Kitty Little (3 page)

Though if her daughter did cry off in the end, Clara might well grab him herself.

Kitty alighted from the bus when her fare ran out to find herself back by the theatre. It was then that the idea came to her. If she dreamed of being an actress, why not try? What did she have to lose? Once the notion had taken hold, there seemed to be no shifting it.

She didn’t even get beyond the porter who sat puffing a malodorous pipe, jealously guarding the back stage entrance, warding off all-comers with a long arm and a short temper. ‘No auditions today girl,’ he growled, wafting her away through a haze of smoke.

Kitty mustered every ounce of charm she possessed but it was clear that he wasn’t about to let her cross the threshold, not to see the producer, the stage manager, nor anyone. Not without a letter of introduction from her agent, which of course she didn’t possess, or unless there were auditions on, which there certainly weren’t as she could see by the fact there was no queue outside.

‘Where would I find an agent, exactly?’

He peered at this tall, rather ordinary looking girl through dusty spectacles, then removing the pipe from his mouth, knocked out the bowl and began to plug it with fresh tobacco. Carefully tamping this down he pondered on whether she was worthy of further consideration. ‘You’re new to this line of business then?’

‘Is it so obvious?’

He lit the pipe, producing a small bonfire before it settled to a slow burn. Having got it drawing to his satisfaction, he grunted and turned his back on her. Then just as Kitty prepared to turn away, despair having finally demolished her resolve, he pushed a grubby sheet of paper across the narrow counter. ‘There’s a list of agents. Give them a try. Though I don’t hold out much hope.’

She caught up the list with surprise, and beamed at him with excited pleasure. ‘Thanks ever so.’

His jaw fell slack, the pipe forgotten as his surprised gaze followed her as she strode away. She was neither plain nor in the least bit ordinary.

Kitty walked the lengths of street after street till she decided she must have visited every address listed, and many she’d discovered on the way that were not, but had failed utterly to interest anyone into taking her on as a client.

Like the porter, some refused to even admit her beyond the outer office. Those who did lectured her on the fierce competition, pointing out that half the country seemed to imagine they could act, or make their fortune in the music hall. They fired questions at her to which she could give no suitable answers, the main one being that of experience. Some asked her to do a little step dance or sing a little ditty. The moment she confessed she could do neither, they lost interest. Others offered to do what they could if she agreed to pay them a large sum up front for their services, which sounded a shady deal even to Kitty’s innocent ears. Such savings as she did possess were far too precious to be squandered without careful consideration. One even indicated he could most certainly find her work, in return for payment of a particular nature. Kitty had fled from that seedy office with all speed.

It took five hours foot-slogging before she admitted defeat. The dream of being an actress, of treading the boards as these case-hardened agents called it, was just that: a dream. The idea, so sparkling and brilliant when she’d first conceived it, lighting a path to a marvellous new future, now lay tarnished and rusting in her mind. There seemed no way out of the rut into which Clara was resolutely funnelling her.

Feet aching, feeling dejected and low, not to mention cold and wet, with even the weather turning to a drizzly rain as if to echo her mood, Kitty caught the next bus home and prepared herself for a lecture.

Chapter Two

Sundays were Esme Bield’s busiest day of the week. Even now as the second hymn bellowed out from Miss Agnes’s steadfast fingering and heavy footwork on the organ pedals, she was mustering the children ready to troop them next door to the Sunday school while her mind was counting the slices of cold ham she might manage to cut from the woefully small bit of hock left in the larder at home. Following this cold and unappetising repast, (no cooking allowed on this holy day) there would be barely time to wash the dishes before Esme must return for the afternoon Sunday School which began promptly at two-thirty. After that there would be tea. Plain bread and jam followed by the smallest slice of Madeira cake. Only then, while her father, the Reverend Andrew Bield, snored in his wing-backed chair, would Esme be free to snatch a few minutes of complete bliss in the privacy of her room to devour the latest romance she had procured from the penny library. A Sunday as predictable as any other.

The organ let out its customary squeak, rather like a sigh of regret as it relinquished the final notes. As if primed by a starting pistol the children rose as one and crept down the aisle in a silent crocodile, too fearful of being struck down by the Almighty Himself to risk a whisper, or even a backward glance as they shuffled out through the side door, thankful only to be free of the heavy formality of the church service. Esme too breathed a sigh of relief as she came out into the sunshine of the church yard.
 

The heavy scents of yew trees and damp grass tickled her nostrils enticingly as she hurried her little band along overgrown paths. Here in this tiny hamlet of Repstone, one of many that clustered around the silvered surface of Carreckwater, primroses, violets and bluebells filled the verges with thick clots of colour; blossom hung in lacy white sprays from the hawthorn trees, brightened here and there by a blush of pink, their heady scent intoxicating as always in spring. The sweet sound of young lambs calling to their mothers carried on a soft breeze and somewhere a skylark sang. It was as if the mountains had shaken out their skirts of green and lavender to bask in the golden May sunshine.
 

Esme smiled at the thought. The Lake District was surely meant for romantics and although she was happy to be counted among that number, without doubt loving this land in which she’d been raised; there were times when she wanted to run from it, and from her life here, just as fast as she could go. Even as the surrounding mountains hemmed her in, yet they represented the promise of a world beyond, of escape from the restrictions of a life bound by duty and dull routine; almost as if they were the gateway to an unknown world.
 

Esme pulled open the heavy schoolroom door and ushered her charges inside. May was traditionally a festive month. Some of the children, from the more prosperous families sported new straw bonnets, others had decked out a hand-me-down with fresh ribbon. They’d enjoyed the maypole dance on the first of the month, for all her father insisted it had pagan origins, and now sat in an obedient line on stout wooden benches, striving not to shuffle their small bottoms while she read them the story of Noah and his ark. It was a story that Esme loved for it signified a new beginning, an adventure for Noah, his three sons and all the animals fortunate enough to be chosen to accompany them on the expedition. How she longed to do likewise.

Later, over thin sliced brown bread and an even thinner coating of raspberry jam, her father reprimanded her on her choice.

‘The New Testament would have been more appropriate, my dear. The Loaves and the Fishes perhaps, or the Prodigal Son.’

‘Yes, father. But the children do so love the Noah story. And they all drew wonderful animals. Little Amy Rigg drew a delightful family of baby rabbits.’ Esme laughed but Andrew only grimaced.

‘My point exactly, my dear. Encouraging the imagination is not wise, for it results in complete inaccuracy.’

Esme would like to have protested that imagination was a gift that should be nurtured in any child and did no harm at all to the value of the bible story, but managed to bite back her words in time. She knew from past experience how useless such arguments were.

Satisfied that he’d made his point, her father patted her arm as she began gathering up plates and cups. ‘You’re a good worker, Mary.’ He often called her by her mother’s name when his mind was occupied with church business. Esme was used to it, so did not trouble to correct him as he put his arms about her, holding her close, one hand cupping her cheek, the other resting lightly upon her buttocks while he dropped a kiss upon her forehead and then upon her lips.

Not an unkind man, yet since the untimely death of his beloved wife and helpmeet the Reverend Bield had assumed that Esme must take her place beside him. He would have been aghast had anyone pointed out the unfairness of this; that perhaps playing the role of parson’s wife was not a task which his daughter relished. It was, in his opinion, her bounden duty.

As Esme watched him turn and walk away to his study, ostensibly to the pruning and tidying of his sermon while in reality he would take a short nap, Esme wiped the kiss from her lips without even realising she was doing it.

Much as she dreamed of escape one day, soaking her pleasure-starved soul in an endless stream of cheap romances, Esme too viewed her role in much the same light. A labour of love that she was duty-bound to fulfil. Yet for some reason, perhaps the coming of yet another spring, she’d begun to question her fate more of late, hearing her life tick away by minute by minute, hour by doleful hour on the vicarage clock.

The moment her father had gone, she pulled the latest escapist delight from out of her knitting bag, opened it at the marker, and began to read. The door of the study opened, causing her to drop the book hastily back into the bag as she turned to face her father with a willing smile on a face flushed with guilt. Andrew Bield did not approve of any other reading matter than the Good Book on a Sunday, or on other days too, for that matter.

‘Esme, don’t forget to remind Mrs Phillips about the Sisterhood meeting on Tuesday evening. She is to lead the prayers.’

‘Very good father. I expect she’ll be at evensong, if not I’ll call on my way home.’

‘And you are to attend the Sewing Circle tomorrow afternoon, don’t forget.’

Esme‘s heart sank. In addition to caring for her father, and minding the children at Sunday School, there were church meetings of one form or another on most evenings of the week, plus several afternoons. What with the Ladies’ Guild, choir practice and various Sunday School teacher meetings, Monday had been her one free day. She clung to it now in frantic desperation.

‘Oh, but I always go for a long walk on a Monday afternoon, once I’ve finished with the washing. The fresh air does me good, and you know I can’t sew for toffee, Father.’

‘Then it’s time you learned.’ The door of the study closed upon her protests and the rosy cheeks of guilt now turned white with a pinched anger. He’d no right to take her for granted in this way. She really couldn’t go on like this, with no say in her own life. Esme was sure that she’d go mad if she didn’t get away soon. She’d no time at all to herself.

Almost as swiftly as it had come, the flicker of rebellion died, superseded by the familiar gnawing guilt. Surely her father had every right to dictate her duties. He had a difficult and taxing occupation. Her mother was dead and it behoved her to at least do what she could to lighten his burden.

Oh, but there were days when Esme wished someone would lighten hers.

In the weeks following as she went about her usual business, duly attending the sewing circle as instructed, Esme could feel the pitying eyes of the parish ladies upon her, their united gaze watching her every move, presumably because she was inept and rather plain. Esme would not for a moment have considered her plump, country rosiness as pretty, or imagine that her neighbours might see her as such. She kept her fair hair painstakingly tidy in one long plait;
 
wound about her head it gave her a rather Scandinavian look. Rimless spectacles hung upon her small nose, no matter how many times she adjusted them, and despite the radiance of pale grey eyes, a rosebud mouth and silky bloom to her skin, she saw their stares as censorious rather than kindly, their silence as a criticism rather than a sign of ineptitude on their part, not for a moment thinking they might have some other reason to pity her.

If only she were twenty-one then she would be a woman and able to make her own decisions. Esme vowed to escape before her nineteen birthday but that was only few weeks away, so quite how this was to be achieved, was quite beyond her.

She regularly visited her dear friend, Ida Phillips, in the ancient, flag-floored kitchen of Repstone Manor, a square grey-stoned building that had become a sad replica of its former glory. This evening the elderly woman was swathed in a wrap-around pinafore several sizes too large for her stick-like frame, chopping a stack of rhubarb preparatory to making jam when Esme let herself in, unannounced, as was her wont.

‘Esme, how kind of you to call. Slide the kettle onto the Aga, dear. We’ll have a cuppa.’ Her birdlike fingers flew as she found tea cups, saucers, a tin of home made biscuits which somehow she always managed to produce. In no time the pair were happily ensconced in their favourite pursuit, recalling those glorious golden days when Esme had been a young girl and the house had still possessed a family and a heart.

On this particular evening it soon became perfectly clear that Ida was bursting with news. ‘You’ll never guess what’s happened?’

Esme laughed. ‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’

‘He’s written.’

‘Who has written?’

‘The young master, of course, who else? Gave me quite a turn it did to see his handwriting after all this time.’