It is four o’clock in the morning and I am sitting at my desk. I can’t sleep. Too many thoughts, too many memories, which I must get down before… well, before it is too late.
I have no pain, not really, merely a constant sickness that prevents me from eating much, despite the tempting little snacks that Sharon prepares for me. She gets cross when I don’t finish my dinner, but I have persuaded her to put less on my plate and she has now got the hang of it and only gives me titbits. I like those.
Elizabeth has been in my mind a lot. She would be an old, old lady now, if she’d lived and perhaps I wouldn’t find her as beautiful as I once did. I like young people these days. I like their fresh skin and clear eyes and hopefulness. The few middle-aged and elderly I meet, like those busybodies who come from the church, with heavy cakes and dried flowers in little baskets, are unbearable. Fortunately, now, I don’t even need to answer the door to them. Sharon tells them I’m asleep and not to bother me and then I see from my window that she puts the dried flowers into the dustbin and picks me a few narcissus or primroses. She knows how much I love fresh living flowers. I think Thomas eats the cakes though. A little gannet, that boy.
I remember the day Elizabeth first came to the house. I can see her now, walking up the drive, striding along with that floppy blue hat constraining her flying curls and swinging the little cardboard suitcase which contained all her possessions. A striking girl, confident and cheerful, which was strange, considering her background and upbringing. We watched her, Mother and I, from the front bedroom, where we were putting Father’s clothes into a big box.
“They must go,” Mother had said, dry eyed and determined. “He has no use for them now and there’s plenty in the village who might be glad of a warm jacket to see them through the rest of the winter.” She meant the likes of the Kirbys and the Raffertys who lived in the slum cottages by the abattoir. They were helplessly poor, especially the Raffertys since their father was killed in the war. Jimmy Rafferty had been in school with me. I liked him; he was clever but had to give up his lessons early to look for work, which was unfair because he could have easily got into the grammar school like I did. But you had to pay in those days, and then there was the uniform as well. That cost.
The Kirbys weren’t such a deserving cause. They were what Mother called feckless. Him in the Golden Lion every night and her not much better with her little mugs of gin. ‘Medicinal,’ she used to say, if you met her outside the pub where she would sit, rocking the latest baby in a cast-off pram. She had loads of children, but I don’t remember any of them at school. I think now that some of them might have been taken away from her by the authorities. I do know that I once saw her, later on, wearing one of Father’s working coats, begging for hand-outs by the station. So the clothes did come to some use, but I hope the Raffertys had their share.
Father died in the January of nineteen seventeen. He’d been ill for months, bed-ridden since the November previous and quite unable to speak or even know who we were, after Christmas week. I’d had my twelfth birthday just before the holiday and he’d been able to whisper a greeting to me, although he got my name wrong and called me Philip. Mother said not to mind, it was good that he had given me his best wishes, but after that, he never said anything sensible again.
Dr Guthrie was hopeless. He had no real idea of what ailed Father so Mother paid for a specialist to come down from Rodney Street in Liverpool. They arrived together one afternoon in a smart black car, driven by a chauffeur. We’d seen cars, of course, many times in the town and Father had been planning to buy one with the extra money he was making out of the vegetables, but he’d been taken ill before having the chance. Still, this car, a Wolseley, if I remember rightly, was impressive and Billy and I stood by it for half an hour, admiring every nut and bolt and asking the chauffeur about the buttons and dials on the dashboard. He was a nice bloke and let us sit in the front and touch everything until Marian came out and asked him to come into the kitchen for a cup of tea and a bite of lunch.
I kept my eye on the front bedroom windows, watching the shadows of people passing back and forth as the doctors examined Father. After a while, all movement stopped and I knew that the examination was over. I went inside then and sat on the bottom step of the staircase waiting for them to come down. It seemed to me that this was an important day in my life and so it turned out. The muttered conversation on the landing was hushed and when Mother led the doctors down the stairs I got up and went to sit quietly on the old settle which stood against the wall between the dining room and parlour. Billy had gone into the yard and Marian was still in the kitchen, but I knew that someone other than Mother should be there to hear the verdict. She didn’t say anything, but I recognised the strained look in her eyes as she beckoned me over to stand by her side while she waited for the specialist to speak.
“You must prepare yourself for the worst, my dear,” he said, not dressing up the bad news. “Farmer Wilde has a growth in the brain. There is no cure. He will not recover. The medicine I have prescribed will only make his passing more comfortable.” He paused and reached out a kindly hand to touch hers. “I wish I could tell you otherwise.”
Mother had reserves of strength which never failed to impress anyone who ever knew her and it didn’t let her down now. No weeping and wailing for her or even a wobble in her voice when she spoke. She merely took a deep breath and said, “Thank you, Doctor, thank you for your honesty and if you’ll excuse me being so forward,” she looked into his eyes in the way that she had, that look that impelled truth and straightforwardness, “now I need to know how long he has left. How long will he live?”
“A few days, a week or so, maybe.” He shrugged and nervously twisted his silk hat round and round in his hands. I was impressed with his hands; they were the cleanest I’d ever seen. “I doubt he’ll see the month out. I am very sorry.”
Mother remained upright and brave, merely nodding her head at the dreadful news. “Thank you, Doctor. Will you take a cup of tea before you leave?”
He shook his head. It was plain to see that he wanted to be out of the house as quickly as possible and he folded her hand into a warm handshake. “No, thank you, Mrs Wilde. I have other patients to see.”
He walked towards his car and I trailed after him. The chauffer held the door open for him, giving the smallest bow. That courtesy wasn’t offered to Dr Guthrie who had to get his own self in on the other side. The specialist bestowed a friendly smile on Billy who had wandered back from the yard and patted me on the head. Mother watched him from the front door.
“Chin up, little lady,” he called before getting into the back seat of his car, “you have two fine boys here to carry on.”
I ask you. As though having children made up for the loss of a beloved husband. Mother said nothing, but I knew she took that very bad.
Anyway, after that Father went downhill fast. The medicine prescribed must have been strong stuff, for it kept him asleep most of the time and it took all of Sammy and Mother’s strength to get him onto the commode and to roll him from side to side, while they changed the bed. Billy and I would go in and wish him goodnight, as we had always done, but it made no difference; he didn’t know us and after the first couple of days of Father lying vacantly in the bed, Billy refused to go near him again. “He’s finished,” he said hotly to me when we had gone to our bedroom after seeing Father. “There’s no point in bothering with him anymore.”
I was sorry about that, for they had been very close and always the best of pals, no matter what trouble Billy got himself into. Perhaps my brother was simply upset and that’s why he stayed away. He did say that too much work had to be done around the farm and that was true. Even though it was winter with short days and some fields lying fallow, the beasts had to be seen to and the milking. I helped as much as I could, when I came home from school, but I still found time to go up to Father. He never knew me, though and died one stormy night with only Mother sitting beside him. When we got up in the morning, she had laid him out and sent Herbert Lowe for the doctor and the undertaker.
A good crowd turned out for the funeral, not only people from the village but others, farmers and dealers whom Father had known at the markets and fairs and amongst them, I was surprised to see Mr Pugh from Rhaeardr who had made quite a journey in the cold winter weather. “My best respects, to you, Mrs Wilde,” he said when Mother greeted him outside the church, “and I bring the kind thoughts of Mrs Pugh.”
Mother shook his hand warmly. “Thank you so much for coming,” she said quietly, “and please come back to the house for a warm drink and a few sandwiches. This weather is not fit for journeying, really.”
Other people greeted her and she repeated the same offer of food and warmth. She had gone straight to St Winifred’s from the house, not walking behind Father’s coffin as Billy and I had done. In those days, women didn’t walk or ride in the funeral procession. Some didn’t go to the service at all, clinging to the old belief that funerals were entirely men’s business and that women’s grief was so private that it must not be shown outside the home. I wonder if they weren’t right. Public show of emotion is now commonplace. And the world is none the better for it.
Granny was one of those old believers. She stayed at the house and attended to the meal, grumbling to the other women who had remained with her that Mother was making show of herself. I didn’t think so. She was, as ever, perfectly composed and greeted the mourners with such respectability and control that no who saw her could doubt that she had behaved correctly.
I remember that I was not composed and cried bitterly at the graveside when the coffin was lowered into the frozen earth. It was a misty afternoon with an early red sunset and a small icy wind that stiffened against my damp cheeks. Spider webs had frozen in lacy strings across the yew trees that surrounded the silent church yard and even the robins and starlings, which normally chattered noisily in the dense green branches, had gone early to roost. My crying seemed to be the only sound. I wanted to stop, fearing that I was spoiling the solemnity but I couldn’t and sobbed and snivelled like a stupid infant. Mother put her arm round my shoulders to comfort me but Billy and Marian stood dry-eyed and imperceptibly moved away. I think they were embarrassed.
Father’s death was a terrible blow to me because although Billy was his favourite, Father had never been other than kind and fair to me. He was the strength of our family, the best one of us, probably, for although I loved Mother with an almost pathetic childishness, I later found out that she had faults. But that was much later and for all my young years I strived to be more like her, more a Trevellyn and less a Wilde.
Elizabeth came to live with us in that early spring after Father died. We were keeping the farm going, Billy giving up school and Mother taking on more work in the yard. She was a good farmer with a broad knowledge of animal husbandry and never afraid of getting her hands dirty. It was her idea to get a servant. “It would be cheaper to get a girl to do the cooking and housework,” she said, “than to hire another farm hand.”
Even Billy, who was tight with money, couldn’t fault her logic, so that’s what they did. Mother asked Mr Kendrick if he knew of a suitable girl and he found Elizabeth. Elizabeth Nugent, who was the loveliest girl I ever met in all my life.
“Can you cook?” asked Mother after she had brought Elizabeth into the kitchen that first day and given her a cup of tea.
“I can.” The girl smiled and took off her hat so that the wild hair sprang into life and flowed around her head in dark curls. “I can bake bread and make soup and scouse and fry eggs. They taught me that.”
‘They’, were the nuns at the orphanage in Liverpool where she had lived for the last two years. It seemed that her mother had died and her father for some reason, not able to look after her. She was about thirteen then, older than me by nearly two years in time, but twenty in experience. I grinned at her and pushed forward the fruitcake that Mother had put on the table. “Have some cake,” I said.
“Mm, lovely!” She took a big bite and sighed with pleasure. Her wrists were thin beneath the frayed cuffs of her cotton dress and I guessed she wasn’t used to treats like cake. I thought she looked like fun.
Mother wasn’t as smitten as I. “What about cleaning and washing? We’d need all that done and,” she looked sternly at Elizabeth, “I’d want it done my way and properly. This is a busy household,” she warned, “we haven’t time for idlers.”
Elizabeth put down her cake and looked calmly at Mother. “I’m used to working hard, and I’m prepared to learn. Just tell me what you want me to do.”
As it turned out, Mother came to love Elizabeth almost as much, I think, as I did. Indeed, as she grew older, Elizabeth was the one person that Mother wanted to be with and I knew that she bitterly regretted that her actions caused them to be estranged. Before Elizabeth came to live with us, Mother and Marian had been very close and Mother’s new affection for Elizabeth led to some ill-feeling. But it wasn’t really surprising because our Marian had become a bitter woman by then. Albert had turned into a disappointment for her, despite his wealth and then they had no children for her to care for. The church became too important and coloured her thinking to a ridiculous degree.
Our Billy was quite uncomfortable with Elizabeth to begin with. He hated having her in the house and was always worried that he might find her in the bathroom, or worse, that she might find him. She had taken the middle bedroom, the one that Eddie had vacated and over the years made it her own. Granny was disgusted. “She’s a servant,” she said, “put her in one of the attic rooms. Carpet’s too good for her.”
Granny was such a snobbish old woman and with no cause. She’d never had a servant in her life nor even the money to hire one but she always knew better than everybody else and was jealous of the relative comfort in which we lived. At one time, she suggested that she should move in with us, but Mother soon scotched that idea. “I do think you’d be happier in your own cottage, Mother Wilde, with your daughters next door. After all, since Thomas passed on, I’m in the yard a lot of the day and you would have no-one to talk to. I’m sure May and Fanny would be heartbroken if you left the village.”
They wouldn’t have. May and Fanny, Granny’s youngest daughters, who’d never married nor barely had the chance with Granny disparaging every man who even looked their way, would have cheerfully given up their virginity to get rid of the old lady. I bet they’d have given up their virginity anyway, if someone had offered. Simply for the experience.
Granny knew Mother was right and didn’t bring up the subject again, but she still interfered with our lives almost on a daily basis. Poor Aunty May and Aunty Fanny were made old before their time and when Granny died they were left in a sad condition. Aunty May only lived a few weeks after but her sister lingered on miserably until she was in her nineties, fifty more wasted years of a lonely out-of-step life, with no friends of her own age or anyone else’s, for that matter.
Elizabeth fell in to work straight away. Without asking, she washed up those first cups of tea and went round lighting the lamps as it got dark. Mother showed her the pantry and the meat safe and said that a bit of bacon and potatoes and cabbage would make a supper, if Elizabeth could manage. It was a Saturday and we always had scraps on that day. Mother had a nice piece of our own pork for Sunday dinner.
“Sure I can, Mrs Wilde, leave it to me.”
So, reluctantly at first, because she was a proud housewife, Mother did indeed leave it to Elizabeth and was rarely let down. The house was clean and warm, food ready on time, clothes washed and ironed and even our boots were polished in time for Sunday worship. Needless to say, Granny wasn’t satisfied.
“I don’t take to that girl,” she’d say, watching out of the kitchen window as Elizabeth hung baskets of washing on the line. “She thinks too much of herself.” Exactly how Elizabeth’s ‘thinking too much of herself’ manifested itself, Granny never divulged, but I suppose it could have been the fact that she cheerfully ignored Granny’s remarks and refused to take offence. Following Granny’s lead, Aunty May and Aunty Fanny started to be quite spiteful to Elizabeth but Mother soon stopped that. “Elizabeth works for me, May,” she said sharply one afternoon when Aunty May criticised the way the washing was being folded, “and I’ll thank you to remember that.”
“Hoity toity!” said Granny who had encouraged the criticism, bobbing her head up and down like one of our old chickens. “There’s no need for nastiness, Mary.”
“Every need,” said Mother. “I won’t have interference, Mother Wilde. I run this house and farm, as well you know.” Granny gave in then. She couldn’t best Mother and seemingly never had been able to, even when Mother was a young bride first come to Manor Farm.
“Now then,” said Mother, her flurry of temper subsiding, “What about a nice cup of tea?”
The only trouble was, that having been cut off from having a go at Elizabeth, Granny turned on me. “Why isn’t this lad working yet?” she demanded.
I was at home that morning, the last day of my Easter holiday. This was my third year in the grammar. I loved school and was doing well. Amazingly, for a farm boy, I turned out to be good at classics, a useless skill in our village, but one which fascinated me. A page of Latin translation held almost as much interest for me as a page from a favourite novel. That year we had started French and German and I was good at those too. Science subjects were my downfall and for all the excellent teaching, I wasn’t half as good at arithmetic as our Billy. Mother said she was proud of me and even Billy, although he teased me about using long words, never said a word against my staying on at school when he’d been working since he was barely thirteen. It was Granny and the aunties who scorned my education.
“Anyone would think he was the son of a gentleman,” said Granny getting up from her chair and picking out my school shirt from the wash basket.
“He is,” said Mother fiercely snatching the shirt and giving Granny such a look that the old lady turned away and picked up her stick ready for her walk back to the village. She paused at the door and straightened her hat while she waited until the aunties went through into the yard. “All I can say, Mary Constance, is that you would know better than anyone else about that.”
When she’d gone I said, “You know, Mother, she was right, Father was a farmer, not a gentleman.”
“He was both,” she said quietly, “I only wish I’d realised it sooner.”
I didn’t understand what she meant and even now I wonder about it. There must have been a part of her mind that I didn’t know and she was the person I thought I knew better than any other. Even than my adored Elizabeth.
Well, Elizabeth stayed on despite Granny, or maybe even to actually spite her and soon she was a much a part of the family than any of us children. Mother taught her farm work as well as housework and within a year she was indispensable in the milking parlour and dairy. She made friends with Sammy Phillips and he showed her how to deliver a calf and the quickest way to dispatch a cockerel.
“I can’t,” she wailed, the first time, when she had the poor unwanted bird between her knees and her hands round its neck. “Sure and it’s too cruel.”
“Get on with it,” yelled Billy. We were sitting on the gate watching. Sammy had taught us how to do it years ago when we were nippers and my brother cheerfully killed a few birds every week, ready for market. I, on the other hand, would never kill an animal, if someone else was about to do it for me.
Sammy gave our Billy a hard look. “Leave her alone, Billy Wilde,” he said.
“Well, she’s being a babby.” Being a babby was Billy’s most damning comment. It had been directed at me on many an occasion, usually called for, but not always.
“I’m not!” Elizabeth shouted, stung into action and with a grunt pulled and twisted the bird’s neck until it snapped cleanly and it was dead. “There,” she cried, “I’ve done it.”
“Well done,” I said. I thought she was brave, but Billy only laughed.
“Babby!” he repeated.
“Oh, am I?” Elizabeth looked up from the quivering corpse now dangling from her hands and with a sudden movement sprang up and dashed across to the gate. Before we had chance to move she had lifted up the white cockerel by its twitching yellow feet and fetched Billy a wallop across the head with it.
“Bloody hell!” he yelled as he fell off the gate into the yard and rolled helplessly in the mud. Feathers flew everywhere and Elizabeth climbed into the place Billy had so precipitately left and gave a triumphant ‘cock a doodle do’. Sammy Phillips snorted with laughter and I laughed too but my laughter was tempered with nervousness. I recalled the little Pugh girl, Kate Ann and how Billy had attacked her. He had been out of control on that occasion and this was exactly the sort of humiliation that he couldn’t abide.
I watched as Billy got to his feet and wiped a dollop of mud away from his cheek. For the briefest moment I saw that look, that still, sickening look that I hated and which others had learned to fear. But I needn’t have worried. His face suddenly creased into a grin and he joined in the laughter.
“I’ll give you ‘cock a doodle do’,” he pretended to growl and gave her a gentle punch on the arm.
“Aah, away with you,” she said, still laughing, her eyes friendly and unafraid and slid over on the gate so that he could climb up again to join us. We were three healthy teenagers then with nothing coming between us and life was carefree. I don’t think Elizabeth realised how close she’d been to a belting at that time, but I knew, and she came to know it too in later years.