Harriet and Annie were playing blind man’s buff with Jimmy and Beau and Pollyanna in the hall of the rectory. It was a riotous game which took them scampering all over the ground floor of the house, squealing and giggling and calling to one another, for they played according to new rules of their own. Any child who was ‘caught’ had to be hugged and tossed in the air for several minutes before the blindfold could be used again. Harriet enjoyed it more than any other game they played, because it was really just a marvellous excuse to tumble about together and cuddle one another, and to have the baby’s warm arms holding her so lovingly about the neck was pure joy. So when she first heard the knock at the side door she took no notice of it but went on calling Beau so that he could catch her and be kissed.
But the knocker was persistent and tried again while the tumbling was in progress and again and louder when she was tying the bandage round her eyes and the rest of the players were squealing off into the parlour. She took the bandage off and passed it to Jimmy, calling, ‘I’ll go!’ Then she went to attend to it.
There was a man standing subserviently on the doorstep, looking down at the strips of sacking that were tied around his feet. He was covered in mud-grey grime from his matted hair to the blackened toes exposed through the sacking, and he was dressed, if that really was the word, in several layers of mud-coloured rags, so old and torn and evil-smelling that at first she took him for a beggar. There was a slatternly woman standing behind him wearing a soldier’s red coat that looked as though it had come straight from the wars, for it was horribly stained and had a jagged bullet hole in one shoulder. She had a filthy baby tucked inside the coat and two equally filthy little boys clinging to her muddy skirts and she looked at Harriet sullenly, her eyes very blue and very young under the tousled bush of her hair.
‘Yes?’ Harriet said, feeling a sudden and yearning sympathy at the sight of them. How terrible to be so poor and dirty? ‘Who did you wish to see?’
‘The Reverend ’Opkins,’ the man said, ‘if ’ee’d be so good, miss.’
And the woman said, ‘Tha’s right Jack, you tell un.’
‘He is not here just at present,’ Harriet said. ‘He is out visiting the sick.’
But she was wrong. He was in the garden, striding towards them with hands outstretched in greeting. ‘Why Mr Abbott!’ he called. ‘How good to see you home and safe.’
‘No work, Mr ’Opkins, tha’s the size on it,’ the man said mournfully. ‘Mr Morgan, ’e’s a-layin’ off so ’e say. Got a new machine fer threshin’ an such, so ’e don’ need the men so ’e say. I told un I was willin’. ’E’s a-layin’ off so ’e say.’ And his face crumpled and he began to weep, strange tears that Harriet found most upsetting.
And the two little boys began to cry in sympathy and the woman repeated, ‘You tell un, Jack,’ in the same belligerent tones.
‘Come into my study,’ the Reverend Hopkins said, and the filthy family followed him into the hall.
The cloying, sour smell of them was so strong once they were inside the house that Annie was alerted by it and came out of the parlour to see what was going on. She took one look and whisked her children out of harm’s way at once, signalling with her eyes to Pollyanna and Harriet that they were to follow her.
‘Who are they?’ she asked Harriet when the parlour door was closed behind them. ‘Did you catch the name?’
‘Mr Hopkins called the – gentleman Mr Abbott.’
‘Jack Abbott, I’ll be bound,’ Annie said, sitting down beside the fire with baby Beau on her lap. ‘Went for a soldier years ago, just after we were married. That’ll be Jack Abbott. Well I only hope they don’t stay too long, that’s all, for they smell worse than old Hannah’s pig.’ Which was strong criticism, for old Hannah kept her livestock in such filthy conditions that they could be smelt all over the village.
‘I think they’ve come to Mr Hopkins for help,’ Harriet said, quite surprised by Annie’s sharpness.
‘I don’t doubt it,’ Annie said. ‘Let’s have some more coal on the fire.’
They waited while the voices in the parlour mumbled and grumbled on, punctuated now and then by an occasional stab of aggression from the woman. Then they heard the study door open and shut and the Reverend Hopkins came stooping mildly into the room.
‘Mr Abbott has nowhere to stay, my love,’ he said to Annie, ‘so I have invited him here. It will mean five more to dinner. Do you think Mrs Chiddum can manage?’
‘I daresay she can,’ Annie said, and it was plain that she was none too pleased at the news, ‘but she won’t like it.’
‘You will explain to her, will you not, my love?’ he said. ‘They have been on the road for the last ten days, hoping for work once they got home, so poor Jack tells me, and now of course there is no work for them and no room in the cottage either, since his brothers came back from Gedding. And he fought at Waterloo. It is uncommon sad. We must help them all we can.’
‘Are they to stay here, James?’ There was an edge to her voice, but he answered her as mildly as ever.
‘We can hardly turn them away, my love. They have nowhere to go.’
‘Those children are crawling with vermin, James,’ she said, and there was no mistaking how she felt. ‘I could see the lice in their hair as plain as I see you. Do you truly wish to put our boys at risk of that?’
‘There is always turpentine,’ he said gently. ‘I am sure you will do all you can to help them, will you not, my love?’
‘I shall use turpentine most certainly,’ she said, and now she sounded quite brusque. ‘But I tell ’ee ’twould be better to send them all elsewhere.’
‘Come now, Annie,’ he said, ‘there is nowhere else for them to go.’ And now there was a harsher note to his voice too. ‘You would not have me cast them out into the wilderness.’
Watching them, Harriet realized to her surprise that they were arguing. They were quite calm, they didn’t shout or turn red or stamp about the room, but they were arguing nevertheless. It was amazing.
‘Rattlesden is not a wilderness,’ Annie said, shifting little Beau on her knee.
‘It is a wilderness to Mr Abbott, there being no work and no shelter in it. Come Annie my dear, consider the Good Samaritan.’
They gazed at one another for a long while without saying a word, while Jimmy looked from one to the other, and Beau fell asleep and Pollyanna looked at Harriet, warning her not to move or speak.
Finally Annie broke the silence. ‘I will do as you say,’ she said, ‘on one condition.’
He answered her most lovingly. ‘Name it, my dear.’
‘They sleep in the east wing, well away from the rest of us.’
‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘And now you will have a room prepared for them, will you not?’
‘Pray take the baby, Pollyanna dear,’ Annie said, lifting him gently. ‘And Jimmy too, if you will. Go along with Pollyanna, there’s a good boy Jimmy, and then you shall have a sugar stick the next time we’re in town.’ Now that the argument was over she was her busy, practical self again as she called her maids and led the way to the narrow east stairs.
Once inside the little east room, she had all the linen stripped from the bed and thrown on the floor. ‘You can take that off to the linen cupboard presently,’ she said to the maids. ‘Don’t ’ee bother to fold it just yet awhile. Come and help me with this mattress Molly. They ain’t having my nice clean mattress,’ she added to Harriet, ‘them and their bugs, and he needn’t think it, dear though he is.’
She had the maids working at furious speed. The mattress was already rolled and ready to carry away. ‘Charity is all very well,’ she said, as Molly helped her to lift it from the bed, ‘but I draw the line at lice and bugs. There is a mattress cover at the bottom of the cupboard, which will do well enough, once ’tis stuffed with straw. But we must make haste or he will bring them up here before we are ready.’
The maid was sent to collect old sheets and blankets while Harriet and Annie ran from the rectory to the barn like conspirators and returned bouncing the now bulky mattress between them. The Abbotts were still in the study as they could hear from the murmured voices behind the door.
‘And a fine old job we shall have getting that clean again,’ Annie said crossly, as they dragged the mattress towards the east stairs. ‘First thing tomorrow I shall ride into Bury and buy turpentine and camphor and as many cakes of soap as my money will run to.’
Mention of Bury worried Harriet. ‘You will not want me to accompany you …’ she hoped.
‘No, my dear, of course not,’ Annie said. ‘You must stay here and help Pollyanna with Jimmy and Beau. And watch that Mrs Abbott gives those children of hers a good scrub down. Under the pump mind, not inside the house. I will buy them some clothes at the slop-shop otherwise James will order new ones to be made for them, which we certainly cannot afford, and then we will make a bonfire of all their old rags and with luck we may burn their livestock too.’
She was full of energy. The new bed was prepared in minutes and covered with an old sheet and two even older blankets, and the chest of drawers was locked and the new washset replaced by an old one. It was as if she were preparing for a seige. Which in many ways she was.
Her unwanted guests ate in the kitchen that evening quietly enough, and retired to their straw pallet afterwards, telling ‘the Reverend’ how grateful they were. But the next morning, when Annie tried to wake them, since it was seven o’clock and the rest of the house had been up and about for more than an hour, Mr Abbott growled to her to, ‘Go ’way an’ leave us be’. And that was the signal for action.
She tied her protective mop cap more tightly under her chin, checked to see that all her hair was safely tucked away inside it, and went into the room.
‘I am leaving this house in five minutes, Mr Abbott,’ she said, glaring down at the five verminous heads that now lay tangle to tangle on her old mattress cover, ‘being I’ve to go to Bury to buy fresh clothes for ’ee, and soap and turpentine and camphor and a deal else besides. ’Twould be much appreciated if you could all be up and washed before I return. I daresay you would like to shave your heads for greater cleanliness, so I have set a jug and razor by the pump. Our gardener has a good bonfire going.’
Mr Abbott got out of the bed at once and wrapped his feet and put on his collection of coats, which were the only articles he’d taken off the night before, and went humbly out of the door. ‘’Twill all be done as you say, ma’am,’ he promised. ‘Thank ’ee kindly.’
But Mrs Abbott stayed where she was. ‘I en’t a-shavin’ my head, ma’am,’ she said, when her husband was out of earshot. ‘No not for you nor for the Reverend nor for anyone. Tha’s my crowning glory that is, an’ a pleasure to my Jack, an’ tha’s a-stayin’ where ’tis.’
‘’Twould be a deal more glorious if ’twere clean,’ Annie observed drily. ‘Howsomever, I cannot force you. On your own head be it.’ And she went off downstairs considerably annoyed.
‘The woman is a slut,’ she said angrily to Harriet, ‘and means to infect the house. Well, we shall see about that. I am off to Bury now, but I promise you I shall be there and back as quick as a wink. I ain’t having my dear boys made lousy, and there’s an end on’t.’
And even though Harriet felt extremely sorry for the Abbotts and especially the children, poor little things, she had to admit that Annie was right to protect her own.
By the end of the day Mr Abbott and his three children had been transformed. Scrubbed under the pump until their skin was bright pink, their heads shaven as close as sheep, adequately shod, and dressed in quite presentable clothes, they looked like different people as they sat down to their second dinner in the kitchen. But Mrs Abbott was still belligerently dirty.
‘Tomorrow morning,’ Annie said, when she and Harriet and Pollyanna were escorting the boys up the west stairs to their nursery, ‘we will scrub the study and make all clean, ready for James to write his sermon.’
‘Why Mrs Hopkins, ma’am,’ Pollyanna said, settling little Beau more comfortably on her hip as she climbed, ‘it ain’t Saturday come round again already, surely to goodness.’
Saturday, Harriet thought. I have been here nearly a week. And then she remembered other things too. ‘Your brother comes here tomorrow,’ she said.
‘Aye, so he does,’ Annie said. ‘But the work must go on notwithstanding.’
In fact he paid no attention to all the cleaning and scrubbing the following afternoon, beyond sniffing the air vaguely when he first stepped inside the house. He was far more concerned to see how Harriet was, and to give her the latest news of her parents. And when she came quietly out of the kitchen door he was so pleased at the sight of her that Annie could have scrubbed him down as well as the study and he wouldn’t have noticed. How very much better she looked! Why, her bruises were almost gone and the cut on her lip was quite healed.
‘I am glad to see you well,’ he said.
‘There is a basket of washing to be taken down to Mrs Barley in the six cottages,’ Annie said to Harriet.
‘We will carry it between us,’ John offered at once. It was just the right sort of opportunity for them to talk alone. As Annie knew very well.
So the basket was fetched and he and Harriet walked out of the garden, carrying it between them like a chaperone, past the holm oak that marked the entrance to the rectory and the massive yew that stood sentinel beside the church. They left the churchyard by the lower church gate, which pleased him because it meant he could take the basket and hold her arm as he helped her through. There was an ancient timbered house beside the lower gate, tall as a man o’ war and full of chattering children who tumbled out of the door and sat on the steps and tottered about the vegetable garden, and on the other side of the street a crowd of listless farmhands stood about in front of the smithy. Too public yet, John thought, as they set off downhill.
They walked in companionable silence past Bruges Cottage, where the smith lived, and Willow Cottage, where the wise woman sat knitting in the sun. They followed the path that led out of the village, and presently they found themselves at the meeting of the four footpaths which led to Woolpit, Stowmarket and Felsham.
‘We could sit here for a while,’ he said hopefully, ‘could we not? It is a warm afternoon and there is no need for us to hurry.’
So they put their basket down beside the signpost and sat on the grass at the top of the little mound, both intensely aware of one another.
‘You are well?’ he said, admiring that apricot blush. Why, she was quite herself again!
‘Quite well, thank ’ee kindly. Have you news of my parents, Mr Easter?’ How very handsome he looked in the sunshine and how very brown his eyes were. Like pansies.
‘Mr Teshmaker has written to suggest that they come up to London at the end of the month for a meeting with me and my mother and our lawyers.’ If only we were engaged I could lean forward and kiss her. There being no one here to see us.
‘Have they agreed to it?’ How kind he is to take such pains. And so gentle. Look how he helped to carry the basket.
‘We await their letter. In the meantime the lawyers have asked me to ask you …’ Would it seem impertinent to be asking her age? Oh, he mustn’t upset her. Not now when she was recovering so well.
‘To ask me what, Mr Easter?’ How dear he is to be so worried about me. I know how worried he is, for he squints with worry. Oh I love him when he squints with worry.
‘How old you are, Miss Sowerby.’ Please don’t take offence, dear Harriet. I have to ask you.
‘I was sixteen in January.’ Is that the right answer? Oh yes, it must be, for the squint is going.’
‘Thank ’ee kindly.’ Sixteen! Sixteen! What good fortune. Too old for child-stealing and just right for marriage. He was smiling at her rapturously. He couldn’t help it.
‘Should we deliver the washing now, Mr Easter? Or is there anything else you have to ask me?’
Oh there was. There was. So much. But it could wait. There would be a time for it, when the Sowerbys were settled.
He stood up and offered her his hand to help her to her feet. ‘Tell me what has been happening in Rattlesden,’ he said. ‘Who were those bald-headed children in the garden?’
‘They are Mr Abbott’s children,’ she told him, adding with some pride, ‘he has no work and nowhere to live and we are looking after them all.’