The Fleethaven Trilogy (4 page)

Esther slipped out of the sty and latched the door taking one last look at the now placid scene.

Suddenly, she felt weary. She sank down on to a square of hay and leant back against the rough brick wall and closed her eyes. Already the sun was slanting deep shadows across the yard. She’d been most of the day with the sow without realizing how the time was passing, so intent had she been on saving the piglets. She had not eaten all day.

‘All dead, are they?’

Her eyes snapped open to see Sam standing over her.

‘Take a look,’ she invited and watched as he moved to the door of the sty and looked in. He glanced back at her and then swiftly away again, back to the sow and her litter.

‘One of her tits is a windy one,’ Esther told him. ‘But with only ten young, she’s plenty to feed ’em all. One didn’t live, but not – ’ she added pointedly – ‘because she ate it!’

Sam stood looking at the litter as if weighing the piglets she had saved for him against the milk she had lost. He made no comment but as he turned towards the house, over his shoulder he said gruffly, ‘Like a bite o’ summat, would you?’

Esther grinned as she levered up her tired limbs to follow him. It was the closest a man like Sam Brumby would ever come to a ‘thank you’.

E
STHER
spent another night in the hayloft, but the following morning, she made sure she was up very early. She had already brought the two milking cows to the byre by the time Sam appeared in the yard.

‘’Morning, Mester Brumby,’ she called cheerfully. His only reply was a sniff and a deepening of his permanent scowl. But at least this morning he hadn’t told her to ‘clear off’. Instead he seemed to be leaving her to do the milking, for she saw neither Sam Brumby nor Matthew the rest of the morning.

After finishing the dairy work, she attacked the dust and grime of years in the kitchen. She found a long-handled broom and swept the ceiling and then she washed down the walls. As the dirt came off she found the plastered walls were painted a deep red.

Next she scrubbed the wooden table and one by one she cleaned the pans from the hooks on the wall. Then she washed the piles of plates, cups and saucers from the two shelves at one side of the kitchen. There were four huge hooks in the ceiling for hams, but only a storm lantern was hanging from one of them. Perhaps the half-grown gilt was being fattened for killing?

A torn lace curtain was the only covering on the kitchen window and Esther took it down carefully, spluttering as the dust tickled her nose and throat. She would wash and mend that later.

If I’m still here, she thought ruefully.

It was dinner time before she had finished this one room and there was still the huge black range to tackle. She surveyed the clean kitchen with satisfaction. The back scullery and the range would have to wait. Now she would try to find something to make Sam Brumby a midday meal.

She went out of the house and turned to the right. Adjoining the main house was a low building constructed in the same brick and roof tiles. The first door she opened was the wash-house. She sniffed the damp, mouldy air.

‘Sam hasn’t done much washing in ’ere lately,’ she murmured, wrinkling her nose. I’ll attend to that later, she promised herself, leaving the door open to let in the fresh air. Beyond the wash-house, on the corner, was the privy. Esther turned again to the right, round the corner of the building and stepped on to grass. To her left was a pond with a beautiful weeping willow tree straggling its graceful fronds in the water. Five green-headed ducks, wriggling their tails, waddled round the edge then flopped into the water. Hens wandered freely about the yard and the grass, scratching and pecking. At the far side of the pond the gander and his geese paraded up and down. The gander held his head proudly and pretended not to notice Esther.

She moved on beyond the end of the house and round to the front. She found herself in what must once have been a well-tended front garden and orchard, but now the weeds were trying to strangle the few surviving flowers. Fruit trees grew up out of the long, unkempt grass but to one side she found a small vegetable patch which showed signs of recent digging. She fetched a fork from one of the small sheds and dug up a spring cabbage and a few leeks. She even found a turnip that had been left in the ground.

Back in the kitchen she washed and sliced the vegetables and put them together with some of the cooked bacon into a clean cooking pot on the fire in the range. Soon the aroma of a kind of stew filled the kitchen. It was a warm, inviting smell which Esther guessed – and rather hoped – had not welcomed Sam Brumby for some years.

Esther was bending over the fire ladling stew into three bowls when Sam entered the house with Matthew behind him. Wordlessly, she placed one bowl on the table in front of the chair where Sam had sat the previous day. She placed another for Matthew and sat down before the third herself.

‘By gum, this is good – a good cook as well as pretty!’ Matthew grinned.

Esther hacked off a piece of bread for herself making no outward response to his compliment, though she felt a glow of pleasure.

Sam Brumby concentrated on his bowl; he neither spoke nor looked at either of the other two. Esther rose and poured each of them a mug of tea.

As they finished the meal, Matthew stood up. ‘I’ve to go to Mester Willoughby’s after dinner today. Shall you be wanting me tomorrow, Mester Brumby?’

Esther saw Sam glance quickly at her and then look away again. He sniffed. ‘Aye,’ was all he said.

Matthew grinned at Esther, picked up his cap and, whistling jauntily, left the house. Esther cleared away the dishes and carried them into the back scullery. She drew hot water from the tap in the range. As she poured it into the sink in the scullery, she felt Sam Brumby’s presence in the doorway behind her and smelt the sweet-sour smell of tobacco smoke as he methodically packed his clay pipe and lit it.

‘There’s a room –’ he spoke in short bursts between each puff as he drew deeply on his pipe to get it fully alight – ‘above ’ere.’ He prodded his pipe stem towards the ceiling of the kitchen. ‘You can get to it by a ladder in yon corner. It’ll – be warmer – than the hayloft.’

He turned away without waiting for her to speak and went out of the back door.

Esther leant on her knuckles in the bowl of hot water and closed her eyes. Two tears of thankfulness plopped into the washing-up water.

The room above the kitchen was no more than an attic boxroom. When Esther climbed the narrow ladder from the corner of the kitchen and poked her head through the trap door, she was met by the musty smell of rotting apples. To one side, spread on newspaper, were apples from the previous autumn; maybe even the one before that, she thought, by the look of some of them. Several were aged to a brown pulp and covered with a thick blanket of dust.

The small, oblong room with a sloping ceiling was littered with bits of broken furniture, a trunk of old clothes and the general clutter of a family who had lived in the same house for generations. In one of the corners, tied up with binding, was a rolled mattress.

Esther surveyed the chaos grimly but by nightfall when she lay down on the mattress, the room was clean and sweet-smelling.

The following morning, as soon as she and Sam had breakfasted and the latter was away out on the farm, Esther went into the back scullery. She sighed as she stood surveying the scene of neglect. It was the same in the wash-house. A mangle stood in the far corner festooned with cobwebs, and tubs and dolly pegs and washboards had been pushed into an untidy heap. On a shelf above stood four irons, a line of cobwebs linking one to another. In the corner opposite the door was the large brick copper with its wooden lid covering the deep bowl. There was evidence that Sam – or someone – had washed a shirt and a sheet which were hanging on a piece of rope strung between two hooks across the room. But in the copper lay a mound of mouldering, dirty clothes.

‘Well, Mester Brumby, there’s enough work to keep me here a while yet,’ she murmured aloud and bent down to rake out the dead cinders from under the copper. Suddenly she felt a smart smack on her rump which was sticking immodestly in the air as she bent double to her task.

‘Ouch!’ she cried and, coming up suddenly, banged her head on the fire door of the copper. She turned and saw Matthew standing over her, grinning.

‘Oh, it’s you again, is it,
boy
? I might’ve known!’ And she turned back to her chore.

‘Aw, come on, Esther, ’ow about a little kiss for a feller in a morning?’

‘I got better things to do wi’ me time,’ she snapped and raked vigorously at the ashes, sending up clouds of grey dust so that she coughed and spluttered as it prickled her throat and stung her eyes. She was forced to draw back and stand up.

Matthew only laughed. ‘Serves you right for being so unfriendly.’ But he pulled out a spotted kerchief from his pocket and wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘Don’t cry, sweet Esther,’ he said mockingly. At his words she slapped his ministering hand away.

‘Cry? Me? You’ll never see me cry, Matthew Hilton, I’ll promise you that!’ They gazed into each other’s eyes, hers intense with anger, his fascinated by her loveliness.

‘You’ve got beautiful eyes, Esther. Green, they are. I ain’t never seen such lovely eyes . . .’ Now the playful, teasing tone was gone from his voice and with surprisingly gentle fingers, he touched her cheek. For once Esther was startled into silence.

The moment was broken by a clatter in the yard. Swiftly Matthew turned away and shot out of the door. ‘God, he’s back,’ he muttered as he went, and Esther was left staring after him with smut on her face and grime on her hands.

An hour later she had a fire glowing white hot under the copper and was staggering to and from the water-butt at the end of the house with heavy buckets to fill it. Each time she climbed on to a stool and tippled the cold water into the huge bowl. Satisfied at last that she had enough, she covered it with the wooden lid and, leaving the water to heat up, she came out into the yard. She glanced at the sun and reckoned it must be nearly midday. The rumblings in her own stomach told her so. There was no sign of Sam Brumby or of Matthew but she prepared a simple meal of bacon and bread and left it set on the table. Then wiping her hands down her skirt, she took a deep breath and opened the door leading from the kitchen into the house beyond.

It led into an ordinary living room with an armchair set on either side of the fireplace and peg rugs on the floor. A table covered with a green plush cloth stood in the centre with four straight-backed dining chairs set around it. In the middle of the table stood a blue and white pot holding an aspidistra, long since dead, its withered leaves rotting and filling the room with a pungent mustiness. The window was covered by yellowing lace curtains which were falling into holes and two huge blue velvet curtains, lined with dust, hung from a wooden pole across the top. The wallpaper had once had a pretty green pattern but now it was faded and dirty. Around the room were several pictures – a large one depicting Jesus in the Temple, with smaller landscape paintings around it. On the far wall at the side of the window was a photograph, brown and faded, of a stern-looking woman, her black dress buttoned to the neck, her dark hair parted in the centre and drawn back severely behind her head.

In the corner, diagonally opposite where Esther had entered, was another door leading further into the house. She moved slowly past the table, letting her fingers feel the soft fabric of the tablecloth, but it was sticky with dust. She opened the door and stepped into a small hallway. To her left was the front door which she knew would lead out into the garden and orchard and to her right the stairs climbed steeply to the floor above. Opposite was another door leading to what she presumed on entering to be the ‘best parlour’.

The huge fireplace was ornate and bordered by a brass fender, sadly dull. Dusty velvet festooned the mantel-piece and to one side stood an embroidered fire-screen. In one corner was an organ and in front of the fireplace were chairs, a work-box and a footstool. A tall grandfather clock stood in one corner, its hands set permanently at ten to two. On a round table in front of the window lay a huge family Bible and as Esther glanced round the room it seemed that every surface was cluttered with ornaments and pictures.

She was quite impressed by the size of the farmhouse; to have a living room
and
a best parlour was richness indeed. And yet, Esther felt a sadness sweep over her. It was obvious that this house had once been inhabited by a loving family. Poor Sam, she thought, these neglected rooms echoed his loneliness.

For some reason she could not quite explain, she found herself tiptoeing up the stairs and quietly lifting the latch of a door to her left at the top of the stairs. It was Sam Brumby’s bedroom. Her heart pounded in her chest with nervousness. It was one thing to arrive at the farm and worm her way into a job and a place in a dusty attic; it was quite another to prowl about Sam Brumby’s home and go into his bedroom to search for his personal washing. Even Esther, for all her boldness, felt this might be going just a little too far.

The room was surprisingly tidy, though dusty. Sam’s Sunday best suit stood on a hanger in the corner, and two faded photographs in silver frames stood on the chest of drawers. Esther bent closer. One was of a man and woman; the woman seated, stiff and straight-backed, her face stern and serious. It was the same face that stared out of the larger picture hanging in the living room. The man, his hand on the back of her chair, had the likeness of Sam about him. Yet it was not Sam. In the other photograph was a solemn little boy, his arm protectively round a smaller girl with a sweet face surrounded by a mass of dark curls.

Esther straightened up and went to the bed. The covers were pulled straight, though the patchwork quilt needed washing. She pulled back the top coverlet and saw that there were no sheets on the bed, only a rough blanket that smelled a little sour. There was no pillow-case on the rough ticking of the pillow either. Her fingers hesitated over a heavy oak chest standing at the foot of the bed. She had no wish to pry into Sam’s belongings, but if she were to care for him properly she needed to find fresh bedlinen. Taking a deep breath, she lifted the lid. Inside were sheets and pillow-cases, yellow with age, but neatly folded. She pulled out two of each and bundled them under her arm. The lid dropped with a dull thud and as she was going out of the room she noticed a shirt on the floor behind the door. She scooped that up too. At that moment she heard the back door bang and she scuttled down the stairs without stopping to look at the other upstairs rooms.