Twisted Strands (22 page)

‘There’s just one thing,’ Eveleen panted. ‘We’ll have to tell them at Pear Tree Farm. I need Josh’s advice about all this now.’

Bridie pulled a face. ‘Oh, all right then. But Gran’ll be mad I’ve been to see them. And she’ll try to stop me going back there. I know she will.’

‘You’ll do no such thing.’

Mary was adamant and she turned to Josh for his support. ‘You’ll back me in this, won’t you, Josh?’ She whirled back to face Eveleen and Bridie and wagged her forefinger
at them. ‘I knew it would cause trouble, her coming to live with you. You haven’t time nor, to my mind, the inclination,’ she added, derisively, ‘to be keeping your eye on
her properly. I told you, she’s a wilful little tyke who needs a firm hand. Well.’ Now she turned her attention directly to Bridie. ‘Well, you’ll be feeling the back of
mine, if you’re not careful.’

Bridie glanced at Eveleen and saw her mouth tighten and saw too, Josh glancing helplessly from one to the other of them. He was caught up in a quarrel, rooted in the distant past, that was none
of his making.

Bridie forced herself to keep calm. Reasoned argument might convince her grandmother as no childish pouting and stamping of feet ever would. ‘Gran,’ she said quietly, but with an
adult firmness that Mary had not heard before, ‘if you’d only seen them, you’d understand why I must go back and care for them. You wouldn’t leave animals in that
state.’

‘Have you been?’ Mary glared accusingly at Eveleen. ‘Have you seen for yourself because I wouldn’t believe a word she’s saying? I think it’s
all—’

‘No, Mam,’ Eveleen cut in. ‘But I mean to take her there anyway, when she goes, so I shall see for myself.’ She glanced swiftly at Bridie, who, despite her resolution to
keep calm, had opened her mouth to protest, ‘Not that I don’t believe you, Bridie, I promise you. But I want to know that you’re going to be all right. That you’ll be able
to cope there on your own.’

Bridie closed her mouth, smiled and nodded, ‘I’ll cope, Auntie Eveleen. If I can’t,’ her smile widened to a mischievous grin. ‘I’ll call in reinforcements.
I’ll fetch Mrs Turner.’

‘Gracie Turner?’ Mary picked up the name. ‘Oh, I might have known she’d be sticking her nose in where it’s not wanted.’ She glowered at them all, including
Josh. ‘But it seems as if it’s all decided. I don’t really know why you’ve come here to ask me.’

‘Maybe we shouldn’t have, but you’re still Bridie’s guardian and—’

‘Then I say she’s not to go,’ Mary snapped.

Only just managing now to hold onto her temper, Bridie asked, ‘Why, Gran? Just explain to me why you don’t want me to go.’

There was an awkward silence in the room, a tension between the three adults that the girl could not understand.

‘Because – because . . .’ Mary was hesitant, her glance roving round the room as if unable to meet the steady gaze of her granddaughter and as if she was searching for a
plausible excuse. Bridie had the distinct feeling that she was not hearing the whole truth. Not from any of them. Mary jumped up suddenly, galvanized into action. ‘Do what you like then, but
don’t come running back to me when they treat you badly.’ She nodded. ‘You’ll soon be back. You’ll not stand it there five minutes.’ And she added sagely,
‘I know them. And you.’ She turned to Eveleen again. ‘You’d better go there every week while she’s there to see what’s going on.’

‘It’s probable I shall be going there quite a lot, Mam. That’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. Well, to Josh really.’

Swiftly she explained all the circumstances, the lack of work in the city and the abundance of orders at Singleton’s Yard. ‘Do you think we can do it, Josh? Turn our workforce to
making clothes for the troops?’

‘I think, mi duck,’ he said slowly, ‘that it’s the only way you’re going to survive the war. But will your uncle agree?’

Before Eveleen could answer, Mary butted in. ‘Huh! You’re asking if Harry will agree to making money? You might well ask if the sun will rise tomorrow morning.’

The tension between them eased and Eveleen and Bridie left soon afterwards, Josh giving Bridie a firm hug.

‘Ne’er mind what yer gran says, mi duck. If you’ve got trouble, you come back here. You know yer gran. Her bark’s worse than her bite.’

Bridie smiled up at him. ‘I know,’ she said softly to the big man alone. ‘And I know
you
.’

There was no need for further words between them; their understanding was mutual.

As Eveleen drove the motor car back towards Nottingham, she breathed a sigh of relief. ‘That went better than I expected.’

‘Better!’ Bridie exclaimed in surprise.

‘Oh yes. Believe me, she could have stopped you going. She is your legal guardian and there’s not a thing I could have done about it.’

‘Oh.’ Bridie was thoughtful for a moment before she asked, ‘Then why didn’t she?’

Eveleen frowned. ‘I don’t really know, Bridie. Maybe, deep down, she does want someone to look after them. But she won’t go herself. Never in a million years.’

‘Why? What happened to make her so bitter?’

‘Don’t ask me, love. It’s not my place to tell you. Maybe when you’re older . . .’ was all her aunt would say and with that, for the moment, the girl had to be
content.

‘Oh, it’s you. I might have known you’d be behind sending her here.’

On the following Sunday morning, Eveleen and Bridie knocked on the door of the first cottage in the row in Singleton’s Yard. Now they stood facing Harry Singleton as he squinted at them,
peering into first one face and then the other.

‘May we come in, Uncle?’ Eveleen asked, stepping across the threshold before he had time to refuse.

‘Seems like you’re in,’ he grunted, turned and shuffled back towards his chair by the range, feeling his way past the furniture.

Eveleen bit her lip as she watched him. He was a changed man from the last time she had seen him thirteen years before. She glanced around the room, which had once been so neat and shining. Now
papers, clothes, bits and bobs cluttered every surface. The white tablecloth, looking as if it hadn’t been removed between meals for a week, was stained with spills.

Eveleen sat down in the chair opposite him. ‘Uncle Harry, Bridie has come to stay here a while to look after you and Gran.’

‘We don’t need anyone.’

Eveleen smiled, though a little sadly. Not quite all the fiery independence had gone.

‘Gran needs some help, even if you don’t.’

‘She’s got Lil Fairbrother . . .’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the adjacent cottage, the one facing the street. ‘She looks after her.’

‘She’s not doing a very good job of it,’ Eveleen said bluntly and beside her Bridie felt a shaft of admiration for her aunt.

He grunted. ‘It’ll do for us.’ Then he roused himself, seeming to summon up some of his old strength, some of the vigour that Eveleen remembered so well. ‘I don’t
want you or her here. You brought trouble on this family. Aye, you and your mother before you.’ He flung out his arm towards Bridie. ‘Born in sin, she was, thanks to you and your
precious family. And I lost my lovely Rebecca because of it. I don’t forget, Eveleen, and I don’t forgive.’

‘I’m very sorry to hear you say that, Uncle. I thought perhaps by now, you could find it in your heart not to bear a grudge against an innocent girl. It was none of her doing, now
was it?’

‘It was your brother who took my girl down. Shamed her and – and . . .’ For a brief moment the big man’s voice trembled. ‘And caused her death. But for him,
she’d have still been here to care for me and her grandmother.’

Indeed she would, Eveleen thought bitterly. An unhappy spinster tied to a life of drudgery. But she gave nothing of her own thoughts away. Instead she said, with as much gentleness as she could
muster, ‘But now her daughter is here instead.’

‘Well, we don’t want her.’ It was his last vestige of fight, for now he lay back in his chair and covered his eyes with his hand.

Eveleen leant across and touched his knee gently and, using the very words that Bridie herself had used, said, ‘Maybe not, but you do need her, Uncle Harry.’

‘Now it’s come to it, I don’t like leaving you here.’

Later, standing beside the motor car in the narrow street, Eveleen looked down at the slight figure of the girl in front of her. She looked so young and yet, suddenly, there was an air of inner
strength about her. A determination that now had nothing to do with wilfulness. There was a sense of purpose in her eyes and a firm resolution to the set of her jaw. Bridie was a girl with a
mission.

At the thought, Eveleen smiled inwardly. How ironic, in view of Harry Singleton’s devotion to the chapel, that that was the phrase that should spring to her mind.

As she hugged Bridie, she said, ‘Are you sure the money I’ve given you will be enough? By the look of it, you’ll need to restock the pantry.’

‘It’ll be fine till you come again.’ She laughed. ‘I shall enjoy playing at being a housewife.’

‘There won’t be much “play” about it, love. But don’t forget, if you have any problems, let me know at once. Promise?’

‘I will, Auntie Evie, and thank you for everything.’

Eveleen held her close. ‘It’s me who should be thanking you.’

As she drove home alone, Eveleen was already missing Bridie’s lively company. When she opened the door and stepped into the house, even the knowledge that below stairs
there were servants did not drive out the feeling of emptiness and loneliness. She dined alone in the immaculate, yet soulless, dining room and vowed that in future she would eat on a tray in her
cosy sitting room, instead of placed at one end of the long polished table staring at the empty chairs. Richard’s, and now Bridie’s too.

Work, she promised herself as she got into the huge bed, work was her salvation. There was plenty to organize, much to do and tomorrow she would talk to Brinsley. She lay down and, as she always
did, she put out her hand to touch the pillow where Richard’s head should be and, like that, she fell asleep.

Bridie lay down on the rug in front of her great-grandmother’s range and pulled a moth-eaten blanket from the spare bedroom over her. She had lit a fire in the range and
now the downstairs front room was warm, even though the mustiness of neglect had not yet been driven out. She would sleep here for her first night, for the spare bed upstairs was damp. Tomorrow she
would lug the mattress down to air before she would consider sleeping on it.

Upstairs the old lady now lay between fresh sheets, warmed earlier in the day in front of the fire. A fire now also burned in the grate in her bedroom and Bridie had spooned hot soup into the
toothless mouth.

She had seen nothing of her grandfather since the moment Eveleen had left. Bridget, and the sorry state she was lying in, were the girl’s first concern. At least her grandfather was
mobile. He was capable of climbing the stairs to his bed and of getting himself some sort of a meal, meagre though it might be.

Tomorrow, Bridie promised silently as sleep claimed her, I’ll sort him out too.

The following morning the girl was awake early, stoking up the fire in the range and preparing a breakfast tray for her great-grandmother. There was little food in the house
and Bridie suspected the same would be true of her grandfather’s home. When she had made the old lady comfortable and given her her breakfast, Bridie saw her uncle making his unsteady way to
the workshop. Once she knew he was safely at his framework knitting machine, she felt she could investigate.

First she toured the small cottage where Bridget lived. The front door opened directly into the living room and beyond that was the scullery, out of which steep stairs led to the first-floor
landing, where there were two bedrooms. From that floor there was a ladder to an attic bedroom, which bore signs of once having been occupied, no doubt by male lodgers who worked for her
grandfather. Then, leaving her great-grandmother’s home, Bridie walked along the path and, holding her breath, tried the door of the cottage at the opposite end of the row. This was her
grandfather’s house and the place where her own mother had once lived. The layout was much the same as Bridget’s home, but the opposite way round. Bridie had been right about one thing:
there was little food in the pantry. Her heart thumping, she climbed the stairs, peeping into the main bedroom and the smaller one on the first floor. She swallowed hard as she looked at the single
bed, still neatly made. Had this been where Rebecca had slept? Then she climbed the ladder to the attic room. Here an iron bedstead with a mouldy mattress still stood in the room and the floor was
littered with old toys and books and the junk of many years. Bridie picked up an old school slate and ran her fingers over it. There was even a tiny piece of white chalk. These must have belonged
to her mother and the girl felt a strange affinity with the long-dead woman. She was touching something that Rebecca had once held. Her fingers were now resting in the same place that her
mother’s had once done. Somehow, here in the place where her mother had lived, Rebecca was almost a living, breathing presence. Suddenly, for the first time in the whole of her life, Bridie
felt close to the woman who had borne her and she wanted, desperately, to know much more about her. Reverently she fingered the other toys. She must have been a very special person, Bridie thought,
to have earned Andrew’s undying devotion. He had never married, never, so far as Bridie knew, even looked at another woman.

If only, she thought, brushing away an unbidden tear, he would love me in the same way.

She stood up, promising herself that when time allowed she would clean this attic room and set Rebecca’s belongings out as she would have liked. She would wash the lace-trimmed runner on
the dressing table and the patchwork quilt folded at the end of the bed. She would clean and tidy this room and keep it as a lasting memorial to the child, the girl and the woman who had perhaps
once slept here.

Downstairs again, Bridie stepped out into the yard and looked about her. Investigating the other buildings, she found that at the end of the building on the right-hand side there was a
wash-house, with a copper, rinsing tub, dolly pegs, posser and a mangle.