House of Angels (11 page)

But for Ella, life on the farm continued to be both cold and harsh.

Out in the woodlands pools of bluebells appeared, wild daffodils bloomed along the lanes, and the first bees began to gather nectar. But the days of young love, of lying in the sweet long grass making daisy chains and letting Danny Gilpin steal kisses were, for Ella, quite over.

She spent her days mostly confined to the dairy, and with its slate floors and thick stone walls, it was freezing cold, even now, for all spring was well advanced and the longer days of summer already on the horizon. Within only a few hours of working her fingers would be so numb she felt certain they might snap off at any moment. Ella felt overwhelmed by the bewildering battery of equipment, which was entirely a puzzle to her – most of it looking as if it had been there for a hundred years at least and really quite alarming.

There were cheese presses, butter pats and markers, yokes and buckets, and wooden frames in which the milk was held that were known as ‘chesfords’. A round
barrel-like
box with a handle was apparently the butter churn, and Mrs Rackett, who was called Nelly but insisted on the more formal title, began by describing its use.

‘It can be reet fickle to make, can butter.’

The milk was apparently brought each morning, fresh and frothing in a big metal milk can and left to settle
until the cream could be skimmed off and left to ‘ripen’, as Mrs Rackett termed it. Experience, she assured Ella, would tell her when it was ready for churning.

‘Tha puts the ripened cream in the churn with some watter, then turn that handle. You’ll happen have to do a fair bit of churning afore it comes.’

‘And how will I know when it does “come”?’ Ella wanted to know, a question that earned her a blisteringly disapproving glare, making it clear what she thought of farmers stupid enough to take on a town girl as a wife. The older woman smartly warned her she’d learn more if she asked fewer questions and paid proper attention, just as if she were a silly schoolgirl and not a young matron.

But the moment she embarked on the explanation, Ella wished she hadn’t asked as it was so long and convoluted, the whole task sounding decidedly confusing and very hard work.

She was outraged that she had to work at all. Father had assured her she’d be mistress of a large manor farm with over a hundred acres, not an ancient farmhouse in the back of beyond that simply held rights of grazing over the fells and actually owned less than half of that acreage. He’d promised her a comfortable life in the country with a well-to-do farmer who owned a substantial number of sheep and some beef stock and poultry. Nothing whatsoever had been said about her acting as an unpaid farm labourer. Had Ella known what would be demanded of her, she’d have put up a much tougher stand against the marriage, wouldn’t she?

And how would you have done that? asked that small weary voice in her head.

Mrs Rackett was now instructing her to listen to the sound butter made as it swished about in the churn, which had something to do with knowing when to stop so that it didn’t curdle. Ella hadn’t been properly listening so was really none the wiser.

‘After that you drain off the buttermilk, add more cold water to wash it, then we salt it to make brine and finally work the butter in order to squeeze out any remaining water and pat it with them “Scotch hands”.’ Mrs Rackett indicated two pieces of wood that looked like paddles. ‘It all depends on the weather, of course, and making sure the churn isn’t bewitched, so you have to take care you don’t…’

Ella hadn’t understood more than one word in ten, and by the time Mrs Rackett had finished her lecture on how to prepare the feed for the calves and described what was involved in killing, plucking and cleaning hens and geese, she was ready to pack her bag and return home upon the instant, no matter what retribution she might face at the hands of her father.

Within a few short weeks of her new life, Ella was in despair.

Sometimes, during the day, she would become aware of Amos casting her sidelong glances as she went about the house, watching closely as she rolled up her sleeves to reveal bare arms when she washed lettuce or peeled vegetables. His eyes would seem to glaze if her breasts
should accidentally brush against him as she passed by, or be riveted by the sight of her neat round bottom as she leant over to smooth the tablecloth upon the table.

And as closely as he watched her, Ella would watch her new husband with equal curiosity. He was not a handsome man, but neither would she describe him as ugly. Plain perhaps, rangy, with a weather-beaten complexion, and although the skin of his hands was rough and hard as horn, she’d seen how tenderly he could hold a lamb and bring it to the teat. And his old dog Beth certainly adored him, following him everywhere he went.

Poor and shabby as the farmhouse was, badly lacking a woman’s touch, he was constantly tidying and straightening things, careful to wash his hands before and after any task. His fetish for washing troubled her slightly, although she couldn’t think quite why. Amos was also extremely parsimonious in his use of candles or lamps, which must not be lit until it was quite impossible to see without them. And he was utterly devoted to his scriptures. He’d sit for an hour or more most evenings reading his Bible, and seemed to expect Ella to do the same.

As she studied him, Ella made a supreme effort to judge him fairly, and not to be too influenced by her father’s part in all of this, which had naturally put her against Amos Todd from the outset. Yet he was not a bad man. She’d made a mistake by mentioning Danny, and hadn’t the first idea how to put that right. And his efforts in the bedroom department had been a dismal failure. But he hadn’t really hurt her, just been rather clumsy and
unromantic. How could it have been any different when he clearly wasn’t in love with her any more than she was with him?

True, she’d expected to marry someone who would love her, even if it couldn’t be Danny Gilpin. She was used to being loved and adored: by her sisters, and her dear departed mother, and even at one time by her father. So why couldn’t her new husband love her too? He saw her only as an unpaid skivvy on his farm, a mother for his children.

At times Ella found it difficult to comprehend that she was a wife at all, a married woman no less, and also, it appeared, a mother. She’d seen little of her stepchildren thus far, as they stayed with their aunt during the week while they attended school in the village. There was a school in the dale, but Amos said it was too far for them to walk the four miles there and back every day, and he didn’t have time to take them in the cart. Ella complained that only seeing them at weekends didn’t allow her much time to get to know them properly, but in her heart, she was rather relieved, knowing nothing about children and caring even less.

Amos merely scowled at her, as serious and thoughtful as ever and told her she’d learn soon enough what was involved in mothering. It felt very like a threat.

As instructed, following Henry’s disastrous visit, Livia collected her bicycle from the garden shed and pedalled off down Gillingate into town to face her father with the unpalatable truth that she had turned the marriage offer down.

She might well get involved in women’s suffrage. Whyever not? No matter what Henry might say, it was a worthy cause, and Livia felt in sore need of a new challenge in her life.

Oh, but the interview had been exceedingly difficult, and the one she now faced with her father would be even worse.

She really needed to convince him that his wish for a match between them was simply that: wishful thinking on his part. Nothing more than castles in the air. He simply mustn’t be allowed to go on organising their lives in this tyrannical way. Couldn’t he see that she wanted to make him proud of her? How could she ever achieve that if she wasn’t to be allowed to flourish and do things in her own way?

At that precise moment, Josiah Angel was poring over his account books and studying them with frowning displeasure. The end of each financial year was always an anxious time and this one had been more difficult than most. Profits were down, and his plans to improve the store by installing lifts had again been put on hold for lack of funds. It irked him to realise that Angel’s was losing some of its former glory and falling behind the times. The London stores – Dickens and Jones, Debenham & Freebody, and Harrods, of course – were producing their own designs, hand-labelled in gold lettering. They were catering for duchesses and foreign princesses, while he could do no better than the spoilt rich wives of the county set. And most of those good ladies could take as long as six months to settle their accounts.

Josiah knew the situation was growing ever more desperate.

The sale he’d held in January, when he’d bought in stock at especially low prices to sell on at maximum profit, had not gone as well as he’d hoped. The kind of high-class customer enjoyed by Angel’s clearly saw such items as unworthy of their attention. And it had never occurred to the snobby Josiah to encourage the ordinary man or woman off the street to enter through his rather grand portals, so why would they think of coming to his sale? The enterprise had been a complete failure, and what had seemed like a way to a quick profit had left him in an even worse situation, since the shop was now overstocked with unsaleable goods. Even bustles, or improvers as they were called, had fallen out of fashion,
and the stock rooms were bursting with any number of those.

On top of all this, his debts were mounting daily. Josiah was becoming more and more dependent upon his daughters for getting him out of these financial difficulties. Livia in particular. Once again he glanced at his pocket watch, every moment seeming to drag as he waited for her to call with the news that she’d accepted Hodson’s offer. He heard the click of the office door and looked up in hope, only to find it was Miss Caraway with some damn fool question or other. Josiah snapped at her and the woman wisely went away again.

Josiah and Henry Hodson had been involved in several projects together over the years, buying land and building and selling property, but their relationship had taken a turn for the worse of late. Josiah owed the younger man a considerable sum of money, having accepted a loan from him to pay off a rather large gambling debt. Gambling, like women, had ever been a weakness of his, but Josiah saw this indulgence as one a man of substance such as himself was entitled to enjoy. He certainly worked hard enough. But after yet another dismal trading year, and having suffered further losses at the Kendal trotting races, the hound trails, and at Cartmel, he’d found himself even more financially embarrassed and quite unable to repay the loan.

Consequently, he’d readily agreed to Hodson’s suggestion that he give him Livia’s hand in marriage in return not only for wiping out his existing debts but furnishing him with a substantial investment in the
business for future improvements. This would allow Angel’s to move on into this new century in a much healthier position.

It had seemed like the answer to his prayers, but Livia, as always, was proving difficult.

As if three legitimate daughters weren’t difficult enough to handle, he’d then had that other one pop up out of nowhere, threatening to be a thorn in his side. And all thanks to stupid Florrie. Still, he’d sorted her good and proper. Shut her away where the sun didn’t shine, and seen to it she stayed there. A fistful of notes in the workhouse master’s back pocket had done the trick nicely. She’d bother him no more.

But there was still Livia to deal with.

Josiah really couldn’t see why the girl was making such a fuss. Hadn’t the pair been inseparable when they were youngsters? He seemed to recall her once suffering a childish crush on the older boy. Josiah took out his pocket watch. It was well past midday, so the interview would be long over. She’d better have accepted him, or she’d live to regret this day for the rest of her life.

By the time Livia had negotiated the heavy traffic along Stricklandgate and Highgate, and propped her bicycle against the kerb at the store’s entrance, her courage had begun to fail. She smiled at the line of small dogs, left by their lady owners chained to the rail at the entrance. She bid the chief floor-walker a polite good morning as she swept inside, but paused to linger over a particularly charming display of summer prints, wondering why
there wasn’t a buzz of young girls doing exactly the same thing. Why did Angel’s Department Store feel like a dusty mausoleum instead of a vibrant, exciting place to shop?

Her pace slowed as she crossed the floor, and by the time she reached her father’s office, her nerves had got the better of her completely. Livia paused, her hand poised over the mahogany door knob and decided that for now, at least, she’d play safe and simply explain that Henry had agreed she should have time to consider his offer, that he would be back in a week for her answer.

A great deal could happen in a week.

It came as a great shock to Ella to discover that Amos expected her to rise early every single morning and
work
! Day after day, after day. She could hardly believe the demands he made upon her. Never in her entire life had anyone asked her to so much as lift a finger before. Weren’t there always servants to do all of that? Really, it was most unfair!

Even Mrs Rackett was a trial to her, actually laughing out loud one morning when she came downstairs in a pretty blue silk gown.

‘Where you off to, a dance?’

Ella lifted her chin. ‘I see nothing wrong in looking smart.’

‘Suit yourself, only you and me has to muck out the calves this morning.’

Ella stamped back upstairs to change.

‘You should employ a lad for dirty jobs,’ she objected
to Amos later. ‘Or do the work yourself. You’re the farmer, not me.’

‘Calves and poultry are women’s work.’

‘I don’t see why. Hens are smelly, nasty creatures, and the geese chased me this morning. They were really quite vicious.’

‘Good guard dogs, are geese,’ and he smiled at her, as if he’d said something funny. When she didn’t laugh too, he said more soberly, ‘I expect they were hungry and wanted feeding.’

‘Well, I shan’t go near them again.’

‘Then feeding could be a problem and they might take to chasing you more often.’

He really was the most infuriating man. This morning he was again complaining that the hen house must be cleaned out and the dairy needed a good scrub, telling her that she might get both jobs done before tea. ‘If you look sharp about it.’ A phrase she had come to loathe.

Ella didn’t feel in the least bit sharp. Nor did she intend to leave this sofa, old and scratchy though it might be, where she was comfortably ensconced with her book. She felt tired and cross, and she had a headache starting. She certainly had no wish to spend an hour cleaning out the hen house. Just the stink of the place made her gag. And the dairy was clean enough. She’d hardly made a mess this morning by pouring milk into a few bowls, and the cream could surely wait another week before she tried, and no doubt miserably failed, to make another batch of butter.

Ella intended to make it very clear that she had no
interest in the traditions of farming. ‘You need a dairymaid to make the butter and cheese, and a servant to clean the house. I really shouldn’t be expected to do those tasks at all.’

‘Why not?’ Amos stood with his fists on his hips considering her with a slight frown on his face, as if he couldn’t quite understand what she was saying. ‘Are you ill?’

‘No.’

‘Then why won’t you work? Esther, my first wife, was happy to help all she could, as all farmers’ wives are, and the children were home in those days as they were too young for school. Round her feet for the entire week they were, yet she coped well enough.’

Tearful now, Ella had the urge to scream at him that she wasn’t his first wife, and they weren’t her children. But that would have been unkind since the poor lady was dead. ‘Well, I’m too tired to do any more today,’ she sulked. ‘I have a headache.’ As if this settled the matter, she flounced off to her room in a pet, to spend the entire afternoon reading
Jane Eyre
, which she’d read five times already but absolutely adored.

But all of this ill feeling, her husband’s coldness, served only to add to her sense of loneliness and misery. Ella felt desperately homesick, longed for a friend to talk to, someone who had a kind word for her, or would give her a hug of affection. There was still no sign of that from Amos, who continued to sleep in the attic. She could hear him most nights pacing the floor.

Exhausted by her emotions and her aching limbs from
all the work she was forced to do, Ella snuggled down in bed and slept, but her respite was short-lived. She woke to find Amos standing staring down at her in ominous silence.

For one awful moment Ella thought he might be about to make another attempt to consummate their marriage, but then he calmly informed her that supper was ready.

If the week was hard and work on the farm relentless, Ella found the weekends even more of a challenge as the children returned home from school. Sundays in particular proved to be an absolute nightmare. Amos insisted that she must rise at eight, despite the fact she was tired after working all week. She would be obliged to eat porridge with his round-eyed, silent children, instead of a little bread and butter and coffee in bed, which she would infinitely have preferred.

Day after day, night after night, Ella ached to go home. She longed to see her sisters and gossip with her friends, take tea on the lawn, visit the library for the latest romance, and of course enjoy the many delightful shops in Kendal town. But whenever she complained that she was bored, Amos would find her yet another task to do, or suggest she peg a rug, for goodness sake, as Mrs Rackett did of an evening. Or take up embroidery, which was apparently a passion of his first wife. She couldn’t tell him that she was bored sick with hearing about the wonderful Esther, his beloved first wife.

‘Won’t you be visiting Kendal soon to go to the auction mart?’ she persisted, but he shook his head as if annoyed
she should ask, saying they would go in a week or two, when the lambs were fat enough to sell.

‘We could at least visit the market. Don’t we have eggs and milk to sell?’

‘My neighbour, Mrs Jepson, sells them for me. She’s always glad to help.’

Ella had met Mrs Jepson on her first visit to St Cuthbert’s church, which the entire family was expected to attend three times every Sunday. Mrs Rackett was excused, as she had to cook Sunday dinner, although most of the work for it had been done the night before, as none could be done on the Sabbath. They were all bundled into the farm cart and bumped back along that endless road until they reached the tiny church Amos had pointed out to her on the day Ella had first arrived.

That first service had seemed to go on interminably. Hours and hours so far as Ella could judge. And all the while she was aware of people turning to look at her, remarking to each other in loud whispers that she must be the ‘new wife’. Ella didn’t feel in the least bit new. She felt old, worn out, exhausted, and desperately unhappy.

Now, weeks later, she was still waiting for Amos to give permission for their neighbour to call. Ella had broached the subject many times but he always demurred, insisting he didn’t care for strangers calling unannounced.

‘Why don’t I go with Mrs Jepson next week and help her to sell the eggs, a few vegetables, maybe a chicken or two, whatever produce we can find. Won’t that help? Don’t we need the money?’ She wasn’t in the least interested in spending a day standing in the market
trying to sell their wares, but a day in town would be wonderful. Marvellous!

Amos scowled. ‘So that you can see your lover, Danny Gilpin?’

Ella’s cheeks flamed. ‘Not at all. That’s not what I intended.’ Oh, but it was, it was. She simply ached to see Danny.

His mouth twisted into a smirk of disbelief. ‘Don’t you need to make the cheese first, my dear, before you can sell it?’

This was a fact Ella hadn’t considered. In her desperation to avoid the dreaded task, she’d even taken to pouring good milk down the drain. Surely he hadn’t found her out, had he?

She hated her life out here in the back of beyond, thought it deeply unfair that she was cooped up at the farm the entire week. She felt desperate to escape, to tell her woes to sweet, patient Maggie, to weep and seek comfort in Livia’s loving arms. She really must persuade Father into allowing her to return home for a while, for a short visit at least. She would write and get the letter posted or delivered somehow.

In the meantime, perhaps she’d better learn how to make cheese, if only to give herself the opportunity to go into town.