The Innkeeper's Daughter (3 page)

‘My future’s here,’ he snapped. ‘I’ll be ’innkeeper one day.’

She wanted to explain; explain that if the doctor’s prognosis was correct, then he would be too young to be a landlord, and if their mother wasn’t allowed to hold the licence for the inn they would all have to leave.

William whispered to her that he couldn’t believe his luck. ‘I’ll be one up when I join ’military. Harry ’blacksmith is a farrier as well as a smith. He’ll teach me to shoe horses as well as meld iron. And I’ll build up muscle, cos I’ve to strike wi’ sledgehammer an’ it’s that heavy you wouldn’t even be able to lift it, Bella.’

Bella looked at him and thought muscle would be an advantage to William, being so stick thin, unlike Joe who was broad and sturdy. She herself was plump and curvy and Nell looked as if she would be the same once she had grown out of childhood.

Their father, during his short enforced convalescence, had been filling his time with thinking and organizing, and as
soon
as he thought he was fit he made an appointment to see the local licensing magistrate.

‘I’ve applied for a joint tenancy licence, Sarah,’ he said on his return. ‘I told Saunders that as you did half of ’work and saw to ’food and accommodation it was onny right that you should be named as landlord as well as me. He agreed and stamped ’licence there an’ then.’ He heaved a sigh of satisfaction. ‘So that’s one worry out of ’way. We’ll get both our names put ower ’door this weekend.’

CHAPTER THREE

DURING THE SUMMER
, Bella helped her mother with the housework, and in the evenings served the lodgers with their food and drink. There were three casual labourers staying with them during harvest. As the weeks drew on their skin grew steadily darker and their arms more sinewy and muscular. Sarah gave them an early breakfast in the taproom every day and then served Joe and William at the kitchen table before packing up bread and beef or cheese for their midday meal, or lowance as they called it. When the men had left for the fields and Joe and William for work, Bella dished up breakfast for her father, her mother, Nell and herself.

‘Don’t give me too much, Bella,’ her mother said, but Bella, conscious that her mother was feeding two, put two rashers of bacon and an egg on her plate. Her father had two rashers, two sausages and two fried eggs whilst Bella and Nell each had a boiled egg, which they ate with bread and butter.

‘Ducks have started laying again,’ Bella remarked. ‘I found three eggs under ’hedge yesterday.’

‘Can you be sure they’re fresh?’ her mother asked. ‘Ducks have a habit of hiding ’em.’

‘They weren’t there ’day before,’ Bella told her. ‘I’ll try ’em. I love duck eggs.’

‘If they’re all right, you can mek me a Yorkshire pudding,’ her father said. ‘Shall we be having beef for dinner?’

Sarah nodded. ‘We can do. I’ve got a nice piece of brisket. I was going to put it out for ’customers.’

‘I’ll just have a slice,’ he said. ‘An’ extra Yorkshires.’

He smiled at Sarah, and she commented, ‘I’m pleased you’ve got your appetite back, Joseph.’

‘But you haven’t,’ he observed. ‘You’ve hardly touched your bacon.’

‘You have it,’ she said, forking up a rasher and putting it on his plate. ‘Bella allus gives me too much.’

He cut up the rasher and ate it. ‘You’ll have me as fat as yon pig.’ Then he pushed his chair back. ‘I’ll go and set up in ’taproom.’

‘I’ll come and help you in a minute, Father,’ Bella said. ‘I’ll just clear up ’breakfast things.’

‘Me and Nell will do it,’ her mother said hastily, and frowned at Nell as she began to object. ‘You go and help your father, Bella. Don’t go lifting owt,’ she called after Joseph. ‘You know what ’doctor said.’

‘Damned doctors,’ Joseph grumbled. ‘They know nowt about owt.’

‘Doctor’s all right,’ Bella said, following him out of the kitchen. ‘It’s for your own good, and it’s only until your heart’s rested. You’re not to overdo things.’

‘What do you know about it?’ he grunted.

Bella hesitated. ‘Onny what Ma’s told me. She said that ’doctor says you’ve to rest.’

Joseph leaned on one of the wooden tables, breathing heavily. ‘Aye, well, we’ll all have to rest eventually until ’day ’trumpet sounds. I’m not ready to rest yet.’

‘But
we
want you to, Father,’ she said softly. ‘We don’t want you going to your final resting place just yet. So can you ease up a bit for our sakes, if not for your own?’

He pulled out a corner of a bench and sat down. He put his elbow on the table. ‘Just what has your ma told you?’

Bella looked at him. His eyes were a greeny-blue, the same colour as hers. She shrugged. ‘Not much.’

‘You’ll help your ma, won’t you, if owt happens to me?
You
know, if – well, if I’m tekken afore my time?’

His voice was hoarse and she guessed that it had taken some effort to speak on the subject. She also thought that he was more worried than he claimed.

‘Course I will,’ she said. ‘But you won’t be if you slow down a bit; tek a rest in ’afternoon now and again.’

‘That’s what owd men do, Bella. Not men of my age.’ He shook his head unbelievingly. ‘I just can’t …’

‘We want you to be an old man, Father,’ she said quietly. ‘We want you to grow old.’

He laughed wryly. ‘You’ve got an old head on your shoulders, Bella. I know you’ll do what’s right and expected of you.’ He heaved a breath, and when he continued it was as if he was already planning what would happen once he had gone. ‘Your ma will need you here. Our Joe will onny look out for himself, and William – well, he’d be all right, but he’s got other fish to fry, I reckon. But Nell. She might give you trouble. She’ll want to do things her way and it might not be ’right way.’

Bella fell silent. She couldn’t envisage being responsible for Nell; surely that was her mother’s role. And what about the new bairn, if it lived? Was she expected to be responsible for this child of whom her father was unaware?

‘I don’t think so,’ she murmured. ‘How can I be?’

Her father frowned. ‘She’ll look up to you,’ he said. ‘An older sister.’

‘Wh-what?’ Then she realized he was still talking about Nell. She shook her head. ‘She doesn’t listen to me, Father.’

‘She will, though, as she gets older. She’ll listen to you as well as your ma.’

‘Don’t let’s talk about it, Father,’ Bella implored. ‘Please!’

She moved across to the bar, rummaged beneath it and brought out a duster and a tin of beeswax, then began to polish the counter, busying herself with the job in hand so that she didn’t have to think about the future; about her broken dreams or life without her father. He hadn’t asked if she had plans of her own. He’d simply assumed that as the eldest daughter her place was at home.

She polished the wooden tables and dusted the chairs and benches, and took the boxes of dominoes out of the drawer and put them on the tables.

‘Go on, Father,’ she said. ‘Go and talk to Ma. There’s nowt for you to do at ’minute, not till later.’

When he had slowly got up and gone back to the kitchen, Bella sighed and placed clean towels on the shelf below the counter and set out tankards and glasses, the tankards for darker mild or bitter, the glasses for gin or pale ale. Then she stood gazing round the room. A shaft of sunlight streamed through a small window, alighting on a polished table and highlighting dancing dust motes, disturbed by her vigorous cleaning.

The room looked inviting and would look even more so later in the day when the newly laid fire was lit. Annie had polished the brassware when she was last here and the kettles and horse brasses gleamed.

When Joseph had first taken on the tenancy of the Woodman, the casks were stacked in the taproom and the ale drawn straight from the barrel. Five years before, at his own expense, he had taken a chance on fitting a hydraulic beer engine to draw up the beer from the cellar. Although it was not an entirely new invention and many public houses in the towns had them, it was expensive and the owner of the Woodman was unwilling to pay the price.

However, now that the casks had gone from what was still called the taproom, the extra space was filled with two extra tables and benches to take more customers, and the rich colour of the mahogany casing, the polished brass taps and the blue and white ceramic pump handles behind the counter were Joseph’s pride and the envy of other local publicans.

Bella sighed again. It was home, well loved, all she had ever known, but she had longed for more; not to go away for ever, but to explore other towns, enjoy other opportunities, which education would have allowed her to do. If I’d been born a lad, she thought, I could have gone. I could have learned a trade just like my brothers. Father would have been pleased
with
that. But I’m not. I’m an innkeeper’s daughter. I can do nothing but serve food and drink, and what kind of occupation is that!

The labourers, at their own request, ate their meals in the taproom, for they said they didn’t want to intrude on the Thorps’ family life. Bella served them their supper that night with pints of dark stout pulled by her father. When she had finished, he called her over to the counter.

‘Come round here and I’ll show you how to pull a pint with a good head on it. That’s what ’locals like on their stout, a thick creamy head.’

He pulled another into a tankard, carefully drawing on the pump handle so that the liquid rose to a satisfying head. ‘Have a taste to know what you’re serving,’ he said.

‘Will I like it?’ she asked, gingerly taking a sip. Then she shuddered. ‘Oh, it’s strong!’

He nodded and pulled on another handle, half filling a glass with darker ale. ‘Try this,’ he said. ‘You might prefer it. This is porter, not as strong as stout and a bit sweeter.’

Bella took another sip, and then licked her lips. ‘Mm. I like it better than stout, but I couldn’t get a taste for it.’

‘Some of ’older customers like it,’ her father said, ‘and ’younger men like bitter; that’s ’most common one and has a stronger flavour of hops. Then there’s mild, and that’s a different flavour cos there’s less hops in it. You’ll soon get used to ’regulars and what their preferences are. They’ll expect you to know and have a pint ready for ’em afore they get to ’counter.’

Bella stared at her father. ‘But – am I old enough to serve them?’

Her father nodded. ‘Aye, just about, but not old enough to drink, not on licensed premises anyway. Not till sixteen. But what anybody does in his own home is nowt to do wi’ anybody else.’

‘You don’t allow Joe or William to drink beer even though they serve it,’ she said. ‘Is that because we’re on licensed premises?’

‘Aye,’ he agreed. ‘It is. Even though they live here, I wouldn’t want to risk my licence by letting them drink alcohol. If they were out in the fields or in somebody else’s house, then that’s a different matter. But not here.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘So just remember that, Bella. No underage drinking in ’Woodman.’

‘Yes, Father,’ she said. ‘I’ll remember.’

Bella had cause to remember just a week before Joe’s sixteenth birthday, when she found him behind the counter on a Sunday attempting to draw a glass of bitter.

‘What are you doing?’ she said.

‘What does it look like?’ he said, wiping his beery hands on his breeches.

‘Who’s it for?’

‘Me.’ He glanced at her with a defiant look in his eyes. ‘You’re not ’only one can draw a pint. I’ve done it often enough.’

‘But you don’t draw it right, you allus make a mess; and anyway you’re not allowed to drink on licensed premises.’

‘Who says? I’m nearly sixteen, so I can.’

‘Father says not. He could lose his licence if ’magistrate found out. You might as well wait,’ she urged. ‘No use risking it. Father would be mad about it.’

Joe paused for a moment, and then sniffed disapprovingly. ‘When I’m ’landlord you’ll be out of a job,’ he said tetchily. ‘I’ll not have you telling me what to do.’

‘You might not be ’landlord,’ she retaliated. ‘We might all share ’tenancy, and anyway, Ma will be ’landlady if—’

She stopped, suddenly aware that Joe didn’t know the full story of their father’s illness.

‘If what?’ he asked sharply.

She shrugged. ‘Just if anything should happen to Father; not that it’s likely to,’ she added quickly, fearful of making it happen by speaking of it. ‘But Ma would be ’landlord then.’

Joe sneered. ‘How can Ma be a landlord when she’s a woman? She’d be ’landlady.’

‘Innkeeper,’ Bella argued. ‘She’d be ’innkeeper, and then it doesn’t matter whether it’s a man or a woman. And she’s
licensed,’
she added, pleased to score over him. ‘Haven’t you noticed ’plaque over ’doorway?’

Joe’s mouth turned down, but he stood his ground. ‘Well, anyway, I can still have a glass of bitter if I want to.’

‘No, you can’t.’ Their father’s voice came from the doorway and they both turned, startled; Bella wondered how much he had heard.

‘You don’t drink till you’re sixteen,’ Joseph continued, ‘and then onny in moderation. There’s nowt worse than a drunken landlord.’

Joe gave a foxy grin at Bella, as if his father had acknowledged that he would be landlord one day.

‘It’s onny that it’s hot,’ he complained. ‘I’ve got a right thirst on me.’

‘Then tek a sup o’ water or tea; beer’s for nourishment and pleasure, not onny for quenching your thirst.’ Joseph came over to the counter and surveyed the floor where Joe’s mishandling of the pump had spilt the ale. ‘Nor is it for washing ’floor. Get that cleared up now, and if you can’t draw it better than that, then keep away from it altogether.’

‘It was our Bella’s fault,’ Joe complained. ‘She came in and interrupted me.’

Bella opened her mouth to protest, but remembering that her father was supposed to keep calm and not have any upset she closed it again, and decided that she would get even with her brother at some other time. She wasn’t going to allow him to lord it over her, just because she was younger and a girl.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE SUMMER WAS
almost over; children were reluctantly preparing to go back to school, the casual workers were leaving, and Bella was kept busy stripping the vacated beds, washing sheets and towels and hanging them out in the paddock to sweeten before putting them away until the following year. She swept out the dormitory, washed the windows, and in the evening helped her father serve the customers. Joe and William were supposed to take it in turns to help, but more often than not they went missing when there was a job to be done. By now, Bella was becoming used to the regulars’ particular preferences.