Netherwood (11 page)

E
ve stood on her back doorstep and upended the last bucket of cold water on to the cobbles of the yard. She watched as Eliza and Ellen and two of Lilly’s children from next door shrieked with laughter and jumped back and forth across the miniature torrent. On another occasion Eve might have snapped at them to stop, but today she felt almost high spirited, in spite of the fact that her back ached, her hands were chapped and her skirts were wet on account of the countless trips between the tin bath and the back door with pails of grey water.

She went back inside, through the kitchen and into the parlour. There was now just an inch or so of water in the bottom of the tub and Eve could easily lift it at one end and drag it over to the door. The girls skipped out of her way as she emerged backwards, pulling the bath by one of its two handles. Using the doorstep as a ramp, she lay the tub down then stepped around it to the other side.

The girls waited. Eve might make them stand out of the way for this last, most thrilling, part of the game and Eliza watched her mother closely to gauge her mood. Ellen, who took all her cues from her sister, watched Eliza. Eve, however, had already decided to indulge them.

‘Ready?’ she said. ‘One … two …’

She paused, holding the tub almost vertical.

‘Three!’ shouted Eliza, and Eve swung the bath over on itself. Water flooded out and down the yard and the girls danced over it as it made its way into the rain gully and out into the street. Eve lifted the empty bath and hooked it, still dripping, on to a great iron peg in the wall, then she took a stiff broom from just inside the kitchen and chased the last of the water away with it. She rested, briefly, using the broom handle as a prop, listening to the girls’ laughter out in the street. It sounded as though there were a few of them now. She’d leave them a while to play. No sense having them under her feet, and Eliza could be relied upon to keep an eye on Ellen.

‘I ’ope they’re not sodden.’ Lilly Pickering’s peevish voice made Eve jump and she turned, a little flushed, to look at her neighbour.

‘Afternoon,’ she said, cheerful in the face of Lilly’s determinedly joyless expression. ‘They’re not sodden, but I am.’ She brushed ineffectually at her skirts. ‘Your Minnie and Bet ’ave more sense than to get their stockings wet.’

A thin wail rose from inside the Pickering house and both women listened for a second, wondering if it required attention. The wail continued, but seemed complaining rather than urgent. Eve smiled at Lilly.

‘Your Victor up at t’match?’ she said.

‘Aye, ’e flamin’ well is,’ said Lilly. Her words were bitter, but her voice was flat, as if even she was bored by her incessant carping. ‘Life o’ bloody Riley.’

‘Ah well, they deserve a bit of recreation,’ said Eve. ‘They’re none of ’em idle.’ She stepped inside her house and closed the door. On one of her bad days, and this looked like one of them, Lilly Pickering’s expression could turn milk sour and Eve wasn’t going to let it spoil her mood. She dried her hands
on the linen cloth that hung by the range, and took a dab of salve from an earthenware pot, rubbing it into the backs of her hands where the skin was red and cracked. Then she took a basin from the cupboard and shook flour into it, a little sugar and a good pinch of salt. Nothing was weighed; instinct and practice had taught Eve just how much to use. She moved with a practised fluency and hummed softly as she added a handful of currants and a small scoop of bicarbonate of soda to the mix, then used the base of the scoop to make a small well in the centre, just big enough to hold the egg she now broke into it. She took a wooden spoon from its jar on the shelf and began to stir, while at the same time adding a steady stream of milk until she had a smooth, thick batter. Then she let it rest while she reached for the cast-iron skillet, blackened with use, rubbed its ridged surface with a piece of mutton fat, and set it to warm on top of the stove.

Eve was at her most content. She was alone in her house, which was clean and in good order, the fires in both rooms were burning bright, the children were out in the fresh air, there was money in the housekeeping tin – an extra 10 shillings too, thanks to Lord Hoyland – and food in the pantry, and in a few moments there would be the incomparable smell of drop scones cooking on the griddle. Arthur and Seth would soon be home and they would all sit at the table and share a pot of tea and warm scones spread with a little of the strawberry jam Eve had made last August. On such small pleasures was Eve’s happiness built.

There was a knock on the door. Sighing, Eve wiped her hands on the front of her apron. She didn’t mind unexpected company as a rule, but hated to be interrupted on a baking day. She opened the door and found a small, scrawny child on the doorstep, hopping from foot to foot. He had no clogs on his little feet, which were blue with cold where they weren’t black with filth. He was a stranger to the bath tub, was Willie
Waterdine, and by the looks of his encrusted nostrils wasn’t over-familiar with a handkerchief either.

‘Bissis Williabs, Grandad sent a bessage,’ he said, still jumping about on the step like an outsized flea. Willie was cursed with chronically blocked nasal passages and as a result his bottom lip hung slack in order to draw breath. He needed half an hour over a basin of camphor and hot water, thought Eve, but the Waterdines were far too numerous for any of them to warrant individual attention.

‘Did ’e now,’ she said. ‘Stand still, then, an’ tell me.’

Willie settled, but only slightly.

‘’E said, ad allotbent’s cub free a’d Bister Williabs is next on t’list,’ said the boy. ‘’E said does Bister Williabs still want it?’

This was news indeed. The allotments were a relatively new addition to Netherwood, just two years old and still with a vulnerable, newly planted look about them. Lady Hoyland, in a rare moment of community-spirited zeal, had decided that the landless poor of Netherwood should be allowed access to a few fertile acres of their own on which to produce food and flowers. Her vision, grandiose in scope and scale, occupied her mind for almost two days, after which she lost interest and handed the scheme over to Jem Arkwright, the earl’s land steward. He had ideas of his own about the value of land and its potential uses, and had proceeded to allocate a meagre site out of town, butting up against the railway tracks and comprising just a dozen narrow plots. Arthur had been too slow to snap one up, much to Eve’s vexation. Clem Waterdine, however, had been first in the queue and, now, two years on, he seemed to have become the self-appointed – and increasingly autocratic – manager of allocation. A peppercorn rent had to be paid to the estate, but it was Clem who had the power of approval or refusal over all applicants and stood in judgement over any gardener who neglected his plot. Clem’s
domestic habits were famously unwholesome but he had turned out to be a fanatically tidy and rigorous gardener. Eve wondered briefly if the old despot had winkled someone out for falling short of his own high standards. Not that she cared, if it proved to be her route to home-grown veg.

‘Tell your grandad yes,’ she said to Willie. ‘An’ tell ’im to drop in whenever he likes for a bite o’ breakfast.’

Willie nodded. ‘Right,’ he said. His eyes were huge in his grubby face, as if astonished, and he was still jigging on the spot on the top step.

‘Bissis Williabs?’

‘What now?’ said Eve.

‘Cad I use your privy?’

Eve returned to her mixing bowl, lifted it and began to drop the batter on to the surface of the hot pan where it spluttered and immediately set in small, irregular rounds. The smell, sweet and familiar, rose in the steam and filled the small kitchen. There was another knock at the door, this time truly unwelcome. Eve looked round with a scowl. It was probably Willie again. She certainly wasn’t about to leave the scones for him; they would scorch in moments if unattended.

‘What now?’ she shouted, irritation evident in her voice. She turned back to the pan; the exposed, uncooked surface of the scones was beginning to bubble and she started to turn each one over with deft flicks.

The door opened and still Eve didn’t turn. She was so fully expecting to hear Willie Waterdine that she started quite visibly when instead she heard the melodious, cultured tones of Samuel Farrimond.

‘Ah, nothing evokes a feeling of wellbeing quite so strongly
as the aroma of drop scones,’ he said, and he inhaled flam-boyantly as he closed the door and entered the kitchen.

This was an extraordinary occurrence indeed and Eve, though delighted to see him so soon after her trip to Grangely, flushed a deep shade of pink as she greeted him. She was mortified now at the way she’d spoken but equally, nothing would induce her to allow her scones to burn.

‘Reverend Farrimond!’ she said. ‘I … I’m sorry, I must just …’ She indicated her pressing business at the skillet and he smiled.

‘Please, please, don’t let me stand between you and your scones,’ he said. ‘No one will suffer more than I if they’re rendered inedible.’

Eve laughed. With her back turned to him she was able to regain her composure. She couldn’t imagine what had brought him here, but he would be properly received as an honoured guest, just as soon as the scones were safely out of the pan. For his part, Reverend Farrimond used the moment to consider the pleasing details of the kitchen in which he stood; it was humble enough but it seemed to him, coming as he did from the squalor of Grangely, to shine from every surface. The floor, the table, the range, the great copper pan, all of them the ordinary trappings of a miner’s kitchen, nevertheless seemed more than the sum of their parts. The room was aglow with pride and purpose.

One by one, Eve placed the batch of scones on to a clean linen cloth. Reverend Farrimond, left to his own thoughts, took the opportunity to admire her. He wondered if anyone ever told her how lovely she was. He presumed Arthur thought her pretty, but he knew how sparing these men were with their compliments. He knew, too, that Eve’s appearance, if she was aware of it, would be of no consequence to her; beauty didn’t feed the children or wash the clothes or keep the cold at bay.

In another person’s life, he mused, her physical attributes
would have been highly prized. Her chestnut hair was long, and though she rarely wore it loose, when she did it fell in gentle waves almost to the base of her spine. Her features were regular, delicate, and her brown eyes were wide and thickly lashed. But Reverend Farrimond was right to suppose that Eve, though she remembered caring about her appearance when she was young and unmarried and her future was still perilously uncertain, hadn’t gazed at her own reflection in a looking glass for many years. Vanity and self-regard were privileges of the idle rich; the only time Eve saw her own reflection these days was in Matthew’s butcher’s shop in Netherwood, where a mirror hung on the wall behind the counter bearing the life-sized outline of a bull, its body divided into sections to demonstrate the various edible parts of the beast. And if she caught sight of her own face on the rib or the flank or the brisket, she certainly didn’t think to admire it.

She turned now, having wrapped the scones into their linen parcel to keep warm, and smiled at the minister.

‘’ello,’ she said, with mock-surprise in her voice, as though he had just walked through the door.

‘Hello to you,’ he said. ‘And forgive me for bursting in on you unannounced.’

‘Well, there’s no other way of bursting in,’ said Eve.

Reverend Farrimond laughed. ‘No, indeed, very true.’

‘’ow are you?’ said Eve.

‘Quite dreadful, inasmuch as my wellbeing is tied up with the people of my parish,’ said Reverend Farrimond. ‘Indeed it’s difficult to imagine how things could be worse. Abandon hope, all ye who enter there.’

Eve’s face fell, and the minister smiled fondly at what he read as compassion. But what Eve was feeling was more akin to shame than sympathy; his words had no hidden meaning, but to Eve’s ear they held reproach. In Grangely she had resolved to return with the offer of further help – food,
perhaps, or extra clothing for the evicted families. She had called to Reverend Farrimond as he left her, but her words had been lost in the din. Had he turned, she might now have been back in there helping to ease the suffering of those whose fate could have been hers. But since coming home, their plight, desperate though it was, had been eclipsed by the simple rhythms of her own domestic life and she had barely spared a thought for those poor unfortunates. In a rush, she blurted all this out to Reverend Farrimond. He, however, would have none of it and held up a hand as if to stem the flow of words.

‘Nonsense, Eve, nonsense,’ he said. ‘It’s only Saturday for heaven’s sake! What could you possibly have achieved in that short time? No, it pains me to hear you berate yourself.’

‘But what should I do?’ said Eve. ‘I do wish to be of some ’elp.’

Reverend Farrimond did have a proposal to make, but he felt it had better wait until Arthur was home.

‘What you should do, young woman, is put the kettle on the stove,’ he said.