Tangled Threads (3 page)

Deciding suddenly, Eveleen snatched up her best bonnet and pushed the other one back into the wardrobe. She would have to get past her mother without Mary seeing it. She crept down the stairs
and into the kitchen. Her mother, clearing away the breakfast things, looked up.

‘Look sharp, Eveleen, your father’s waiting for you in the yard.’

Hiding the bonnet beneath the cream shawl she carried, Eveleen hurried forward to kiss her mother’s cheek and then flew out of the house. Picking up her skirts she ran across the yard and
climbed into the pony and trap borrowed each market day from the big house.

Only when they were safely out of the gate and a short distance down the lane did Eveleen breathe a sigh of satisfaction and put on her bonnet.

‘Oho,’ Walter Hardcastle chuckled. ‘I wondered why you came out of the house at a gallop. Now I know.’

Eveleen laughed aloud and then tucked her arm through her father’s. ‘But you won’t tell her, Dad, will you?’

‘’Course not, love. Our secret, eh?’

Eveleen hugged his arm to her side, her love for him spilling over as they laughed together.

Then Eveleen lifted her face and breathed in the sharp air. An early morning frost silvered the ground and turned trees and hedges into gossamer threads as delicate as her mother’s pillow
lace. A mist hung over the land and shrouded the trees. But the sun, rising palely before them, would soon warm the earth, melt away the frost and disperse the mist. It was going to be a lovely
day.

And today she might see Stephen.

The village of Bernby lay on a hill to the west of Grantham. Even further west, down the steep, narrow lane twisting beneath the overhanging trees of Bernby Covert and over the
footbridge across the bubbling beck, lay the Dunsmores’ 700-acre farm and the homes of their employees.

George Dunsmore had been born in Pear Tree Farm and at the age of twenty had inherited the house, forty acres of arable land and a herd of cows. But George was ambitious. He chose as his wife a
girl from good farming stock and together they determined to build a future, not only for themselves, but also for the next generation.

Ann Dunsmore bore five children but only three lived to adulthood. George Dunsmore focused his hopes and dreams upon his only surviving son, Ernest. With Ernest’s birth in 1855, George
added more acreage to his farm and built a grand mansion, Fairfield House, just across the fields behind his former home.

Ben Hardcastle had worked on the land from the age of twelve and at fifteen had been the first farm labourer George Dunsmore employed. They worked shoulder to shoulder, just the two of them,
from dawn to dusk and beyond. A year after George’s son’s birth, Ben married Emily and George offered them the tied dwelling, Pear Tree Farm. Soon George employed other men on his
expanding farm, but he made Ben his head stockman and Ben Hardcastle was always the man the others looked up to.

George Dunsmore was a lucky man. By the time he died in 1890 at the age of sixty-five, he had lived long enough to see his ambitions realized and he died happy in the certain knowledge that his
son would continue his life’s work. By that time, the farm had already grown to five hundred acres and he had seen Ernest marry and present him with a grandson, Stephen, who would one day
inherit all that George had striven for.

The Hardcastles had not been quite so fortunate. A year after their marriage Emily gave birth to a son, Walter, but that same night his birth had caused her death. Within a year, however, Ben
married a kindly woman who, unable to have children of her own, had lavished affection on her stepson. Neither Ben nor his son Walter had been ambitious and were content to live on in Pear Tree
Farm and work for the enterprising Dunsmores. As the years passed and the estate grew, the Hardcastles, while being liked and respected, no longer held the unofficial position of the boss’s
right-hand man and confidant. A farm bailiff, Josiah Jackson, now administered the day-to-day running of the estate and while Walter carried on his father’s work as gathman, he no longer held
a privileged position.

‘That Josiah Jackson would turn us out of our home, if he could,’ Mary would often say, only to be placated by her gentle, unassuming husband.

‘Oh come now, Mary love, I’m sure that isn’t so.’

Mary would shake her head and smile and say, ‘Oh, Walter, what am I going to do with you? Sometimes, I think you’re just too good to be true. You don’t see wrong in anyone, do
you?’ And she would pass the back of his chair and plant a kiss on his thinning hair. Walter would only chuckle and his eyes would twinkle. ‘Well, I’ve my stepmother to thank for
that, love,’ he would say.

‘She was a lovely woman,’ Walter, speaking of Elizabeth, his stepmother, would tell Eveleen often. ‘It’s my only real sorrow in life that neither my dad nor my stepmother
lived to see you and Jimmy. How she would have loved you,’ he would murmur, reaching out to touch his daughter’s wild halo of hair.

Then Eveleen would hug her father. ‘I wish I’d known her too, Dad, and your father.’

‘He was a nice man, such a kind man.’ Her father’s voice would soften as he remembered. ‘Such a shame he died earlier than he should have done. He was only in his
forties. I – I found him you know. Collapsed in the field next to our house. A heart attack, the doctor said. No one could have done anything, even if we’d been with him when it
happened.’

Eveleen would always shudder when her father recounted this tragedy. She could feel her father’s sadness and share his helplessness. The poor man, dying alone in the middle of a field and
no one even there to hold his hand.

‘What happened to your stepmother?’ Eveleen knew the answer, but also knew instinctively that her question helped her father to talk about it. It did him good to talk about one of
the saddest days in his life.

‘She was distraught, devastated by my father’s death. Couldn’t come to terms with it at all. She blamed hersen, although that was nonsense, of course. The doctor –
everyone – tried to reassure her but she wouldn’t listen. She just went downhill afterwards. So fast. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with me own eyes that
anyone could go from being a happy, laughing, healthy woman to skin and bone in a few weeks. She didn’t live many months after he went.’

Sorrow and guilt were in her father’s voice. ‘It wasn’t your fault. You mustn’t feel responsible, Dad,’ Eveleen would try to reassure him, but her father’s
answer was always the same. ‘But I do, love. I do. I can’t help thinking that if only I’d looked after her better . . .’

Now, sitting together in the trap bowling their way to market, Eveleen asked, ‘Dad, how did you and Mam meet? I know you lived alone in our house after your parents died, but you’ve
never told me how you met our mam.’

Joining the lane at the end of the track leading from their home, Walter turned to the left and then after a quarter of a mile or so took another left turn. They passed the wrought-iron gates
leading into the sweeping drive of Fairfield House. Eveleen risked a glance and found she was holding her breath, but there was no sign of Stephen.

The pony trotted on, splashing through the ford beside the footbridge across the beck and labouring up the hill towards Bernby Covert. The road passed beneath the trees, cold where the sun had
not yet penetrated the shadows, and on towards Bernby village and then Grantham. Eveleen loved these trips with her father, loved having him all to herself for a few precious hours. They talked
about all sorts of things and she soaked up his knowledge, his wisdom and revelled in his obvious love for his family.

But now he was not answering her immediately. He was sitting, holding the reins lightly in his hands and staring straight ahead.

‘Dad?’ Eveleen prompted.

With her arm still through his, she felt, rather than heard, his heavy sigh. His words came hesitantly, reluctantly. ‘She came to work for the Dunsmores one potato-picking time.’
Walter cleared his throat and seemed to be choosing his words very carefully. ‘The work was very hard for her. Not – not what she had been used to. She was – er – ill and,
because I was living on my own, I took her in and looked after her. Mrs Dunsmore – the old lady that is – heard about it and said it wasn’t seemly.’

Father and daughter exchanged a knowing smile. It was the sort of phrase that Mary herself now used constantly.

‘So you married her?’

‘Not straight away.’ Again, Eveleen could detect that Walter was being careful to select his words. ‘Mr Ernest had been married just over a year and his wife had just had
Master Stephen and she needed help about the place. In the house and with the dairy work. So when ya mam felt well again, she went to live in for a while at Fairfield House.’

Eveleen could not keep the surprise from her tone. ‘Mrs Rachel used to work?’

Her father’s expression lightened a little as he said, ‘Oh yes. I remember the time when they were first married, Mr Ernest still used to plough fields himself and his bride, Rachel,
used to help milk the cows. That was when the old man, Mr George, was still alive. After he died, it began to change and now, of course, like your mam always says . . .’ without a trace of
resentment or envy in his tone, Walter said, laughingly, ‘the Dunsmores can afford to employ others to do all the work while the master and his son ride around the estate on their horses
instead of walking mile after mile behind them.’

‘But where did Mam come from? Did her family live near here?’

‘No – no, she came from a little village just south of Nottingham.’

‘Nottingham!’ Eveleen could not keep the surprise from her tone, and yet this revelation did answer a question that had been in her mind as she had been growing up but had never been
voiced. Aloud she murmured, ‘So that’s why she talks different to you.’

Walter Hardcastle spoke with the broad Lincolnshire dialect of the area, but Mary’s speech was different.

Walter was chuckling softly to himself. ‘I’m sure your mother would be delighted to hear you say that. She has tried so hard to erase dialect of any sort from her own way of
speaking. And from you and Jimmy. ’Fraid she hasn’t managed it with me, though, much to her disappointment.’

They travelled for a few moments before Eveleen took a deep breath and asked, ‘Did you know her family?’

There was a long silence and when her father did answer he was now noticeably hesitant. ‘Eveleen, love, it’s not for me to tell you. If your mother wants you to know, she will tell
you in her own good time.’

For a moment Eveleen held her breath, restraining the tumult of questions that threatened to spill out. Then she released her breath slowly, but her mind was racing. So, there was some mystery
surrounding her mother’s early life. Her mother never mentioned her family and Eveleen did not know if she had grandparents, aunts, uncles, or even cousins. Whatever could have happened to
make Mary lose contact with her family so completely?

She risked one more tentative question. ‘Are her parents still alive? Have I got a grandpa and granny somewhere?’

There was genuine sadness in Walter’s tone. ‘I don’t know, love.’ Then, more firmly, he added, ‘Please, Eveleen, don’t ask me any more.’

The remainder of the journey passed without either of them speaking. A shadow had passed across their day.

They came to Westgate in the town close to the cattle market.

‘It’s busy today,’ Walter remarked. ‘I’ll have to leave the trap here.’ They climbed down. ‘You can go and look around the shops, Eveleen. Don’t
get lost.’

They smiled at each other and the constraint that had been briefly between them fled. Eveleen laughed. She knew this part of Grantham almost as well as the lanes around her own home.

‘I won’t, Dad. Besides, I’ve a list of things to buy for Mam. I’m not going to have much time for dawdling.’

‘Well, enjoy yarsen, lass. You don’t get into town very much. Now,’ his attention turned to his work, ‘I must find Master Stephen. We’re here to buy a bull today.
Mr Ernest wants to start breeding shorthorns, so I must be sure to find him a good one.’

‘You will,’ Eveleen said, confident in her father’s knowledge of cattle. Walter was reputed to be the best cowman in the area and while the modest man would never speak of it
himself, the knowledge filled Eveleen with pride. ‘If I see Stephen, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him.’

At the mere mention of his name, her foolish heart began to beat a little faster and she could feel the colour creeping up her neck. She turned away before her father should see the sparkle in
her eyes and her smile of anticipation.

She wove her way through the throng, nodding and smiling at acquaintances and then she was brought to a sudden halt by the tall, lanky figure barring her path.

‘If it isn’t the lovely Eveleen in her best Sunday bonnet.’

She smiled up at the young man. ‘Hello, Ted. What brings you to town on market day?’

‘All the pretty girls, of course. But there’s none as pretty as you, Evie.’ Before she could protest, he had grabbed hold of her hand and pulled it through his arm. ‘When
are you going to start walking out with me properly?’

Eveleen looked up at him, threw back her head and laughed aloud. ‘When the sun shines on both sides of the hedge at once,’ she teased.

Ted pretended to be heartbroken and pressed his hand against his chest. ‘Oh, I’ll die of love for you,’ he clowned. Then, dropping to one knee, he clasped both his hands
together in supplication as if proposing.

His tomfoolery caused a ripple of laughter among the passers-by and Eveleen had to wipe tears of merriment from her eyes. ‘Get up, you idiot. What will people think?’

‘I don’t care,’ he proclaimed loudly, with feigned passion. ‘You’re breaking my heart, Eveleen Hardcastle.’

A voice spoke behind her. A voice that made her legs tremble and her heart feel as if it was doing somersaults. As she turned to face him, Eveleen caught her breath. On Stephen’s face
there was an unmistakable look of jealousy as he glanced away from her to glare at the young man who was scrambling hastily to his feet and, for once, looking embarrassed himself.