The Caxley Chronicles (4 page)

'Just brought the pattern I promised you,' said Edna, holding out an envelope. 'It turned out fine for Kathy, and you only need a yard and a half.'

'Thank you,' replied Hilda. 'You shouldn't have bothered, 'specially leaving the children in bed.'

This was a shrewd blow, and was not missed either by Edna or Bender. Under the surface solicitude, the sentence managed to imply parental neglect and to draw attention to the fact that Edna had no resident help in the house to mind her offspring, as Hilda herself had.

'Sep's there,' said Edna shortly. She put up a dusky thin
hand to brush back a wisp of hair. The coin bracelet jingled gaily.

'You heard the news?' she continued. There was a hint of excitement in her casual tone.

'What about?' said Bender, coming forward. He was frankly interested to know what was afoot. Hilda assumed an air of indifference. Really, local tittle-tattle did not interest her! She blew some dust from a box of screws with an expression of distaste.

'The King!' said Edna. 'They say he's been took bad, and the Coronation's off.'

Hilda was shaken from her lofty attitude. Her mouth fell open into a round pink O.

'You don't say! The poor dear! What's the matter?'

'The King!' echoed Bender, thunderstruck. 'You sure this is true?'

'Gospel! Had it from Lord Turley's coachman. He told him himself. Lord Turley's just got back from London on the train.'

This was news indeed.

'But what about all this 'ere?' spluttered Bender, waving a large, dirty hand at the bedecked market place.

'And the parties? And the concerts and all that?' echoed Hilda, all dignity forgotten in the face of this calamity.

'And what about poor Sep's baking?' retorted Edna. 'He's got a bakehouse chock full of iced cakes, and sausage rolls, and a great batch of dough ready for the buns. I tell you, it's ruination for us, as well as bad luck for the King!'

Bender's face grew grave. He knew, only too well, the narrow margin between Sep's solvency and his business downfall. He spoke with forced cheerfulness.

'Don't you fret about that, Edna. It won't be as bad as you think. But do the Council know? Has the Mayor been told? And what about the vicar? Ought to be summat done about a service pretty sharp.'

Edna did not know. Her cares were all for the Kong's condition and her husband's set-backs.

'I'll be getting back,' she said, putting the paper pattern on the counter. There was a hint of sadness now in her downcast countenance which stirred Hilda's conscience.

'Now, Edna, don't you worry,' she said, with unaccustomed gentleness. 'It's a sore blow for everyone, but the one who's suffering most is poor Queen Alexandra, and the Family too. There'll be another Coronation as soon as the King's fit, you'll see, my dear, and then all Our troubles will be over.'

She walked with Edna to the door and let her out, watching her walk back across the square beneath the fluttering flags. Hardly had she closed the door when one of the Corporation's carts, drawn by two great carthorses, clattered to the centre of the market square. Two men jumped down and began to remove the ribbons which bedizened the statue of the old Queen. At the same moment the bell of St Peter's began to ring out, calling all parishioners to prayer.

'Let's go, Bender,' said Hilda suddenly.

Without a word, Bender removed his overall, and accompanied his wife aloft to fetch jacket, hat and gloves.

Within three minutes, the Norths with other bewildered Caxley folk, crossed the market square, fast being denuded of its finery, and, with heavy hearts, entered the sombre porch of the parish church.

***

From a top floor window, high above the ironmonger's shop, young Bertie North looked down upon the scene, unknown to his parents.

It is difficult to go to sleep on summer evenings when you are eight years old and put to bed firmly at seven o'clock. Bertie resented this early bed-time. Just because Winnie, two years his junior, had to go then, it seemed mighty unfair to expect a man of his advanced age to retire simply because it saved trouble for Vera, the girl. He did not make a fuss about the matter. Bertie North was a peace-loving child, and did not want to upset Vera, the fourteen-year-old country girl from Beech Green, who worked hard from seven in the morning until the North children were in bed at night.

But the injustice rankled. And tonight, as he stood at the high window in his cotton night-shirt, he felt even more resentful, for there, far below, he could see the two Howard boys. They were hopping gaily about the statue, watching all the activity of taking down the ribbons and fairy lights. Bertie had seen them bob down behind the stone plinth to hide from their mother as she made her way home from visiting his own parents.

They weren't made to go to bed so early! Of course, thought Bertie reasonably, they were much older than he was; Jim was twelve, and Leslie was ten. His particular friend, Kathy, who was only seven, had to go to bed when her little brother did, just as he did. This crumb of cold comfort went a small way towards consoling the boy gazing down at the enviable freedom of the older children.

The bell stopped ringing, and the everyday noises could be heard once more. The clop of the horses' great shaggy hooves,
as they moved across the cobblestones of the market square, mingled with the screaming of swifts round the spire of St Peter's. Behind him, in one of the back bedrooms looking across the river Cax, he could hear Vera singing to herself as she darned socks.

There were four little bedrooms at the top of the tall old house. Bertie and Winnie had one each overlooking the square. Vera had another, and the fourth was known as 'the boxroom' and was filled with the most fascinating objects, from a dressmaker's model, with a formidable bust covered in red sateen and a wire skirt, to a dusty pile of framed portraits of North ancestors complete with cravats, pomaded locks and beards.

These old be-whiskered faces intrigued young Bertie. He liked to think that he belonged to the same family; that they too had once been his age, had run across the market square with their iron hoops as he did, and floated their toy boats on the placid face of the river Cax. His father and mother had been patient in answering his questions, and he already had an idea of his respectable background. Brought up in a community which recognised the clear divisions of class, Bertie knew the Norths' place in the scale and was happy to be there.

The Norths were middle class. They were respected tradespeople, church-goers and, best of all, comfortably off. Bertie was glad he was not in the class above his—the gentry. Their children were sent away to school or had stern governesses. Their fathers and mothers seemed to be away from home a great deal. It would not have suited Bertie. Sometimes a passing pang of envy shot through him when he saw his betters on ponies of their own, for Bertie loved horses dearly. But there was always the sturdy little cob that pulled Uncle
Ted's trap in the High Street, and on this the boy lavished his affection.

He was even more thankful that he did not belong to the class below, the poor. The people who lived in the low-lying area of Caxley, called 'The Marsh', were objects of pity and a certain measure of fear. Respectable children were not allowed to roam those dark narrow streets alone. On winter nights, the hissing gas lamp on the corner of the lane leading from the High Street to the marsh, simply accentuated the sinister murk of the labyrinth of alleys and small courtyards which were huddled, higgledy-piggledy, behind the gracious façade of the Georgian shop fronts.

Other people—far too many of them for Bertie's tender heart—were also poor. He saw them in his father's shop, thin, timid, unpleasantly smelly, rooting in their pockets or worn purses for the pence to pay for two screws, a cheap pudding basin, or a little kettle. They were pathetically anxious not to give any trouble.

'Don't 'ee bother to wrap it, sir,' they said to Bender deferentially.

'It don't matter if it's a mite rusty,' said another one day. ''Twill be good enough for I.'

It seemed strange to the listening boy, his head not far above the counter, that the poor whose money was so precious, should be content to accept shoddy goods, whereas those with plenty of money should make such a terrible fuss if there were the slightest fault in their purchases.

'What the hell d'you mean, North, by sending up this rubbish?' old Colonel Enderby had roared, flinging a pair of heavy gate hinges on to the counter, with such force that they
skidded across, and would have crashed into young Bertie's chin if he had not ducked smartly. 'They're scratched!'

His father's politeness, in the face of this sort of behaviour, brought home to his son the necessity for knowing one's place on the social ladder. But it did not blind the child to a certain unfairness in his world's structure.

Standing at the high window, his bare feet growing more and more chilly on the cold linoleum, a new thought struck Bertie, as he watched Jim and Leslie far below. Were the Howards poor? They certainly had plenty to eat, delicious pies, new crusty loaves, and cakes in plenty; but they had very few toys, and Bertie's mother often gave Mrs Howard clothes, which Winnie had outgrown, for Kathy.

He remembered too, with some shock, that Jim's and Leslie's grandmother was old Mrs Bryant, the gipsy, who sometimes came into the shop, bent under her dirty black shawl. She certainly was poor. She spoke in a whining nasal voice and Bertie had heard her ask his father to take less than the marked price.

Did this mean that the Howard boys were on a par with the marsh children? His mother certainly spoke with some condescension about the Howards, Bertie recalled, but he knew very well that he would not be allowed to play with the marsh folk. Obviously then, the Howards were acceptable as play fellows.

It was all very puzzling, thought Bertie, resting his forehead against the cold glass. As far as he was concerned, Jim and Leslie were friends, even heroes, for when one is only eight one looks up to those of ten and twelve, especially when they are gracious enough to accept one's homage.

Through the window-pane, now misted with his breath, Bertie saw Mrs Howard appear at the shop door and beckon her sons inside. Reluctantly, with backward glances, they obeyed and Bertie watched them vanish indoors. The shop door closed with a bang.

'Now
they've
got to go to bed!' said Bertie with satisfaction. And with this comforting thought he bounded into his own and was asleep in five minutes.

T
HE KING
recovered, and the nation rejoiced. Now the Coronation would be on August the ninth. The decorations, so sadly taken down, were restored to their places, and Queen Victoria peered once more from beneath her ribbon umbrella. The bells of St Peter's rang out merrily, calling across the countryside to a hundred others pealing from tower or soaring spire, among the downs and water meadows around Caxley.

Septimus Howard was doubly thankful for the King's recovery. On the morning after Edna's visit to Bender's shop he had called there himself, pale with anxiety. Bender had ushered him into the shop-parlour and closed the door.

'Say nothing, Sep,' he said. 'I know how it is.'

'I've got to say something,' burst out poor Sep. 'I haven't had a wink all night. I stand to lose nigh on forty pounds with cancelled orders, 1 reckon, and I can't see my way clear to paying you back what I owe for many a week.'

He passed an agitated hand over his white face.

'Look here, Sep,' rumbled Bender, 'you've got nothing to worry about. I know my money's safe enough. It'll come back one day, and it don't matter to me just when. Your business is coming along a fair treat. These 'ere set-backs happen to us all—but you keep plodding on, boy.'

He smote the smaller man a heartening blow on the shoulder
which made his teeth rattle. Sep managed to produce a wan smile.

'It's good of you, Bender,' he began, but was cut short.

'More to the point, Sep—have you got enough to tide you over? Do you want a mite more till this business is straightened out?'

Sep's pale face flushed. His eyes were unhappy. He looked through the glass partition between the parlour and the shop and gazed at the kettles and saucepans, dangling from the ceiling there, with unseeing eyes.

'I think so. I think so, Bender. I'll know more tomorrow, and I don't want to borrow from you if I can help it. You've been generous enough already.'

He rose from the horse-hair chair and made his way to the door.

'Must get back to the shop. Plenty to do over there. People want loaves even if they don't want Coronation cakes.'

He turned and put out a timid hand. Bender gripped it painfully and pumped his arm vigorously up and down.

'Don't let things get you down, Sep,' boomed Bender cheerfully. 'That shop o' yours will be blooming gold mine before you know where you are. Keep at it, old chap!'

'I only hope you're right,' poor Sep had replied, hurrying back to his duties.

But by August the ninth, with Coronation orders renewed, Sep had recovered his losses and made a handsome profit besides. By the end of that month, when he settled down, with Edna beside him, to cast up his accounts, he found that for the
first time he was out of debt. Bender's loan had been repaid, so that the shop, furnishings, bakehouse and machinery, were now entirely their own. It was a day of thankful celebration in the Howard household.

From that moment, it seemed, fortune began to smile upon Sep and his family. The wedding cake for Miss Frances Hurley had been a creation of exquisite fragility, much commented upon by other well-born matrons at the wedding with daughters in the marriage lists. Sep's handiwork, and his competitive prices, were noted, and many an order came his way. Howard's bakery was beginning to earn the fine reputation it deserved. Sep himself could hardly believe his luck. Edna, excited by more money, needed restraining from gay and frivolous expenditure.

'Don't fritter it away,' begged poor Sep, bewildered but still prudent. ''Tis wrong, Edna, to be too free. There'll be plenty more rainy days to face. One swallow don't make a summer.'