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Locked in the past
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Auckland, New Zealand
March 1899
For the moment, she felt free – deliciously free – only too aware the illusion would pass soon enough.
Gwenna Price hurried along busy Karangahape Road towards Turner’s, the greengrocer. Her boots crunched along the hardened grit as she swung her basket and called a cheery good morning to shopkeepers preparing for the day ahead. She loved watching them sweeping footpaths, cleaning windows or winding out the shop awnings, unless they were lucky enough to have a fixed verandah. Other merchants set their wares out in doorways and along their shopfronts, seemingly indifferent to the rattle of trams and clink of harness, or the clomp of horses’ hooves and bicycles whirring past.
Gwenna delighted in these sounds as the day came to life, exhilarated by all the hustle and bustle. She waved to the girl changing the window display in the milliner’s shop and stopped to pat a horse munching on oats in its nosebag, wishing her life could be as contented. In the distance, the sails on Partington’s Mill slowly turned in the breeze.
One day, she promised herself, she would be a part of all this busyness. One day.
She continued down the street, mentally ticking off her shopping list, thankful for the wide-brimmed bonnet shading her face. Her cool dimity blouse and pale grey skirt swishing around her ankles were a blessing in the warm air on a cloudless autumn day.
She pushed the niggling worry of her ailing half-brother Charlie to the back of her mind as the far more pressing worry of the charming and persistent Johnno Jones entered her thoughts. She was tempted to give in to the young man’s pleas, if only to escape life at home, except for one troublesome detail – his father, Black Jack Jones.
She and Johnno had known each other once in childhood days, when his father had been the local carter and used to do odd jobs for her pa, but they’d disappeared years ago. She’d all but forgotten about them until Johnno returned over the summer.
Deep in thought, Gwenna hadn’t seen Johnno appear, as if from nowhere, as he was wont to do. He’d grabbed her hand and spun her round like they were dancing, before his smiling face came into focus. His cap was set at its usual rakish angle. “How’s my favourite girl doing?”
She slapped his arm playfully, laughing, elated at the sight of him. Readjusting her hat, she tried to ignore the melting feeling that swept over her whenever he was near. As a youngster, with his impish smile and cheerful ways, Johnno had been a popular lad for running messages. He still found occasional work, but nobody hired Black Jack any longer.
“What are you doing here at this time of day, Johnno? You near scared me to death,” she teased.
“Hoping to see you, of course. How can you ’xpect a man to go for so long without seeing yer pretty face?” Johnno twisted one of her freshly curled ringlets around his finger as he leaned closer.
At his touch, a flutter ignited in places too intimate to think about. “Away with you now. Enough of your flattery, and it’s not much more’n a week since you saw me last. I’ve work to do, ev’n if you don’t.”
“Aw, Gwenna. Don’t be like that. Walk with me aways. You make my heart glad, that you do, and I need some cheering.”
“So you always say.”
His glorious brown eyes, glowing with desire, threatened to devour her, and she couldn’t resist their unmistakable message.
“All right, then, but only a wee ways. I need to get the groceries home before that stepbrother of mine thinks I’ve been gone too long. I don’t want to feel the sting of his hand this day if I can avoid it.”
“Run away with me, sweet Gwenna, and I promise you’ll never feel the sting of a man’s hand ever again.”
He led her off the main road and down a couple of twisting alleyways until there was not a soul in sight. Gently pushing her back against the warmth of the brick wall, he kissed and caressed her with a lightness of touch that sent shivers through her body. The more she quivered, the more amorous he became. She lost her heart, as well as her hat, as the fiery passions of youth flared.
“Ah, Gwenna, me love. I wish you’d come away with me. What have you got to lose? Jack and me, we’re leaving this night to try our luck down south.” Johnno always called his father by his nickname. There were far too many John Joneses, even in Auckland, not to differentiate them in some way. “The wagon’s all loaded and only needs you to decorate it.”
Gwenna had heard this argument before, more than once, and it was enticing, but not if she had to be anywhere near his father: something evil burned in that man’s dark eyes.
If only Pa were still with us, she wished fervently. He would advise me. She shook her head to chase away her futile thoughts. Her stepbrother, Elias Hughes, was head of the household now, and life had changed.
“We’ve been through this afore, Johnno. Sometimes the devil ya know is better than the one you don’t. And I can’t leave Mam just yet. She’s enough on her plate caring for young Charlie. He’s mighty sickly, and Elias wouldn’t care whether he lives or dies.”
Never to be undone and always philosophical, Johnno shrugged his shoulders. “Well then, give us some more of those tasty kisses to take with me on me travels. I’ll have to store ’em up till I return.”
* * *
“Wherever have you been?” whispered Bethan as Gwenna eased the latch to the door, hoping she could pretend she’d been at home for a time before Elias found her. “He’s been looking for you.”
A trickle of fear turned Gwenna’s stomach sour, but the sight of her stepmam’s tired, wan face unsettled her more. Sitting in the big armchair next to the fireplace, Bethan nursed the sleeping Charlie on her knee. He was almost seven, but small and scrawny enough to be mistaken for a four-year-old.
A lump rose in Gwenna’s throat as Bethan began to sing softly in Welsh ‘Ar Hyd y Nos’ – the old hymn ‘All Through the Night’.
“Charlie’s so peaceful there, Mam. Don’t disturb him. You stay put and I’ll start the soup.”
“Be quick then, chook. He’ll be wanting you to make the sugar ready − not doing my chores. Charlie had a rough go earlier, coughing his little lungs out till he were sick. Poor fellow.”
Gwenna placed the basket of groceries on the kitchen table before going through to the scullery. She filled the pot with water from the butler’s sink and set it on the coal range to heat. Chatting away to Bethan about the gossip she’d picked up at the grocer’s, Gwenna sorted the vegetables.
She didn’t see the blow coming. As she stood up from getting a few parsnips from the bottom of the pantry, Elias slammed the door against her face, sending her staggering into the table. Before she could gather her wits, he was leaning over her, forcing her back into a painful arch. She could smell him. The foul odour of stale beer and sweat made her gag, and his cold, hard stare frightened her. Most times when he lost his temper and spittle flew from his mouth in his rage, he was content to push and shove, and sometimes slap her, but nothing like this.
Even as the blood seeped from a cut to her cheek and pain exploded in her nose, she refused to show her fear.
“I’ll break you in two one day, I will, if you don’t learn to do as you’re told. One hour, I said, then back here and ready the sugar. But what do I find?” Elias’s temper was rising and Gwenna’s body relaxed a fraction. He ran out of steam quicker when he was angry and often mistimed his blows. “I find you missing for more’n half the morning, the ol’ woman in there caring for the crybaby an’ you doin’ her chores instead of yer own, that’s what. An’ I won’t have it. Do you hear me? I’m head of this family now, and you’ll do what I tells ya.”
The open-handed slaps jerked her head first to one side then the other. As she prepared herself for the next blow, he turned away. Crossing to his mother, he grabbed her by the bun at the back of her neck and forced her to her feet. She barely had time to put the now wide awake and whimpering Charlie down before Elias shoved her in the direction of the scullery. “Get in there and do ya chores.”
Tripping from the force, Bethan would have fallen had Gwenna not caught her.
Elias’s hand was raised to strike again when the sound of the adjoining door stopped him in his tracks.
Hugh Powell filled the doorway. His muscles bulged under the rolled-up sleeves of his collarless white shirt, as he wiped his hands on a towel. His jaw clenched within a grim face.
“What do you want?” snapped Elias, spinning around and combing his fingers through his hair.
The women stood silent, watching from the safety of the scullery door, waiting for Elias’s next move. Hugh was broader than his employer and a good half-head taller. Elias had never challenged him, but there was always a first time.
“I’ve finished that batch of boiled sweets,” said Hugh.
Wise to his boss’s temper, Hugh said little. He had become a thorn in the other man’s side and someone Elias viewed as a necessary evil – someone with both the strength and skill needed to keep the business viable, but who saw what he shouldn’t.
Elias glared between the two women and Hugh, before pushing past him, and stormed into the back room where the large sugar-boiling kitchen was housed. Hugh followed, closing the door behind him.
“Let me see, Gwenna, bach,” Bethan coaxed, as she soaked a towel under the tap.
Gwenna, pale with shock and pain, leant against the door frame, holding her hands to her face, unable to control the trembling in her legs. At times like this, she sorely missed her pa George, who had died two years earlier of the bronchial disease Charlie now suffered from. Elias would not have dared touch her or Mam had Pa been alive.
“Come, sit down,” Bethan said, pressing the cold compress against Gwenna’s nose, and led her to the table. Gwenna’s sky-blue eyes filled with tears as she gaped in bewilderment at her beloved stepmother – the only mother she’d known.
“Why, Mam, why? He’s never been that vicious before.”
Bethan subdued her own tears as she fussed around inspecting the damage to Gwenna’s face, cleaning up the blood amongst the tears and runny nose. “I can’t answer you, my dear. I don’t understand him any more. He wasn’t like this as a child. You remember, don’t you? He was never moody and bad-tempered. Not until his father died. But now – since your pa’s gone – he seems to have lost his way.”
Gwenna’s memories of Elias’s father, Owen Hughes, were few, except as a funny, kind man. She’d been six years old when her widowed pa had taken his two daughters to live with the Hughes family in Treorchy, in the Rhondda Valley of South Wales. Their life had been blissful for two whole years – until the accident.
Owen and Pa had built up a healthy trade together, boiling and stretching the sugar to make medicinal lozenges and every variety of sweets she could imagine. Every month Elias would hitch up the wagon and happily traverse the hills and valleys with his father, selling their goods for days on end.
One day, Owen didn’t come home.
In time, Gwenna had been told the full story of how, on a wet day, the wagon had got stuck in a muddy rut on a hill. How Owen had put his shoulder to the back, yelling at the boy to drive the horse forward, but the squealing, terrified animal kept slipping in the mire. As the cart lurched backwards, Owen was crushed under the wheels. Even now, Gwenna could picture the scene and hear the screams of both man and horse. She felt the agony of a young Elias who could not save his father. The scene had haunted her for years.
“Do you remember how inconsolable he was?” asked Bethan. “Elias blamed himself for his father’s death, and his grief was unbearable. Overnight he changed from my happy-go-lucky boy into a morose young man.”
Gwenna understood how barren Elias had felt, now she had lost her own father – and guilty. She understood guilt too.
“I remember, but that’s no excuse. Elias shouldn’t treat you like that, Mam. It’s not right.”
Nor me, she thought, as she ran her finger down Charlie’s cheek and smiled at the silent boy sitting on the chair next to her. His eyes, too big for his thin face, were troubled.
Bethan put ointment on the cut on Gwenna’s face, and placed a fresh, cold cloth over the girl’s throbbing nose. “He says I betrayed his father’s memory. Betrayed him, too. It was bad enough when I sought your father’s advice to keep the business running, but when I married George, and Charlie was born ...” Bethan drew another shuddering breath. “... Elias never forgave me.”
Once Bethan had finished tending to Gwenna, she tidied up and returned to the scullery. Picking up her favourite knife, Bethan began to chop the vegetables, the knife blade flashing as she vented her anger. Still holding the compress to her face, Gwenna watched.
Elias’s bitterness had festered, eating deep into the soul of the tormented sixteen-year-old. Nothing but memories remained of his father after George changed the name of the business to G Price & Family, and they emigrated to New Zealand. While Gwenna understood his sorrow, she could never forgive the young man whose wrath had become a beast that grew with each passing year. If only she and Mam could get away, but they had few choices; the law was on his side.
She sighed; she would never fulfil her pa’s dreams under Elias’s roof.
“Maybe you should get married again,” ventured Gwenna. “It’d be a way out of this mess.” Gwenna bit the side of her fingernail while she thought through what she wanted to say. “What about Hugh? I’m sure he’s got a real soft spot for you. I’ve seen the way he keeps an eye on you.”
Bethan stopped chopping to glare at Gwenna. “Rubbish. And you can put those ideas right out of your head, young lady,” she said, pointing the knife tip at Gwenna. “But it’s you he has a fancy for, not me.”
Gwenna wasn’t sure how old Hugh was – somewhere between her eighteen years and Bethan’s mid-forties, she suspected. He was considerate, dependable and likeable, and she trusted him, but she’d never thought about him like that, not when she had Johnno. “Never!” Gwenna shook her head, denying Hugh’s interest. “You’re dreaming, Mam.”
“I know what I see, girl,” said Bethan. “And if you took more notice you’d see it too. I’m too old for all that nonsense now, but you should think about getting yerself away, our Gwenna. Before it’s too late.”
Unbeknownst to Bethan, Gwenna had been thinking about it. She’d thought a lot about Johnno and his constant urging to go away with him.
“You don’t need to put up with Elias,” continued Bethan, dropping the chopped vegetables into the pot. “He’s no kin to you. Why, even Samuel, his own brother, won’t have nowt to do with him any more.”
This wasn’t the first time she and Bethan had had this conversation, but Gwenna was torn. She wanted to get away but, almost with his dying breath, Pa made her promise to care for Bethan and Charlie after he’d gone.
Pa had understood Elias’s loyalty to his father’s memory and watched his resentment grow over the years but he could never have imagined Elias becoming quite so angry and obsessed. It wasn’t until her older sister Matilda married Tom Griffiths the previous year that Gwenna’s sense of responsibility for Bethan and Charlie weighed so heavily on her shoulders.
Oh, how I miss Tillie.
To take her mind off the things she couldn’t change, Gwenna rolled up her sleeves and gathered the tools she would need to make a new batch of acid drops with her homemade lemon essence. Since her father had gone, she preferred to work in the scullery rather than the back kitchen where the men worked. Her family still made their sweets and lozenges by hand, despite the proliferation of modern machinery used by many other confectionery manufacturers. The Price family reputation rested on it, and on her.
George Price had taught his daughters well, but Gwenna had excelled. No one matched Gwenna’s skill at boiling the sugar or pulling and stretching the mixture until it was smooth and pliable. She could flavour and colour to perfection and turn the finished length into sweets – or lollies, as they called them here – of any shape and size she chose. And while she didn’t have the strength to lift the seventy-pound sacks from the Colonial Sugar Company across the harbour in Birkenhead, nor handle the large boxes of finished goods, Hugh did.
With difficulty, Gwenna reached up to unhook the six-pounder open pan from the collection of copper pots hanging from the rack swinging above the scullery workbench. Her back hurt and her muscles resisted the stretch. She fetched a long-handled roasting fork to help her dislodge the pan then set it on the range to heat.
With a practised eye, she measured out a good six pounds of sugar, added a pint of water and three pounds of glucose, and stirred it until it had all melted. Leaving the mixture to reach temperature and bubble for about half an hour, she poured boiling water from the kettle, permanently on the range, into the cast-iron hollow workbench Pa had made that better suited her height.
While she waited for the sugar to liquefy, she squeezed the lemons, grated the skin and put the mixture on to heat with a little confectioners’ sugar. Stirring it all the time while it simmered, she felt the familiar ache in her jaw at the tart aroma. As soon as it was ready, she pushed the mixture through a sieve until she had the right consistency. Lumps of rind didn’t go down well.
The heat rose in the enclosed space, and she wiped her forehead with her sleeve, bumping her sore nose in the process. “Ouch!” Her eyes watered with the pain, and she held her nose between her fingers until the throbbing subsided. She dabbed at her eyes with her hanky and checked the sugar mixture again.
Once the pan and workbench reached the right temperature and she settled into her routine, she could produce batch after batch without thinking. Only if she allowed herself to get distracted was she likely to make a mistake, resulting in a cut or burn to her hands. On occasions, she overheated a batch and it would crystallise, but it had been a long time since that had happened. Pa had taught her well. Pa had taught them both – her and Tillie – but for reasons never explained, Elias would not allow the sisters to work together. But then nothing about him surprised her any more.
Gwenna checked the temperature of the sugar mixture with the large thermometer, stirred in the lemon essence and decided it was ready. Picking up a padded woollen cloth in each hand, she felt every muscle protest as she lifted the pan from the range and tipped the contents onto the hot, greased worktable.
Using the wide scraper, she briskly folded the sticky substance in on itself several times, flipped it over, and folded it again until it was cool enough to handle. With a quick flick of the wrist, she threw the knot over the hook fixed on the wall above her head and started stretching and twisting the sugar mixture over and over again – pulling it out and turning it back on itself in a continuous motion – until it was the right consistency and turned a creamy colour.
“You do that so well, Gwenna,” praised Bethan. “You have the right action. I used to watch Owen and your father in amazement, but you are as good as they were – and as quick. I can’t say the same for Elias, but he already knows that. It’s one of the reasons he’s so hard on you.”
Feeling comforted by the soothing action, Gwenna smiled her thanks at Bethan. She lifted the molten mass off the hook and dropped it on the table. Picking up her father’s favourite wood-handled knife, she cut the sugar mixture into manageable chunks and, regularly dipping one hand into a bag of fine rice flour, she kept up a constant motion, kneading and stretching each piece back and forth between her hand and the heated worktop to make long rolls. Once satisfied with the length and thickness, she swiftly chopped them into smaller pieces using the oversized scissors that were almost as long as her forearm. She shaped each of them into little balls and laid them out on a tray to cool and harden.
A small hand pulling at her skirt interrupted her rhythm.
“Can you make me a lollipop? Please, Gwenna?”
“ ’Course I can, Charlie,” she smiled. She glanced over her shoulder towards the door, nervous about Elias coming in, but shrugged the thought away. It didn’t matter. He would either get angry or he wouldn’t, never mind what she did.
Taking a couple of portions, she added a drop of cochineal to one and kneaded the colour in. Twisting the two pieces together into a long roll, she curled it into a circle, put a wooden skewer through, and handed the red and white lollipop to Charlie. His grin was worth a thousand tears. He was beautiful when he smiled.
A memory of Pa flashed into her mind. He used to make special lollipops for her and Tillie when they were little. She missed him so much – and her sister. Oh, Tillie, what shall I do? I’m torn. Can I afford to have dreams?
A wave of loneliness washed over her. One by one the household had emptied. A few years ago, the oldest of her stepsisters, Louisa, had married Albert Evans the butcher. Then Janetta wed. She chose Percy Lewis, who worked for the ironmongers. They’d gone before Pa died and understood little of what their brother was like except from what they’d been told. Soon after, Samuel disappeared. Time and circumstances had put distance between them.
And now Tillie was married too.
The only chance the four girls had to catch up and talk without the pressure of life was when Elias was away, or sometimes after chapel on Sunday mornings. Gwenna and Bethan would walk past the two-storey corner house in Beresford Street where Tom and Tillie lived, on their way to the gothic-style wooden church in Wellington Street – not that St James’s was chapel, as they knew it; the place was much fancier. And every time Gwenna walked past, she peeked into Tillie’s front room and dreamt of turning it into a shop where the two of them could work together.
Gwenna tried not to dream too much and shut her heart and mind to the possibilities such thoughts opened up. Elias would never allow it.
