Calico Road (20 page)

When Matron came for her, Meg was glad to leave. The silence in the little room made her feel as if she was alone.

It seemed a very long way home again and when Rhona saw her, she exclaimed in dismay and made Meg go straight up to bed. ‘I’ll leave you to sleep, but I’ll be in again later to see if you need owt.’

But Meg wasn’t able to rest until she’d fed Nelly and the baby kept stopping and having to be coaxed into feeding again, so that took a long time. In the end, Meg changed the wet clouts and let her daughter sleep, falling asleep herself out of sheer exhaustion, not even attempting to get anything to eat.

10

A
lthough he was still tempted, Toby did nothing about the things he’d discovered because he was afraid of getting Phoebe into trouble. He locked up the secret chamber and rarely went into it, though for some reason he had a hankering every now and then to see the sketch of the young woman.

Phoebe still refused to say who she was and wept when he pressed her.

Sometimes it felt as though he could hear echoes in the big room – soft footsteps, the faintest of faraway singing, a door closing.

It made him smile wryly. He was getting altogether too fanciful! It was likely all the new knowledge that was stirring up his brain, because learning to read and write properly was taking up an increasing amount of his energy and attention. Even running the inn couldn’t compete with the fascination of learning about other countries, other people’s lives, the history of his own country. So many things he hadn’t known. So many things still to learn.

Just to dip his quill into the ink pot and write words that made sense and looked neat and orderly thrilled Toby, and as for ciphering . . . well, he found that easiest of all. Once you’d learned how to write the numbers and recite the multiplication tables, suddenly you could do a whole host of calculations with the greatest of ease.

Other men in the village made fun of him for wasting so much of his time with the Curate and spending good money on lessons and books, but Toby didn’t care.

Mr Pickerling said it was a sheer pleasure to teach such a willing and able pupil. Toby suspected that the Curate was lonely, because there was no one else of his station in the village. Yet although they were gentry, the Pickerlings were as poor as anyone else and couldn’t afford to visit people outside Calico, even if the Parson who employed Cornelius had been friendly enough to invite them to dine, which he wasn’t.

Toby had met the old Parson when he came for one of his rare visits to the village and had been affronted by the patronising tone of his voice and the sneering expression on his face.

Well, what did he care about the Parson? The inn was bringing him in enough to live on and a bit to spare, and that was all Toby needed. His previous ambitions for the place had faded somewhat in comparison with the intense pleasure of learning. Buying his first book gave him more joy than higher takings from the inn ever could. He had never thought to own a book and now intended to buy others, and newspapers too.

Ross popped into the inn regularly. He would sip his ale slowly, not being the sort to get outright drunk, and chat to his friends, but always made time to talk to Toby as well. The other men took their lead from him, all except Cully Dean who seemed to have found the money to buy his drinks these days, but who was as surly as ever. In some ways Toby felt himself to be still an outsider, not truly one of them. Well, hadn’t he always been an outsider, bastard born and an easy target for bullying until he grew big enough to stand up for himself?

When you had a book to read, though, you had a friend who didn’t look down on you.

One morning Phoebe found him reading in the back part of the inn. She sat down beside him and took the book from him. ‘I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while, Toby love.’

‘Can’t it wait till later?’

‘No. Later there’ll be people wanting drinks and we’ll be interrupted.’ She clutched the book to her chest, then took a deep breath and said in a rush of words, ‘Toby, an unmarried young man like you ought to be courting. I want you to have a happy life, and that means a family of your own.’

He looked at her cheekily. ‘Will any woman do or can I wait till I find one I really fancy?’

‘Toby, I’m being serious!’

‘I know you are, but—’

‘I’ve never had children of my own, always regretted it, and you will too if you don’t do something about it. Besides, if you had some children, I could be a sort of grandmother to them, couldn’t I?’

Her wistful, hopeful tone came nearer than anything else to convincing him, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to marry just for the sake of it. If he found a woman he couldn’t live without – and he didn’t see that happening – things might change. ‘I’m sorry, Phoebe love, but I doubt I’m the marrying sort.’

‘Have you never fancied courting anyone?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t – dislike women?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I mean, you don’t dislike the idea of bedding them? Some men do.’

His big hand covered hers and he said gently, ‘I’ve bedded one or two over the years, but I didn’t want to wed them any more than they wanted to wed me. Leave it be, Phoebe. I’m not looking for a wife.’

But she began introducing him to young women from the neighbourhood and in the end he had to be rude about that to her – and to them – before folk would leave him alone. Why was there such a conspiracy to get young fellows wed?

For a time he took up with the widow of a man in the village because his body had its own needs and these could be urgent. He enjoyed Jenny’s body if not her conversation. The books and reading suffered, as did his hours of sleep, since Jenny didn’t want her relatives knowing about them, he had to creep out to see her after the inn had closed.

Phoebe guessed what was happening and didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry. Jenny wasn’t the sort of woman she wanted for her Toby. She suspected that the widow was simply looking for another husband and Toby was the best prospect in the district. But somehow Phoebe didn’t dare interfere.

When, after a few weeks, Toby started going round with a scowl on his face and making sharp remarks about widows who wanted to trap a man into marriage whether he was interested or not, she guessed that he had been given his marching orders. And sure enough, there was no more creeping out after the inn had closed – as if she hadn’t heard the stairs creaking!

A month later the eager widow married a man from Todmorden and moved away from the village. Toby bought some more books and read half the night as well as the day, using up good candles as if the cost meant nothing.

Phoebe tried to take her comfort from the fact that he was happier again and that, even without his taking a deep interest, custom from passing travellers was picking up a little. Word was getting out about her cooking, the quality of the beer and the comfort of the beds. She knew, because friends further down the valley had told her that.

One night more fugitives from down the valley appeared and this time Ross and Toby worked together to hide them and then get them away safely. That gave Phoebe fresh cause for concern. She didn’t want her Toby getting on the wrong side of Mr Beardsworth. Toby might be big and able to defend himself, but Mr Beardsworth was both rich and ruthless.

Eh, why couldn’t life be calmer? Why did there always have to be something to worry about?

Ben Pearson didn’t regain consciousness after the accident and faded away before Meg’s eyes. She went out to Spotland to visit him every day and each visit found him looking thinner, frailer, his breathing so faint and slow you had to bend ever closer to hear it. At first she’d clung to hope, but it faded and now all she had was the desperate need to be there every morning because it was the only thing she could do for him.

They’d tried dripping water into his mouth, but he made no attempt to swallow it. They didn’t even try to feed him.

One day the doctor was there when Meg arrived and took her aside. ‘I’m sorry, but it can’t be long now, Mrs Pearson.’

She held Nelly tightly, glad to have something warm to cling to, until the baby protested with an angry little mewing sound.

Matron said she should stay there that night, and she did. They brought her food and were kind to her, but she couldn’t eat, knowing that Ben was literally starving to death.

Just after the moon had risen he stopped breathing. Meg knew at once that he’d gone because the room seemed to be filled with a special stillness, and with echoes of sadness and regret as if he was sorry to leave her. She didn’t call anyone but sat on, knowing that they would take the last of him away from her when they found out he was dead.

In the morning Matron came in, saw what had happened and drew her to her feet. ‘I see he’s passed away, love. He has a more peaceful look on his face now, doesn’t he?’

Meg could only nod. Her voice seemed drowned in tears.

‘What about the burial? We can see to that for you, love, if you like.’

Meg shook her head vigorously. ‘No! He’s not being buried in a pauper’s grave. I’ll pay for a proper funeral.’

‘How?’

‘They took up a collection at the brewery so I have some money.’

‘You’d be better spending that on yourself and the baby. You’ve lost weight. You aren’t eating properly, are you? Eh, you need to keep your strength up for the baby’s sake.’

Meg couldn’t seem to think about herself, not yet. ‘My Ben has to have a proper funeral,’ she insisted.

‘But he’s beyond knowing, love,’ Matron said gently, ‘an’ you have a child to look after now.’

‘He’s having a grave of his own an’ that’s flat.’ Meg looked pleadingly at the other woman. ‘Can you bring his body home to me? Please? I want him to lie in his own home one last time.’ She looked round sadly and added, ‘Not here.’

The funeral took place the following day. Meg insisted on attending and taking her baby too, though Rhona had offered to look after the child. ‘Thank you, but Nelly will be glad one day that she was there at her father’s funeral, I know she will.’

Rhona rolled her eyes and said no more. As if an infant would remember!

The coffin was carried from the little house to the church on a brewery dray and some of the men were given an hour off to walk behind it with Meg, because Mr Brooks prided himself on doing things properly where death was concerned.

The wooden box looked small sitting in the middle of the dray where the two slightly upward-sloping halves of the floor met in a lower channel at the middle. No chance of the coffin bouncing off, Meg thought as she walked behind it, because the dray had been designed to keep barrels of ale in place safely.

Nelly was asleep against her. She wished the child would wake. No, she didn’t. She wished
she
could sleep like Nelly. But she’d hardly slept a wink last night and today her mind kept drifting. Just put one foot in front of the other, she told herself. That’s all you need to do.

Inside the church someone led her to the front where she sat on her own. The Curate came to take the service, gabbling the words so quickly she wanted to call out to him to slow down, to remember that in that coffin lay a man who had a right to be treated with respect. But she didn’t dare so the service went on at breakneck speed. Nelly slept the whole time.

Afterwards the men from the brewery lifted up the cheap coffin and carried it out to the hole that had already been dug at the back of the graveyard, a place where there were no fancy headstones and statues, just plain strips of stone lying on the ground in squares that framed the graves, with the names of those buried there carved in their sides.

‘Oh, no! I forgot about a stone,’ Meg exclaimed.

Mr Brooks, who had also attended, said brusquely, ‘I’ll get one made. Now, Mrs Pearson, let the Curate finish.’

When they’d lowered the coffin and thrown in some dirt, the men from the brewery obeyed a jerk of the head from their employer and moved away, muttering, ‘Sorry about your loss, missus.’

Mr Brooks cleared his throat and took Meg’s arm. ‘Let the gravediggers do their work now, my dear.’

She stepped back, thinking of poor Ben lying there under all that damp earth, then became aware that her companion had pressed some coins into her hand.

‘Just a little extra to see you and the baby through till you’re on your feet again,’ he muttered, tipping his hat and walking away.

She looked down at the coins. There weren’t many. Was that all a man’s life was worth? But most employers wouldn’t have been half as generous so she shouldn’t complain, because the men had taken a collection so this must be from Mr Brooks himself.

The gravediggers paid her no attention. It was a cool day with rain threatening and she was damp and shivering, but she stayed there until they’d filled in the hole, saying farewell to Ben inside her head before making her way home.

Nelly was crying by the time she got back and needed feeding and changing. Afterwards Meg collapsed on her chair, exhausted. She hadn’t had Ben’s support since the birth but knowing she never would now made everything feel far worse. She was alone. There was only her to raise the child. The dampness of her clothes made her shiver suddenly and she laid Nelly down on a piece of sacking while she got the fire burning up again. Oh, but she felt weary to the core! If only she could lie down and rest!

It seemed to take forever to feed the baby.

Afterwards they both slept, Meg with her head on the table, Nelly curled up in the warm nest of her mother’s lap.

The following day Meg had to buy some bread so decided to call at the pawn shop while she was out. She’d sent a message to Peggy that she’d be back as soon as she could and had half-expected her employer to come round to see her or at least send someone to ask how she was.

When she went into the shop she found another woman behind the counter.