The Innkeeper's Daughter (17 page)

‘Thank you, Mrs Greenwood,’ he said. ‘You’re so good to us.’

The housekeeper touched her cheek and he saw that her eyes glistened. ‘Thank
you
, Master Jamie,’ she said softly. ‘Travel safely and take care of yourself whilst you’re away.’

Bob Hopkins was waiting outside with Bonny and Jamie saw by the disturbed snow that he had kept her moving around so that she wouldn’t get cold.

‘Have a good journey, sir,’ he said, touching his cap. ‘See you in a couple o’ weeks?’

‘A bit longer than that, Bob,’ Jamie said, putting his boot into Bob’s waiting hand to mount. ‘I’ve to keep my nose to the grindstone.’

‘Ah! Just ’same as me then?’

‘Exactly so!’ Jamie wheeled Bonny round and waved a hand. ‘Goodbye.’

‘Cheerio, sir.’ Bob watched him as he trotted down the drive, the horse’s hooves kicking up flurries of snow, then turned and went back to the stables.

It was a fine crisp morning and Jamie took deep breaths of icy air. It was good to be outside and he was looking forward to getting back to the simple room which his landlady Mrs Button looked after so well. He had given her a rough idea of when he would be returning and she had promised that she would keep a low fire burning in his room.

Although Mrs Button provided his meals and kept his room swept and dusted, she also provided him with a small kettle so that he could make himself tea or coffee whenever he wished. To someone who was usually unwilling to disturb the servants between mealtimes by ringing a bell to request a drink or a slice of pie, this was a revelation, this was freedom, and he often sat toasting his stockinged feet by his fire, drinking coffee and eating cake whilst reading through his required schoolwork.

As he neared the Woodman Inn, he debated whether to call. He had no reason to, being neither tired nor in need of refreshment, for the longer part of his journey was yet to come; nevertheless, he felt a desire to visit. So why is that? But feeling the slight churning inside and the beginning of a smile unfolding, he knew very well why it was: there could only be one reason and that was to see Bella, the innkeeper’s daughter, again.

But what excuse can I give, he wondered? If her surly brother is there then I’ll feel obliged to buy a glass of ale when I don’t really want one, and I don’t want a cup of chocolate for it isn’t so long since I ate a hearty breakfast. What then? He slowed Bonny to a walk as he considered the matter.

‘Ah! Yes,’ he murmured. ‘It’s you, Bonny. Did you not say you had a sore foot? Did I notice that you were limping?’

The horse snickered at his voice, pricking up her ears.

That’s it, he thought. I’ll call and ask if there’s a farrier nearby, and he dug in his heels and urged Bonny on.

The young lad Seth was in the stable yard again. This time he was chopping wood with an axe almost as big as himself and Jamie gave a shudder when he saw the blade.

‘You’ll take care with that, won’t you?’ he said as he dismounted.

‘Oh, aye, I will, sir.’ Seth grinned. ‘I’ve been chopping wood since I was just a bairn.’

‘Really? As long as that?’ Jamie grinned back at him. ‘Is the inn open?’

Seth nodded. ‘Yeh. Just an hour since. Shall I stable ’hoss, sir?’

‘I’m only staying a few minutes,’ Jamie told him. ‘If you’d put her in a stall, please.’

Bella had lit a fire in the taproom, but not in the other rooms. There would be nobody much in this morning; the regulars would be at work, or if they were not in work they’d be at home getting under their wives’ feet, and saving their money to spend at the inn later in the evening. Joe was still in bed and she had deliberately not called him. Her mother was in the kitchen baking bread and Nell was back at school.

Bella washed her hands and then went up to her room to make her bed and tidy herself up, taking off the heavy-duty apron she wore when raking the fires or filling the coal hods and changing into a clean white one. She brushed her thick hair, looking in the mirror that sat on the deep windowsill, and then her gaze wandered to the view below.

The land was white with deep snow, the tops of hawthorn hedges showing as dark elongated lines defining each field and meadow, all of which were peppered with tracks of fox or rabbit; from up so high she couldn’t make out which.

She looked to the long road below with the snow piled up
at
each side and saw a single rider, his figure and that of his horse dark against the dazzling whiteness. Who’s this, she thought? Not a farmer, he’s not riding a plough horse, more like a thoroughbred. She turned away from the window. Mebbe somebody going to ’farrier? A job for our William perhaps.

Downstairs in the taproom she twitched the curtains neatly. Annie had washed the windows this morning and put fresh net curtains up as she did every fortnight. Bella looked round. Everything was tidy, the tables polished, the counter clean, and on it a jug with sprigs of winter jasmine which she’d cut early this morning; all they needed were customers and she wished they were busier during the day rather than having a rush during the evening.

She heard the back door leading to the stable yard being tried, and realizing that she hadn’t unlocked it she dashed down the passage, calling that she was coming. ‘Sorry,’ she began as she opened it, ‘I’d forgotten—’ and stopped when she saw Jamie Lucan standing there.

‘Sorry,’ they said in unison, and then both smiled. Bella didn’t know why she felt a sudden uplifting of spirits, but she did. A rush of warmth enveloped her and she said, ‘Come in, come in.’

‘I’m on my way back to Hull,’ Jamie said diffidently.

‘Won’t you come through?’ she said. ‘Come and warm yourself. There’s a good fire burning.’

‘Thank you, I will. It’s very cold.’

She nodded and led him through. ‘It’ll start to thaw tomorrow. That’s what ’farmers say anyway.’ Then she blushed. He would know that if it was true that his father was a farmer.

‘Is that so?’ he said. ‘Well, they’d know. My father’s a farmer,’ he added as he held his hands out to the fire. ‘But I don’t think he knows folklore; he’d have to ask his foreman or waggoner.’

He gazed into the flames. ‘It’s odd, I hadn’t thought of it before,’ he murmured, almost to himself. ‘My grandfather was also a farmer and apparently he worked the land along with his hands, but when my father married my mother he bought a bigger parcel of land and the house, which was my mother’s
choice,’
he added, smiling. ‘She loved it, especially the sound of the sea, and I suppose that my father was then confined to his desk to run the estate.’

Bella was listening, not only to his words but to the sound of his voice; it was steady and mellow, unusual, she thought, for an eighteen-year-old man, not blasé or arrogant as sometimes Joe and William could be. You would believe anything he told you.

‘Are you going back to your studies?’ she asked quietly. ‘Is your holiday over?’

‘Yes. At least, I could stay another week but I decided to go back.’ He turned to look at her. ‘Does that sound strange? Do I sound like a swot?’

Bella shook her head, entranced by his confiding in her and not wholly knowing what a swot was.

‘It’s just that my father has agreed that I can sit the university exam,’ he said. ‘And I’m desperate to get good results so that he has no reason to change his mind.’

‘How clever you must be,’ she murmured. ‘It’d be a waste if you didn’t go. Where will you go? What will you study?’ and she thought that maybe she wouldn’t ever see him again and that made her feel quite melancholy.

‘I’m not so very clever,’ he demurred. ‘I want to study medicine; become a doctor if I’m good enough, and I’d like to go to King’s College if I can get in. That’s the University of London,’ he added, seeing the blankness in her face.

‘Oh, I see,’ she said softly. ‘And will you come back?’

He hesitated. How very young she was, and unworldly. He wondered if she had ever been out of her village. Then he recalled that she had told him she had been to the seaside once, and had confided that she had wanted to stay on at school but had been unable to.

‘Oh yes, I expect so,’ he murmured. ‘There are some people who would miss me.’

‘Of course!’ She gazed at him and again he thought how fresh and innocent she seemed, untouched yet by life. ‘I hope you do,’ she said.

‘How old are you, Bella?’ he asked.

‘Fourteen.’ She simply stood, looking at him from her wide eyes. ‘Grown up.’ She smiled. ‘But not yet old enough to have my name above ’door.’

‘Even though you do most of the work?’

She nodded. ‘My mother will take over again when she’s recovered from my father’s death, and ’birth of Henry. I expect,’ she added.

Jamie swallowed. He had never met anyone quite like her and he couldn’t define the attraction he was experiencing, even though she was so young.

‘So – if I go away – and didn’t – wasn’t able to call for a time,’ he stammered, ‘and then I did come back, would you, I mean – would you still be living here?’

It was as if a light had come on behind her eyes, for they glistened clear and bright. ‘Oh, yes,’ she breathed eagerly, and her cheeks were rosy. ‘I will. I don’t ever expect to move from ’Woodman. At least,’ she added, ‘not unless – I mean, not for a long time.’

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THINGS DON’T ALWAYS
turn out the way we expect them to, Bella thought as she stood at her window watching the sun go down. She had celebrated her eighteenth birthday just two weeks before and there had been changes since that cold winter day when Jamie Lucan had called in to see her.

That he had called especially to see her she had been certain, for he hadn’t asked for a drink and she hadn’t offered one and they had just talked, shyly, haltingly and hesitatingly, as if they were aware of the huge differences between them. At least, he would have been more aware of those differences than she had been, she thought, being older and of a different status. She gazed out at the long winding coast road and autumnal landscape, enraptured as she always was by the brilliant multicoloured sky. As far as she was concerned he’d been a handsome young man, polite and agreeable and with something special about him that made her senses flutter.

It was later that day, when she’d thought about their conversation and the question he had asked her, that she’d read more into it, but now she doubted her immature reasoning; she had seen him once more that summer when he’d come to the inn and had his usual glass of mild, but as they were particularly busy that day there was only time for brief words when he told her that he would be going away to London in September. Their conversation had been stilted
and
she wondered if he was regretting any confidence he might previously have let slip.

I was mistaken, she considered, sinking down on to her bed. The question meant nothing, therefore it doesn’t matter now.

When William turned sixteen he declared as he had always claimed he would that he was leaving home to join the army. His mother had accepted the announcement with her usual apathy. The hope that Bella had held on to that her mother would become her normal steadfast industrious self had not been realized. She existed in a grey bubble in which she floated through the days, doing what was expected of her, nursing Henry until he was two, baking, washing and the usual household chores and occasionally coming into the public rooms of the inn, but not taking any great interest in them.

When Henry had begun to walk, Bella had noticed that he seemed lopsided. She’d stretched out his legs one night when changing him for bed and noticed that one leg was shorter than the other.

‘Ma,’ she said, distraught. ‘He’s lame.’

Sarah looked at him, stretched his legs as Bella had done and said, ‘So he is. He’ll manage.’

Henry now sat at the table with the rest of the family and Bella served him the same food except that she mashed the potatoes and greens and minced his meat and gave him extra custard on his puddings to build him up. He had grown into a sturdy toddler, always getting into mischief but with an occasional tendency to fall over.

Joe called him Hopalong Henry until Bella flew at him in a rage and ordered him to stop, and such was his surprise at her outburst that he complied. William had said that Henry would never be able to join the army, to which Bella had replied, ‘Good. One soldier in ’military is enough for any family.’ She had been bitterly disappointed in William, as even though she had been expecting his departure she had always hoped he would change his mind, not least because she had wanted him to help her deal with Joe, who was still drinking in spite of his many promises that he would stop.

After William had left, Bella asked young Seth if he would help her with chopping wood and filling the coal scuttles each morning. In return, instead of wages she would feed him breakfast every day. He was eager to do it and told her it meant one less mouth to feed at home. He kept it up for several months until his father told him it was time for a proper job and took him to the farm where he worked, where Seth was employed as a boot boy. The following year his mother miscarried another child.

At twenty Joe was pasty-faced and sluggish and rarely went out of the house or garden. Bella accompanied him down to the cellar when there were casks to move, for she didn’t trust him to go down alone in case he got up to his old tricks. She felt that although he served in the bar every evening, she had some control over his intake of alcohol when he was where she could see him.

She barely had time to consider that her life was dreary, for she hardly stopped between getting up at five and going to bed at eleven after the customers had gone, but there were occasions when she thought that perhaps there might be something more to life than what she was experiencing.

But today her mother had delivered a blow; a cannon shot that had knocked Bella sideways.

Sarah had taken Nell into Hull during the late summer, travelling on the carrier’s cart early one morning and not coming home until the evening.

‘Why are you going, Ma?’ Bella had asked her before they left. ‘We’re so busy just now! Field workers need feeding, ’labourers will be in for supper and yesterday we’d a group of walkers in for dinner and they said they’d be coming back again today.’