunt Tizzie. You heard Mam, that silver thruppence’s the Saint's gift to a good child. Good, mark you, Mike.” Mike scowled, but kept his hands to himself.
Tizzie smiled down at Agnes. “Then it’s your turn this year. You’re always good.”
Agnes stirred, opened her mouth, but kept her peace, eyeing the distance between herself and Mike. He glowered at her. “Tha’s a knowing lass,” Tizzie whispered, “keep still and he’ll not bother you.”
Agnes nodded.
“Any more bacon, Mam?” Mike thrust his plate at Agnes. “You fetch me it, naggy Aggie.” He looked pleased with his rhyme. “Naggy Aggie. That’s what sisters do, nag their better brothers.”
Maggie paused, looking at Tizzie then Agnes. Tizzie, still wondering about her letter, didn’t catch Maggie’s hinting glance. Maggie shrugged and turned to Agnes. “Little lasses don’t need as much as growing lads. I’ll give you more porridge, Agnes. Come, bring up your bowl and your brother’s plate.”
Agnes spluttered into her porridge bowl. “But I’m hungry too,” she began. Tizzie touched her shoulder. Agnes rose and went to her mother, muttering.
“Don’t you complain, Agnes Cawthra. Your brother’s been out in the cold with the sheep whilst you’ve been underfoot in this warm kitchen.” Maggie sent her daughter back to the table with a sharp shove.
Mike snatched his plate and pulled a face at Agnes. Agnes stuck out her tongue, and he pinched her hard. “Little sisters must behave, nor do polite lasses do that,” he told her.
Agnes opened her mouth to retort, but Tizzie, returning with her plate of bacon, eggs and tatie cakes, shepherded Agnes away from troublesome brothers and into her seat. She dragged the spare stool from under the table with her foot, sat herself on it and put her plate in front of Agnes. “Share with me, if you’re still empty.”
Mike humphed, threatening to complain to his Mam. Tizzie spoke softly to him. “What’s wrong with you, lad, that you can’t be kind to your sister?”
Mike glowered and hunched his back at them both, playing with the extra bacon on his plate. His brothers muttered something to him, and he began to eat. Maggie returned to the table, cast a thoughtful eye over her three sons, then sat herself down with a cup of tea, placing the tea pot within Tizzie’s reach.
“Draper’s got some nice bottle green stuff would make you a coat, Tiz. T’would look good with a bit of military braid for trim, go with your new black boots. Or we could see what Sam might get from the mill.”
Tizzie nodded and poured Agnes some tea, then filled her own cup. “If we shorten that coat of mine to three quarter length, it’d be better for working in, and we could make Agnes a warm jacket for school.”
Maggie took the tea pot, steadying it with her hand before replying, “We could.” She plumped the teapot back on its stand and said no more.
Agnes, beside her aunt, kept silent, but Tizzie felt her stillness, her wanting, knew her eyes would be bright with hope. And Maggie’d not nay-sayed the suggestion. Happen the lass’d get a warm coat this year.
“She could come up and help me cut and hem my coat now, if you can spare her, Maggie.”
Maggie paused, then shook her head. “It’s Monday, and there’s all the extra Christmas linen still to wash. I need you both to help this morning. Tomorrow between the starching and baking you can squeeze a few moments.”
Tizzie nodded. Her life always ran like this. Never time to sit and think, to understand or work things out. Who could she ask about Tom’s letter? Agnes’d only know where she’d found it. Tizzie daren’t ask Jack, nor Maggie, it would be like accusing them of hiding it. They wouldn’t do that surely?
***
Tuesday, January 4th
Overnight the cold snap vanished. Tizzie left off her jacket, glad the frost had broken, leaving a rare, soft day. There were even a thin sun, so far up beyond grey clouds it looked whitish pale, valiantly tried to force rays through any gap amongst the lowering grey layers. Tizzie scoured and cleaned the setting pans, the milk pails, and her utensils, swinging the pump handle vigorously. She barely noticed the chilled water stiffening her fingers. Inside her head, Who? and Why? tolled in counterpoint like the church and chapel bells. She couldn’t stop worrying about it. Had Tom written other letters, and why hadn’t she seen them? She scarcely saw Agnes running in, plaits bouncing, without cap, coat or shawl.
“Auntie Tiz.”
Tizzie startled, came back to the present. “Eh, lass. Where’s your shawl? And did your Mam give you leave?”
Agnes nodded. “She told me to get out from under her feet for twenty minutes. Mike wanted her. We’ve to go back when you’re finished, to pan the bread. The bread oven’s fired, Mike lit it, and the furze caught fast, gave him a burn.”
“That’ll make him hop.” Tizzie continued her swilling. “Mind your feet, pet, you’ve not put your clogs on and you’ll get your boots soaked.”
“Auntie Tiz.” Agnes stopped, blinked at her aunt and abruptly began again. “My birthday in June. Ten, I’ll be ten.”
Tizzie swooshed out the last of the water and nodded. “Double figures, getting old, little lass. But I’m still nineteen year older than thee, tha’ll never catch up to me.”
“ I know that.” She dodged a finger of water. “Listen, Aunt Tizzie. Mam says this’ll be the last Saint Columba cake she’ll make.” Agnes fetched down a bunch of dried horse tails and swished them round the milk pails.
“Good lass, thank you.” Tizzie paused, thinking. “Your Mam didn’t tell me, so I didn’t know that.” She considered some more. “Well, maybe you are getting a little old. It’s a custom meant for bairns and with you turning ten and Mike being twelve, happen it is time to give over.” She watched Agnes working. “Make sure you catch any scrap of milk. That’s it, brisk and steady, but don’t scratch the wood.”
“Auntie Tiz, I’ve never had that lucky coin in all the years Mam’s been baking the St Columba’s Day cake.”
Tizzie reckoned the numbers. Fair wonder it were, over the twelve years since Maggie introduced the custom, how all of Agnes's brothers found that coin. Worked out at twice each it did for Bert and John-Jack, once for young Mike. Real valuable for starting them off in life. All three boys had a bit put by on interest in the bank from the sale of those lambs. Agnes didn't though. She'd never been lucky enough to find the silver thruppenny piece.
“Auntie Tiz, Mike says he’ll have the thruppence this year.”
Tizzie, in the midst of arithmetic, trying to figure out how many times the adults had received the lucky coin instead of a child and if it worked out fair over twelve years, paused. “Don’t be so foolish, poppet. He’s joshing you like always.”
“Nay, Aunt, Mam told him.”
“Nay, lass.” Tizzie turned away. ‘Twas a puzzle that Agnes should think her own Mam would do that. Trying to find words to reject the tale, she went to open the window for a through draft, tipped everything to face the brisk January breeze and left the lot to dry. She wiped her hands on her towel and offered an end to Agnes. “Here, wipe those hands, you’ll chap your fingers else.”
“Aunt?” It were a plea this time.
“Give over, lass, that’s nonsense, You’re making summat of nowt. Here, hold out your hands.”
Agnes sighed, offered her red hands and let Tizzie rub them for her.
Tizzie sighed too. “Mike’s not a kind lad right now. He’ll grow out of it, same as your Da did. He and your Da are very like.”
“But Da hasn’t...” Agnes saw Tizzie’s face and stopped herself, began again. “I saw Mam speak to Mike.”
Tizzie wrinkled up her nose and her brow in a deep frown. “Did you hear what she said?”
Agnes shook her head.
“Well, then. That’s your brother’s spiteful tongue at work.”
“Brothers! They always get everything.”
“That they do.” Tizzie wrapped an arm round Agnes and drew her close. “Brothers do, lads do, men do. That’s the way it is. We lasses, we women, we must give and support. They provide.” She found herself thinking again about Tom’s letter. She couldn’t keep a still tongue, she needed to know. “Did you find plenty of pictures and letters in that box for your keepsake book?” There, that was as near to direct as she could come.
Agnes drooped her head, avoided looking at her aunt.
“Agnes.”
“You want to know about that letter, if there were more.” It came out a half whispered mumble.
Too quick for her own good, were Agnes. Tizzie smiled to herself and placed a cold hand under Agnes’s chin. She regarded the flushed face with a questioning expression.
“I found one the Christmas before, but Mam said not to upset you with it or you’d be moping up and down the house for weeks.” Agnes looked straight into Tizzie’s eyes then, her own polished with tears. “It were wrong weren’t it, not to let you have the letters? I took that one ‘cos I wanted you to know.”
For a moment Tizzie held still, unbelieving, then let her commonsense tell her to think about it later, for the lass were upset. She slid her arm around the knobbly shoulders and squeezed Agnes until the tears stopped. “It were wrong, lass, but there’s naught we can say or do now. It’s too late for this Christmas any rate.” She patted Agnes’s arm. “How if we go to my room, where it’s warm, and start on cutting my coat for your jacket?”
Agnes sniffled and nodded. “Come here lass.” Tizzie gathered Agnes close, wrapping her oversized shawl around them both. Agnes giggled, snugged up in front of Tizzie, cosy as a hot water bottle, buried under the shawl. “We’re trussed up like the Pantomime cow,” Tizzie told her. They lumbered away to the house, trying to keep their feet in step, making silly mooing noises, laughing when they tripped.
Unseen they crept up the back stairs, down the long passage and up the little flight to Tizzie’s room. Tizzie snecked the latch to the door and pushed Agnes inside. It were cosy there, the fire banked, but still hot. They had another fifteen or so minutes before they were wanted in the kitchen, the bread oven temperature wouldn’t be high enough yet.
Agnes ran to warm her hands and feet. “I like this room,” she said. “It’s comfortable and quiet, away from us all.”
Tizzie looked round and agreed. It were a great stretch of a room, once the hay lofts above the cattle when this older part of the house had been a long house, beasts one end and people the other. It were all hers, light because of the three new windows fitted in the long wall when Maggie and Jack first settled her there, the walls fresh plastered then too and painted a pale yellow. Her favourite colour that shade of yellow, a shy yellow like spring’s first primroses. She had her own fireplace, sharing the kitchen chimney, which ran up one wall. She even had a good fire over winter, and enough fuel to keep the fire in overnight. Best of all though she had all the bits of furniture her Mam and Nan left her. Maggie didn’t like that old, turn of the century stuff, ‘plain and flimsy’ she called it. No, Maggie preferred the modern furniture, dark, solid and covered in what that cheeky lass, Agnes, called twiddly bits and Maggie called carving. They’d bought a fair bit, Maggie and Jack, when they moved in and Maggie made the place her own. But Tizzie liked her Mam’s and Nan’s things, and her private place up here, a distance from the family. A room of her own instead of a home of her own. Why if she’d replied to Tom she might have had...no use thinking like that now. Agnes needed her.
“Wish I had a thick warm rug on my floor, I’ve only a little bedside mat.” Agnes plonked herself down on the rug next to the fire, shed her slippers, and rubbed her feet.
Tizzie tutted. “Tha’s a bairn and bairns have to wait ‘til they grow up to get grown up comforts.” She fetched her coat from the row of pegs beside the door.
“The boys have a good rug in their room.”
Tizzie pretended not to hear. It were true the boys did have a good rug, the one brought upstairs when the downstairs parlour rug needed replacing, but it were too big for Agnes’s little bit of a room. She thought about a new coat, as she slid her hands over the cloth of her present coat. Cherry bright stuff. Good woollen cloth her brother, Sam, had sent from his mill. Sometimes he could buy cheap and would let them know when bargains came. She liked the colour, happen he could find her some more. She must get Agnes to help her write a letter to him and maybe ask after Tom. She found it hard to think ill of anyone, let alone her family, but Agnes said Maggie had deliberately kept other letters of Tom’s from her. Why? It were a problem enough to give her a headache, never mind the heartache.
“Come over, lass, take the chalk and mark the coat for me just above my knees, then we’ll see if cutting it there gives you enough for a jacket.”
Agnes left the fire reluctantly, but chalked away willingly. Tizzie looked down at the busy lass and silently blessed her niece. She weren’t proud, no, but even a little lass like Agnes could spell and reckon, read and write better than she did. “How about you and me write your Uncle Tom a letter?”
Agnes thought a bit before nodding. She sent a quick upwards glance, something expressed in her eyes which made Tizzie uncomfortable. “You know, Auntie Tiz, the new schoolmaster will be holding night classes for grown ups on a Thursday, a proper Night School. It’s for reading and writing and general knowledge. You could go, learn to write the letter there, all on your own.”
“Schooling? For me? Well, I don’t know, Agnes. I can read and write.” She could too, but reading and writing didn’t come easy. After all she’d not been schooled like her brothers. It had been out of the classroom before she were ten and into the milking parlour and dairy. Her Nan dying meant Mam needed help. She’d been going to go back to finish school, her Mam wished her to, only her Da wanted to be sure Tizzie knew her mother’s secrets to good butter and grand cheeses. More use to the lass than any schooling, he’d said, and they’d needed her in the house and dairy. That were the lot of an only daughter.
She paused in her cutting, as a notion occurred. Happen she had heard Tom’s news after all. Jack always read her the Christmas letter from him, knowing she’d be more comfortable hearing than reading. That were it. Tom’s letters to her had been overlooked, stuck in the envelopes or fell down somewhere to be found later. Aye, of course that must be it. Jack wouldn’t keep something that important from her. Maggie wouldn’t spoil her chance of a man and bairns of her own. She sighed with content, she’d reckoned up the problem and got a right answer. She held the cut cloth against Agnes. “What do you fancy? Enough here for a good long jacket if we lengthen it with different coloured stuff on the hems, cuffs and collar.”
Agnes twirled around, the cherry cloth draped around her neck and over her shoulders. “No. I like it as it is.”
Tizzie laughed. “Little Red Riding Hood? Well, we could make a hooded cape for you.” The roiling in her belly slackened, all was well. Jack and Maggie wouldn’t... she cut off the thought, grasped the scissors, and pictured a lined cape for Agnes.
Agnes stared at her aunt, laughed, spun round again, then decided, “Yes.”
The door rattled and rocked in its frame, as a fist slammed on the wood. The racket startled them both. “Mam wants you,” a muffled voice yelled. Mike didn’t stop to put his head round the door, or make a polite request to his aunt. He bashed again and galloped noisily down the stairs.
“That lad.” Tizzie pulled a face at Agnes. “ Later then.” She gathered the cloth off Agnes and laid it on her bed. She let the lass run on ahead and nodded to herself. Aye, she had the right of it. Jack nor Maggie wouldn’t stop her going to Tom in New Zealand if she wanted. Maggie’d once said it were a shame she hadn’t wed, encouraged her to go out to church suppers, the Friendly Society Dinner and Christmas party. “You might meet a good man,” she’d said. Not that there were any unwed men in their part of the Dale. Them that stayed had families now, them as went to the Mills in the West Riding didn’t return, but Maggie and Jack sent her out regular to hobnob with folks. Nay, it were all a mistake. She’d find a quiet time to ask Jack about Tom’s letters one evening when things were easy.
“Hurry, Aunt Tizzie, Mam needs us.” The faint voice carried down the passage.
“Coming, lass. I’m coming.”
***
Wednesday, January 5th
Tizzie waited ‘til the next day to speak to Jack. She planned to catch him after tea, when he’d be fatly fed and sleepy, but her plan faltered at the meal table.
“You didn’t tell us?” Jack roared, and his roar near beat thunder for volume.
Agnes almost dropped the plate of griddle scones. Tizzie stopped buttering the pikelets. Maggie paused to listen, knife hand hovering over the egg and tatie pie.
Mike ducked his head and muttered.
Maggie cut the pie hastily and advanced on her sons, proffering a piece to each. “The schoolmaster said what?” Her voice, cold, quiet and reasonable, sent Tizzie and Agnes scurrying to their seats, taking the scones and pikelets with them. Agnes sat herself on the far side of her aunt, using her as a shield. Tizzie slid onto her chair and wished she had someone to hide behind. She did so hate raised voices and rows. They so often led to Jack’s thrashing all the boys, beating Agnes, and then Maggie’d start with her more subtle punishments that’d last for weeks. Children needed chastisement, she knew, but Tizzie hated it. She’d suffered enough herself, and Jack took after their Da who walloped mightily.
Maggie directed a harsh look at the boys and repeated herself.
It were Bert who replied. Like several of the other sixteen year olds who’d already left school, he attended one day a week, studying a special agricultural course. Tizzie knew he enjoyed it. “Makes a break from all the slog, Auntie Tiz,” he’d told her, “and I’m learning good things.” Now he spoke out for his brothers. “Schoolmaster wants us to recite. We’re having an evening concert, he said summat about showing parents and the community what the new schooling were about.”
“Something, Bert, not summat, I’m sure your schoolmaster taught you that.” Maggie’s voice oozed calmness and reasonableness.
“And,” Jack continued, voice full volume enough that they could hear him in the next dale, “you had to learn some poem to recite, all of you, even you, Bert?”
Bert and John-Jack nodded. Mike tucked his head down between his shoulders.
“And have you?” Maggie pounced, sending a glance at Bert, which made him straighten up.
“Then let’s be hearing you, boy.” Maggie smiled so wide her dog teeth showed.
Bert coughed, stretched his neck and shoulders, and recited a long piece he called ‘Thomas Tusser’s farming principles then and now.’ It wasn’t all in verse, but he managed to remember it with nary a fault, just a couple of hesitations.
Tizzie didn’t dare applaud, Jack still looked like to explode.
“And you be sure to say it right on the night,” Jack’s voice reduced to shouting level, “I’ll not have you shame us in front of all t’village.”
Bert kept a still tongue, bobbing his head in reply. He waited, but no more was said to him. He let out a breath, helped himself to pie, and stuffed his mouth.
“Now, you, John-Jack.” Maggie’s sweetness had Agnes clutch her aunt’s arm and tremble. Tizzie patted her hand in sympathy. She’d quake too if she thought Maggie were going to turn that kind of sweetness on her. It promised a waspish sting.
John-Jack stood and recited ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’. He knew it well, he would, smart lad. John-Jack were as quick as his sister. He followed it immediately with a short piece about a candle and good deeds. It came, he announced, from a play called ‘The Merchant of Venice’ by William Shakespeare. Tizzie liked the words even if John-Jack did gabble.
“An’ you see you do it right an’ all.” Jack threatened.
“I’ll try.”
“Oh no. You will, my lad, not you’ll try.” Maggie’s voice iced over, the look she gave her son should have stopped his blood flowing. Agnes squeezed Tizzie’s arm in panic. “Repeat it, and slowly this time.”
John-Jack’s lanky legs gave under him, and he sat down all of a bump, but he repeated his pieces carefully. Maggie nodded and turned away. Bert helped him to pie with a pat on the shoulder and a commiserating look.
Maggie looked at Mike. “And what have you learnt, Mike?”
Silence. A silence of held breaths, of stilled mouths, food unswallowed, each child anticipating the storm of their mother’s wrath.
Jack roared again. “Speak when you’re spoken to.”
Mike looked up, anger in his movements, defiance writ on his face. “I ain’t saying stupid poems about fairies.”
Maggie and Jack spoke together. The combined noise made Tizzie wince. Agnes ducked down below the table top, covering her ears. Maggie pointed at Jack and he quietened. She directed her gaze at all three boys. “We have a new schoolmaster brought here by our new squire. Things are different now, staying on at school for this certificate of leaving means altered ways for all of us.” She looked at Mike who wanted to leave school next year. “It is certain our new squire believes school’s important, the money he’s spent. We must accept what’s said and done. You will do as you are told, Master Michael. You will not disobey. You will learn your piece.”
Mike shook his head. “I ain’t standing up in front o’ folks and saying that fairy stuff.”
Jack rose, the veins in his forehead knotted up clear to see, his nose and cheeks mottled dark red and purple. He leaned across the table and grabbed Mike by the scruff of his collar. “I’ll thrash you, you whelp. Think to have the lucky thruppence this year do you? I’ll show you. No lambs for you, boy unless you do as you’re told. We’ll see to that.”
Maggie reached out to Jack, shushing him. John-Jack edged away from his young brother, nudged Bert. Bert gulped, but raised his voice. “Agnes has to speak too.”
Jack paused, distracted. His grip eased on Mike’s collar.
Maggie looked down the table at their daughter in surprise. “Do the girls get to take part?”
Jack held on to Mike. “An’ if she do know her piece she’ll make you look soft, lad.” He shook his son and demanded Agnes do her bit.
Agnes recited, her voice hushed, but clear, for all that she shook. She knew her words. It were a grand poem, about how some men brought good news by riding from a place called Ghent. The poet, called Robert Browning, were a favourite of the scholars.
“Faultless,” Tizzie muttered, patting her hand. She and Agnes had been practising every evening when Tizzie went in to say prayers and tuck her up for the night. It’d been worth the effort.
Jack dropped Mike back in his seat. “There now. Shame on you when even a lass can do it. You’d better shape up, lad. Get to your room and come down in an hour with it learnt.”
Maggie smiled. It wasn’t a smile Tizzie would welcome. Small wonder Mike backed off. “You will recite your poem as the schoolmaster taught you, and say it well on the night, or I’ll know the reason why.” She turned to her other two sons. “When is this evening to be?
“Friday night,” John-Jack said.
“There, Mike, you have two days to practise.” She looked down the table at Tizzie. “Make us another pot of tea, Tizzie, do, and get those scones handed round, Agnes. Be sharp about it, lass, or they’ll turn cold and leathery. Bert, put wood on the fire, and John-Jack don’t forget to fill your aunt’s coal hod. It’s cold now and bidding worse for the night.” She looked at her youngest son. “And you, boy, move. You heard your Da. Upstairs to your room and learn that piece. I’ll be up to hear you in an hour.”
Mike dragged himself upstairs, kicking every riser, and muttering furiously.
Tizzie made the tea and wondered. Jack had said to Mike, “No lambs for you, boy unless you do as you’re told. We’ll see to that.” She wouldn’t have noticed except Agnes had put it in her mind about her Mam cheating her. Maggie had jumped in smartish to silence him. Of course Agnes had nudged her and whispered, “See, I told you.” But she couldn’t be right. Families didn’t do things like that. Mam and Nan’d never have allowed it. Jack was just threatening, warning Mike to be good. That were it, that must be it.
As she made the tea, she totted up the disturbing information of Tom’s letters and St Columba’s thruppence. Two things seemed out of kilter, not as she’d thought they were. It made her uncomfortable. She’d not been easy about a lot of things, things that had crept up over the last twelve years, things Maggie encouraged Jack to do that Tizzie now began to understand had consequences for her. She needed to find a quiet moment and have a good think.
***
Friday, January 7th
Friday morning brought snow, the first snow of the year, lovely pure white, just a sufficiency to cloak the Dale and make it unfamiliar, showing, in this new way, a bright clear beauty. Tizzie, with her cows drying off for their late March birthing, took a few moments to gaze and enjoy it before wrapping Agnes up in the new muffler she’d knitted her for Christmas. Glad she was to have made it long enough to criss-cross round the child’s chest twice, and tie snug at her waist for the lass had a bit of a chesty cough. Agnes wriggled as Tizzie tucked her into her new red cape, but hugged her hard before heading off for school, trotting behind her brothers, hood up and mittens on. Tizzie watched them go along the farm track. They’d have a wet walk in the slushy snow down their long lane to the road and then another fair step down hill to school, but no one could miss today’s last rehearsal.
Mike capered about in the snow like the monkey he were. He’d got his way. He’d not be reciting the Shakespeare fairy speech after all. Agnes were. Seemed Agnes had spoken out to the new schoolmaster, and he’d let Mike have another poem. Tizzie wondered how the lass dared speak up when she couldn’t at home. Where did she find the courage? She’d asked Tizzie to wear Sunday Best for this school evening and wanted her to talk to the schoolmaster about Thursday classes. Tizzie’d not promised. Maybe she would, but not if she had to start writing by doing pot hooks and hangers again like a five year old and read out of a bairn’s ‘Little Sir Horn’ book.
By tea time the snow fell again out of a pewter grey sky so heavy laden it looked likely to fall down on top of them and smother the dale. But when Jack and Maggie chivvied them to the school, the sky had dropped its load and left only big flakes falling slow enough for Tizzie to count them, drifting through the still air, touched by moonlight. In the now clear sky the great globe, so nearly full, shone a cold hard silver and made each flake dazzle as it tumbled down. Tizzie swallowed a catch in her throat. The beauty of snow and moon together made her want to weep.
Agnes fell back to clutch at her hand and sigh. “It’s...it’s fairy land.”
Tizzie murmured agreement, but Jack bade them get a move on, and the magical feeling melted in the heat of his irritation.
When they reached the road it seemed all the village was turning out to hear the scholars, and see what this new schoolmaster had done. Tizzie and Agnes, lagging behind, catching snowflakes, and trying to keep their feet dry by stepping into Jack’s footprints, scurried to catch up. They found themselves in a throng of neighbours and villagers, feet sliding and blurring the soft snow, discolouring it, squelching it underfoot. Agnes ran ahead with two other lasses who’d called to her. Tizzie exchanged chat with people she didn’t often see, happen only in church. ‘Twere good to meet old friends again.
“You still knitting, Tizzie?” That were Ivy, who lived on the farm nearest to them.
“When I’ve time.”
“Aye, we’ve none of us much of that these days. But we still meet, you know, we knitters, Tuesday evenings. Got a couple of buyers for patterned gloves if you’d like to join us. You always did make up a good pattern.”
“That’s kind of you, Ivy, but if it’s not butter and cheeses, it’s cheesecakes and curdies to make for Market Day. We’ve a fair few orders now from the Wednesday market stall. Tuesday night’s a bad time.”
“I know. Your Jack’s Maggie were saying how well the stall’s doing.” Ivy paused, drew breath and touched Tizzie’s elbow. “They’d not do it without you. No one else has a way in the dairy like you, lass, nor can milk as many cows.”
Tizzie laughed. “Ah, get away with you. That’s not what Jack says.”
“Nay, he wouldn’t would he? You think on. They’d be hard up if you left ‘em, you ought to set a value on that and on yourself ...” but Jack interrupted, seeking Tizzie out to hurry her into the school where Maggie held seats for them.
The school had been added to. Tizzie’d not been inside to see the improvements. She liked the new wide porch, broad enough for four big boys to go abreast without shoving. Through the arch on the right was the cloakroom Agnes talked about. Tizzie stopped to peek. Pegs for littlies on the near wall, higher pegs on the far, with places for boots and even a drying rack over head for wet clothes. Beyond the cloakroom a wide hall led to the master’s study and a library even, with two alcoves, a long table in each for senior students. The school room itself had been enlarged. Now L shaped, the addition held many tiny desks and another teacher’s desk. Two teachers? Classes for the littlest bairns?
“Tizzie, stop laiking about and hurry up, His Lordship wants to speak.”
“I’m coming Jack, just wanted to see the new...”
“Well, gawp at it another day. Get a move on.” Jack thrust her through the crowd right to the front before the large teacher’s desk. Trust Maggie to have them all in His Lordship’s sight. Tizzie would have smiled if she dared. Maggie hunted a permanent order of butter and cheese from His Lordship.
His Lordship did indeed want to speak. He stood, with the schoolmaster, by the big desk. Behind the desk, and to the right, sat the vicar and his lady wife, and Sir Charles’s wife. The vicar and his lady were a village fixture, Tizzie saw them weekly. But Sir Charles and his wife, well, Tizzie’d seen them nobbut once or twice, since they’d moved to the Hall, and only in a carriage, or on horseback. Seeing them here, right close, in the village school came as a shock. After the old squire, a jolly noisy fellow, comfortably stout and cheerful-faced, this tall, quietly dressed, still-faced gentleman, who spoke politely and softly, looked very different, a shy sort of man. He nodded to people and murmured greetings, where his father would have laughed and shouted out. He’d earned that nickname, His Lordship, from the village when but a lad, so stiff and proper he had been, like his mam. Even his father had referred to him as His Lordship, laughing mightily when he did, telling one and all that his son followed his lady mother’s ways. Still Sir Charles’d spent all this money on their school, and t’other school on his estate. Jack said there were great things doing at Linden Hall and Linden Home Farm. He’d plans, for what no one could guess, but so long as it wasn’t to raise rents or turn people out, the village would go along with them. They hadn’t much choice, he owned most of their farms and houses.
His Lordship’s wife surprised Tizzie most of all. She were one of those Quakers, wore a finespun lace collar like cobweb, over a simple silver-grey silk dress, not a bit the fashionable lady Sir Charles's mother had been. Tizzie felt sorry for Maggie, who’d be disappointed. Most of the women would be. Another reason Maggie’d sought the front row seats were to take a good look at what Lady Esther wore. The village liked to copy London fashions from the Linden Hall ladies. They’d not make much of the plain clothes Lady Esther wore. Still she rose in Tizzie's estimation when she spoke kindly to Agnes. That were well done. Agnes, with her two friends, had presented the Vicar’s wife and Lady Esther with hand-made paper flowers all tied up, posy-like, with paper cut-outs and streamers. The vicar made a fleeting introduction of the girls and Lady Esther used the old fashioned Quaker thee and thou as she spoke to each. Agnes didn't blink or giggle, but bobbed a curtsy and replied sensibly. A grand lass she were, and Tizzie warmed with pride.
The schoolmaster removed the three girls and himself. Tizzie watched, wondering. Queer one the master were, an ex-soldier he told his students, skin darkened from his time in India. Sometimes he walked a bit lame. Tizzie thought him an unlikely schoolmaster, different from the ones they’d had before. So engrossed she were in figuring out the difference betwixt him and t’others, she missed His Lordship’s first words. In fact they were almost his last for he didn’t speechify like his father. Would he explain why all this fuss about schooling? Tizzie listened carefully, wondering what he’d tell them.
“Golden Jubilee year it may be, celebrate our gracious Queen’s remarkable reign we will, but this decade...” he paused here to check on his audience’s comprehension, “these last few years, have brought us farmers real hardship.”
His audience drew in their breath, an involuntary chorus. Tizzie blinked at the ‘us farmers’
“Yes, it is indeed ‘we’. I cannot prosper if you, my tenants, do not do well. The Empire holds its own, now sends us food, meat even from as far as New Zealand, butter and cheese and wheat from distant Australia. Prices for our produce have dropped, and will drop further. The Wensleydale railway takes our milk to the West Riding cities, but we need more markets. And we must supply other means to earn money. These children from this school will help us with that if we help them now.”
Here Sir Charles paused, as if to say more, then exhaled. He looked at his audience and smiled gently. “Educate them, and they will repay us. But more of that another day. Now our students are to entertain us with their concert and show us what they have learnt.” He stepped back and sat beside his wife. There was a moment’s hesitation, some urgent whispering, then the waiting children marched into the school room singing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. The concert began.
The press of bodies under damp coats, hats, caps, bonnets and wraps warmed rapidly, steaming gently in the school room. Tizzie’s nose stuffed up, thank the Lord. The smell of drying wool almost overpowered the smell of village people, too many of whom were farmers. Tizzie’s eyes grew heavy in the stuffy air, for the stove had been stoked and added extra heat along with its burnt coal, hot iron smell. If she weren’t careful she’d be nodding off, better pinch herself and look out for Agnes. She’d be hard to spot, for all the girls wore the same brown holland pinafore at school. With her friends perhaps? No, she had a place with the littlies, and helped order them into and out of the space allocated for the performers when it was their turn to recite. Just before she stood to say her pieces the schoolmaster slipped into her spot, and not only smiled at the lass, but nodded in an encouraging way. Agnes smiled back, all easy and friendly. Ah, now Tizzie knew why Agnes dared to speak out at school. She were a favourite, and no wonder at that. She wasn’t fond or foolish, she were quick and balm to Tizzie’s childless state. She were the daughter Tizzie’d longed to have. Pity her own mother preferred boys over girls, but then it were a man’s world, and. Maggie needed her sons more than her daughter to run the farm.
The students sang the National Anthem to finish. The littlies in the front rank, looking fit to burst with importance and pride, made Tizzie’s eyes water. His Lordship, or mayhap Her Ladyship, had organised cocoa and sticky current buns for them. Sir Charles’s housekeeper and a couple of maids stood behind a trestle table to serve out, and a maid and manservant saw to tea for the adults in the schoolmaster’s study. Trays of sliced sally-lunns and penny-sized fat rascals disappeared rapidly. His Lordship were spending freely, a lot of butter went into fat rascals, as Tizzie well knew. Maggie never let her keep enough back from market to make them at home.
She’d just bitten off a warm buttery mouthful when Agnes appeared, half eaten bun in hand and a cocoa smile around her mouth. Behind her trod the schoolmaster. Tizzie felt a blush rising, struggled to chew and swallow, but Agnes never introduced them, looked all amazed from him to herself and blurted out, “Sir says I should train for a teacher.” Her mobile little face showed amazement, delight and despair in quick flickering changes. She clutched at Tizzie’s sleeve.
Tizzie managed to swallow. “And wouldst tha like that?” She kept her voice low, for Agnes only.
Agnes looked at the schoolmaster watching them and grasped Tizzie’s sleeve harder, actually pulling her down towards her face. “I think so,” she breathed.
The schoolmaster nodded and came forward. “I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Cawthra. Agnes has a way with people, a talent for teaching, she could become a teacher if she continues to work as well. Her income would make a substantial contribution to the family.” He watched Tizzie, waiting for her to speak.
She switched her gaze from little face to man’s face, wondering how she could help, but pronounced, “Then us’ll have to see her try.”
“But Mam....” then along came Maggie, Jack lagging behind, to fetch Agnes and Tizzie home.
“Fine work, Mr Topley.” Trust Maggie to speak out so well. No tongue ties or stammering for her. “Our Michael made us proud the way he recited that poem. He’s doing well, I hope?”
Agnes pulled a face at Tizzie. Tizzie spluttered in her tea. That lad. The poem he had were called ‘Casabianca’, about a boy on a burning ship, given, so Agnes told her, because he had burnt his boats with the schoolmaster. “Twere a good thing the man had a sense of humour. Here he stood, laughing. T’old schoolmaster’d have caned the lad for disobedience.
The schoolmaster shook his head. “Bert’s more of the scholar, Mrs Cawthra, he’s done well, will get a diploma at the end of the school year. John-Jack’s clever, but lazy, good at figuring and accounting, a real business head there, Mr Cawthra, but your Mike’s a farm boy, no interest in school.”
Jack made a disagreeable sort of snorting sound. Maggie’s mouth pressed into a line, quickly rearranged itself into a curved up smile. “He’s young, yet.”
“Your Agnes is one of the most promising of my scholars. With your permission I’d like her to help me on Thursday nights. I’m teaching a Night School and it would be a good learning experience for her.”
Jack’s ‘Nay, that’s....’ and Maggie’s ‘Well, we’ll have to see about....’ stuttered to a halt as His Lordship appeared behind the schoolmaster.
“Ah, Jared, have we persuaded the Cawthras to let your star pupil assist you at the Thursday Night School?” He turned to Tizzie. “Perhaps you’d come with her, Miss Cawthra? You could read some of the new books we have in the library as you waited. It’s a long walk alone at night for a young girl. Also....” He turned back to Jack and Maggie, “we need Tizzie’s produce at the Hall. Shall we talk business tomorrow, Mr Cawthra?”
Maggie’s smile grew into one of genuine pleasure. Tizzie detected triumph. Well, why not? They’d got a butter and cheese order at last. Jack hastily settled a meeting time, they all bobbed farewells and retreated, heading home to the farm. Maggie and Jack seemed content, let the boys romp, throwing snowballs. Tizzie and Agnes wandered slowly behind, admiring the moonlit snow and whispering about Thursday nights. Tizzie knew she’d have to go when it meant so much to Agnes. She’d just hope there’d be other women like her, and they could help each other. She’d like to read and write as well as Maggie could, but ‘twas hard to learn at her age.