Tangled Threads (2 page)

Now Eveleen could laugh with ease and say, ‘Of course he hasn’t, Dad. Master Stephen’s too nice to do that.’ She ran her tongue around her lips that were suddenly dry as
she said carefully, ‘But I can hardly ignore him if he – if he wants to – to talk to me, can I? We’ve been friends for years. Remember how he used to play with us when we
were kids?’

‘Only because there were no other children from his own class nearby.’

‘Oh come now, Mary love,’ Walter remonstrated gently. ‘The Dunsmores aren’t snobs. You can’t accuse them of that. Why, the old man used to work alongside us in the
fields. That was Stephen’s grandfather, of course. George. I was only a lad then. Miles and miles he’d walk behind the two shire horses at ploughing time.’

‘That’s as maybe,’ Mary snapped, for once impatient with Walter’s reminiscing. ‘But now his son and grandson ride around the estate on a horse instead of walking
behind it.’

Walter shrugged, his kindly, placid nature ready to accept change without a trace of bitterness. ‘Ernest worked hard as a lad, I’ll say that for him, but they’ve done well for
themselves, Mary, that’s all. They’ve a big estate to run now.’

‘And you really think that the Dunsmores would allow their son to court the daughter of their gathman?’ Mary asked.

Eveleen felt her father’s gaze upon her. He smiled. ‘Why ever not? She’d make a grand wife for him. Stephen’s a fine young man.’

Mary leaned forward. ‘I shouldn’t think for a moment that marriage is what the “fine young man” has in mind.’

Now Walter swivelled his gaze to meet his wife’s angry eyes. The smile left his face and he frowned, concerned now at Mary’s insinuations. He glanced worriedly back to his daughter.
‘Eveleen, has Stephen suggested anything – anything that’s not – not . . .’ he seemed to be struggling to find the right word, ‘proper.’

Mary too was watching her, awaiting her answer. Eveleen trembled at the memory of Stephen’s kisses beneath the shadows of the trees in Bernby Covert. The way he held her close and murmured
in her ear. ‘Oh, Eveleen, how I want you.’

She ran her tongue around her lips once more but was thankful that she was able to meet their eyes steadily and say, quite truthfully, ‘No, Dad, he hasn’t.’

‘Well, mind you never give him the chance,’ Mary snapped.

‘Eveleen won’t – what I mean is – she’s . . .’ Walter began.

A long look passed between her mother and father, a look of mutual understanding and something even more. Memories, perhaps, that their daughter could not share.

Walter reached across the hearth to touch his wife’s hand in a tender gesture. ‘She’ll be all right, love. Eveleen will be all right.’

For a moment Mary held his gaze, then she nodded and lowered her head over her work again, but not before Eveleen had seen unshed tears glistening in her mother’s eyes.

Pear Tree Farm, the Hardcastles’ home, was larger than the cottages occupied by the other workers on the estate. It had a large crewyard and cowhouse, two barns, a
henhouse and two pigsties. The weekly wash was done in the washhouse attached to the end of the house where a brick copper built into the corner boiled the clothes, and where Eveleen laboured over
the rinsing tub and the mangle. The back door of the house itself opened into the scullery and then into the kitchen where the family ate their meals and sat at night near the range which provided
heat and hot water and cooked their food. In this one room Mary cooked and baked and ironed. In the centre of the room was a plain wooden table and to one side stood a dresser holding the pots and
pans they used every day. In the drawers Mary kept her lace-edged table linen. Down two steps out of the kitchen, the pantry shelves were lined with bottled fruit, home-made jams, chutneys and
pickles, and from hooks in the ceiling hung cured hams wrapped in muslin.

In the far corner of the kitchen, a door led into a small hallway and then into Mary’s best room – the parlour – only used on Sundays and at Christmas. This room, by any farm
labourer’s standards, was grand. The walls were papered with heavily patterned green paper and pictures adorned each wall. In a corner cupboard was Mary’s prize possession, a
willow-patterned tea service. Above the fireplace was a mantelpiece draped in green fabric to blend with the wallpaper and above that an oval mirror with an elaborately carved wooden frame. A
dining table covered with a plush green cloth and four chairs stood in the centre of the room. From the hallway between the two rooms, the staircase led up to the master bedroom, a second smaller
room that was Eveleen’s and, beyond that, a long, narrow room with a sloping ceiling where Jimmy slept.

Only Eveleen ever heard her brother creeping up the stairs late at night and tiptoeing through her room to reach his own.

Not knowing what had transpired, it was ironic that Stephen chose the very next morning to visit Pear Tree Farm quite openly. Eveleen was in the warm barn, gently turning the
eggs in the incubator. Dust floated in the shaft of sunlight slanting through a hole in the rafters and the rays highlighted her chestnut hair with golden tints.

‘What a pretty picture,’ he said softly. Though she jumped at the sound of his voice from the doorway and her fingers trembled, Eveleen managed to carry on moistening the eggs,
inspecting each one for the first sign of a hairline crack that would herald the arrival of a fluffy yellow chick. She closed the incubator carefully, checked that the paraffin lamp at the side was
still alight and turned to face him.

‘Master Stephen,’ she said, managing to keep her voice level though her heart leapt at the sight of him. She felt dishevelled in her plain brown skirt, cream blouse and rough hessian
apron. She tried to smooth the wild halo of her unruly curls, mortified to think that there might be wisps of straw tangled in her tresses. If only she could have been dressed in her best blue
dress and new bonnet, with a parasol to protect her face from the sun. That was the sort of girl Stephen Dunsmore would court, she thought, not some poorly clad milkmaid employed on his
father’s farm.

And yet he was here, smiling down at her as he leaned nonchalantly against the door jamb, idly slapping his riding crop against his soft leather boot.

‘So formal, Miss Hardcastle,’ he teased, but his eyes caressed her.

Eveleen thought him the most handsome man she knew. Gently curved eyebrows above blue eyes, a long straight nose, high cheekbones and a chin that was delicately rounded. The early morning sun
behind him glinted on his fair hair, the white collar of his shirt gleamed against his lightly tanned skin and the tightly fitting riding jacket outlined strong shoulders. Whenever she saw him,
Eveleen would feel the breath leave her body and her limbs tremble.

She glanced out of the barn door but the yard was deserted, except for his horse tethered at the gate. Then, drawing back into the shadows, she whispered, ‘They know. Jimmy saw us
yesterday in Bernby Covert.’

Stephen’s laugh was unconcerned. ‘So?’

‘He told Mam and Dad at suppertime last night.’

Stephen’s left eyebrow arched a fraction. He lifted his riding crop and tapped the ivory handle thoughtfully against his lips. ‘Did he, indeed? That was very foolish of him,
wasn’t it? I think you’d better warn your dear brother not to tell tales in future.’

‘Warn him?’

For a brief moment, his blue eyes were steely. ‘If he values his job.’

Eveleen’s dark brown eyes widened in alarm. ‘Oh, you wouldn’t?’

Then he was laughing as if it had all been a joke. ‘Of course I wouldn’t, darling. But Jimmy doesn’t know that, does he? And we’ll just have to be more discreet,
won’t we?’

Relief flooded through her. He wanted to go on seeing her. He did love her as much as she loved him.

He was reaching out towards her, his fingers almost touching her hair when, from the back door of the farmhouse, her mother’s voice floated across the yard. ‘Eveleen? Eveleen, where
are you?’

Stephen let his hand fall and pulled a wry expression. Standing aside for her to pass he murmured, ‘You’d better go.’

As she hurried across the yard, Eveleen was acutely conscious of his gaze following her and knew that her mother had seen him too.

It was not until suppertime that Mary chose to mention Stephen Dunsmore’s visit.

‘He was here this morning,’ she informed her husband in front of both Eveleen and Jimmy. ‘And she’s been less than useless ever since.’

His fork suspended halfway to his mouth, Walter glanced at Eveleen. Slowly, the fork continued its progress then, chewing the mouthful, he appeared to be thinking.

‘And?’ he said at last.

‘He was in the barn with her. Goodness knows how long he’d been there. I only saw him when I called her in to help me fold the sheets.’

‘I told you so,’ Jimmy put in smugly, but for once his mother took no notice of him.

‘Have you anything you want to tell us, Eveleen?’ Walter asked, his face sombre.

Her heart hammering inside her chest, Eveleen swallowed painfully. ‘No, Dad,’ she whispered. ‘There’s nothing to tell. Honestly.’ It was the truth, at least about
their meeting that morning.

Walter pushed his plate away, his supper only half eaten, as if his appetite had suddenly deserted him.

Eveleen dropped her gaze, avoiding his. She could no longer meet those loving, anxious eyes knowing how she was deceiving him.

Mary stood up and crashed the plates together, scraping off Walter’s uneaten food on to the topmost plate with swift, angry movements.

Then she leant across the table and wagged her finger in Eveleen’s face. ‘You’d better come to your senses, miss, and be quick about it. You’ve been in a dream all day
ever since he was here. You burnt a hole in a sheet doing the ironing. Then I found you sitting idly on the hearthrug gazing into space when you should have been polishing the fender. Now you can
take these plates into the scullery and wash them. Don’t forget to put the meat away in the meat-safe and then you’d better get yourself to bed. You’ve an early start in the
morning if you’re going to the fat stock market with your father.’ She put her hand on her husband’s shoulder and her tone softened as she added, ‘And you’d better go
to your bed, too, Walter dear. You’re looking tired.’

Already Jimmy was sidling towards the door to escape before Mary could send him to bed too.

‘I think I will, love.’ Walter heaved himself up from his chair and, wishing each member of his family goodnight, he hauled himself up the narrow stairs to the bedroom above.

As she washed and dried the dishes and put everything away, Eveleen’s pulse quickened. Stephen often went to the cattle market. Perhaps they would see him. Tomorrow she would wear her best
bonnet to ride in the pony and trap to Grantham.

As she returned to the kitchen to say goodnight it was as if her mother, sitting once more with her pillow lace, had read her thoughts.

‘And don’t you be thinking you can wear your Sunday best tomorrow,’ Mary said.

Thankful that the comment made no direct accusations, Eveleen was emboldened to protest. ‘But, Mam, I can’t go to town in my working clothes. What would people think?’

‘Of course I don’t mean you should go looking like a ragamuffin.’ Mary Hardcastle bristled with indignation. ‘But your second-best dress and shawl will be quite
serviceable.’ She pursed her mouth primly. ‘I don’t want anyone to think you’re getting ideas above your station.’

A spark of rebellion made Eveleen ask, ‘And what is my “station”, Mam? Because I’d really like to know.’

‘Eveleen! Don’t you dare to answer me back. Now, get to bed and I’ll have to decide whether I even let you go tomorrow.’

‘But, Mam—’

‘Not another word.’ Mary flapped her hand, dismissing her daughter.

Eveleen bit her lip to still an angry response. Her mother knew full well that one of the harshest punishments she could inflict upon her daughter was to stop her weekly trip into town with her
father. Silently she left the kitchen to the sound of her mother’s mutterings about ungrateful children and climbed the stairs.

Sleep deserted her. She didn’t like upsetting her mother, but sometimes retorts sprang to her lips and were out of her mouth before she could stop them. In the darkness Eveleen sighed. It
was her biggest failing, she knew. But her mother was a difficult and complex woman to understand. Even Mary herself did not seem to know exactly what it was she wanted in life, so how were her
children expected to know. At times she would be exhorting them to work harder, to “make something of themselves”; at others she was castigating them for “getting above
themselves” and warning them that they should “know their place”.

Now their father . . . Eveleen smiled to herself at the mere thought of him. He was easy to understand. Straightforward, placid, loving, and generous as far as his meagre wage would allow him to
be. His generosity of spirit went much further than monetary gifts. More than anything, he gave of himself. He gave time and patience to his children. He always had done so, as far back as Eveleen
could remember, even helping her as a small child to learn to read, though hardly a scholar himself. He would painstakingly write the letters of the alphabet on to her slate with a piece of white
chalk and point to each one, guiding her hand as she traced the outlines of the letters herself.

Even then her mother had grumbled. ‘An education’s wasted on a girl. What she needs to learn is how to cook and wash and sew and look after a family. What good’s fancy learning
going to be for her?’

But Walter Hardcastle only smiled indulgently at his wife and said gently, ‘You’re right, of course, my dear. Eveleen must learn all those things and who better to teach her than
you.’ Then he would pause and add quietly, but with a firmness that even his wife could not ignore, ‘But it will do her no harm to learn her letters and go to school. One day, it might
come in useful.’

Despite a restless night, Eveleen was up first the following morning. The fire in the range had been stoked up and the breakfast laid before even her father appeared. When her
mother came down, Eveleen went back upstairs to her bedroom to wash in the china bowl and to put on her pink dress with a high neckline and leg o’ mutton sleeves. Today Jimmy would cope with
the early morning milking, so Eveleen made her bed and then laid out the only two bonnets she possessed. Biting her lip, she stood looking down at them. The newest, the one she had only had since
the previous Easter, was by far the prettiest, but it was her best one. The older one was becoming shabby, although her mother declared there was plenty of wear left in it yet.