A Woman’s Fortune

‘Well, no doubt he’ll be round before long,’ said Sue, and, having extracted what information she could about the landlord, she changed the subject to the village generally while Jeanie cooed over baby Nancy and little Archie.

As soon as Josie Lambert had waved goodbye with promises to call again when Jeanie was settled, Sue turned to Michael.

‘Right, you get over to that market garden, lad, and see what this job’s about.’

‘But I know nowt about growing vegetables,’ he protested.

‘Who said you’d be growing the veg? You won’t know if you don’t go.’ She shooed him out of the door, then turned to Jeanie. ‘Now, I’ve an idea about the front room. Come through and see what you think. You, too, Evie. It was us women that held the place together in Shenty Street and we can make a go of it here with luck and a fair wind. And as I said earlier, this could be our lucky day.’

‘It’s looking that way so far,’ Peter said, grabbing his whistle and playing a jaunty fanfare. ‘Come on, Bob. I’ll wash, you dry, and Grandma can think up ways to make our fortune.’

Billy immediately recognised Evie’s neat round handwriting on the envelope Ada Taylor had left on the kitchen table for him to find when he got in from work. He snatched it up as he called out to her that he was home, then went upstairs to read it in private.

Pendle’s

High Street

Church Sandleton

Near Redmond

Thursday

Dear Billy,

I hope you and your mother are well. I’m missing you like mad and I hope you’re missing me, too.

I can’t believe so much has happened since we waved off Fergus Sullivan on Sunday evening. Dad’s got a job – the first one he tried for! It’s at the market garden across the road and he’s helping to pick the crops. There’s a huge amount of them at the moment and Dad says it gets very hot in the glasshouses. He says it’s backbreaking work, especially the strawberries, but luckily they’re nearly finished. Another really good thing is that Mr Clackett, the owner, gives Dad some of the stuff he says won’t sell so we’re eating lots of very ripe fruit and vegetables.

The boys are on holiday from school and play outside all day. Pete is making friends with Mr Clackett’s son, Martin, and Bob usually tags along with them. There are miles of fields for them to play in around here as it’s proper countryside.

Where we’re living is an old shop, which makes a strange house with the shop window, but Grandma has hatched a plan for her, Mum and me to open a little business. I’m so excited that we’ll be working together again. We’ve looked around the village and there’s no one advertising their dressmaking services or doing alterations and repairs so we think we may have found what Grandma calls ‘an opening’. We need to get in touch with Mr Bailey, who owns the building, to see if that’s all right, but so far we haven’t met him.

It’s nice here but it doesn’t feel like home and I don’t know if it ever will. It’s so different from everything we know and love in Bolton. The people in the village are friendly but we’re all missing you and the Sullivans and Mrs Marsh – our kind of people.

Please give my best to your mother, and write soon. I shall look for your letter every day. Remember not to tell anyone the address, just in case.

With lots of love,

Evie xxx

So, Evie was missing him ‘like mad’ – which was exactly how he felt about her. How he longed to see her pretty face, with her pointy chin and big hazel eyes. It seemed far longer than five days since he’d waved her goodbye and he’d been thinking of her constantly since then.

Billy reread the letter, then changed out of his postman’s uniform and returned downstairs.

Ada had a pot of strong tea brewing and a toasted teacake waiting for him – ‘to put you on till teatime, love.’

‘Thanks, Mum. You’ll have guessed the letter was from Evie. Guess what: seems her dad has a job already.’

‘Well, bless me, who’d have thought it?’

‘It’s great news. Things will turn out better for them all from now.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on it with that Michael Carter. I reckon Jeanie Goodwin has long rued the day that she married him. She’s a bonny woman and could have had her pick. What she wanted to choose him for I don’t know. I’d have thought Sue might have talked her out of it, but no.’

‘Sounds like he’s doing all right now, anyway.’

‘That’s if he can keep this job, whatever it is,’ Ada muttered darkly. ‘He’d do well to change his ways and be a bit more reliable. What news of Sue and Jeanie?’

‘Mrs Goodwin wants to start a dressmaking business. Seems they live in an old shop so there are ready-made premises for customers – I expect that gave her the idea.’

‘Well, Sue was always a hard worker, and a talented seamstress, too. It’s a step up from taking in washing, but if anyone can make a go of it, she can.’

‘Evie is going to help her, she’s good with a needle, and a fast learner. She worries about getting things just right and she’ll apply herself to it. She has the same eye for a job well done as her grandma.’

‘They’ll be all right with Sue in charge,’ said Ada confidently. She looked carefully at her son. ‘Sounds like they’re making a whole new life for themselves down south.’

‘I think Evie’s missing everyone here,’ Billy replied. ‘It’s not the same as where she was brought up and what she knows. And I reckon we’re all missing her, too,’ he added boldly.

‘You say that now, Billy, but she’s not been gone long. Sometimes folk move on, love, and it’s not a good idea to be wanting everything to be as it was. She’s not here now and probably won’t come back. You’ve got to accept that or be disappointed.’

But Billy wasn’t at all ready to accept that Evie was gone for good. He’d never forget the promise he’d made to her that they wouldn’t be apart for ever, though he decided not to share this thought with his mother.

He’d write a reply to Evie that evening. After they’d had their tea his mother liked to doze while listening to the Light Programme on the wireless so there’d be a chance then for him to write a long letter full of news about Evie’s friends in Bolton. And to send her his love.

‘I can’t believe we’ve been here over a week and still haven’t met this Mr Bailey,’ said Jeanie as she chopped some of the twisty-shaped carrots Michael had returned with that evening. Sue, Evie and Peter were busy in the front room, cleaning it in preparation for a coat of paint.

‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it?’ said Michael as he scrubbed soil from under his fingernails at the kitchen sink. ‘At least he hasn’t come asking for any rent.’

‘We’ll have to pay him eventually,’ Jeanie replied. ‘And Mum is full of ideas for our little business and wants to get started. We’ll need to have enough money for the rent when the time comes, and there’s no one else offering a sewing service in Church Sandleton. So far, anyway. We can’t be the only ones with a sewing machine and Mum’s worried someone may pip us at the post if we don’t get started soon.’

‘Can’t she set up business without asking Bailey?’ Michael sank into a chair to watch Jeanie work.

‘I expect so, but it is his property, after all. It’s only polite to tell him what we want to do, see if it’s all right with him.’

‘Why would he object, though? It’s not like you’re opening a – I don’t know – a pub or summat you’d need legal permission for.’

‘Or an undertaker’s,’ piped up Robert, at the far end of the kitchen table. ‘That would be horrible and creepy. You’d have dead people in the front room and, Dad, you’d have to wear a tall black hat.’

‘Good grief, Bob, I don’t know where you get such ideas,’ laughed Jeanie, pulling a quizzical face at Michael. ‘Anyway, I’ve decided that if Mr Bailey’s not coming to us then I’m going to him. Mum looked out her sewing machine this morning, oiled it and everything. Evie’s written a neat little notice to pin up in the shop, offering alterations, curtain- and dressmaking, and mending. Once that’s up we’ll need to be ready for our customers.’

‘I’d leave it if I were you, love,’ said Michael. ‘Wait and see what happens. We’re living rent-free at the moment – no use courting expense and creating problems for ourselves.’

‘If you think it’s rent-free here then you’re dafter than you look,’ said Jeanie wearily. ‘Come on, Michael, we’ve lost so much, but let’s start as we mean to go on. The laundry and mending business was what kept us going many a week in Bolton. The boys will need new school uniform come September and we can’t live for ever on what Mum and I saved from the washing.’

‘I do my bit—’

‘Picking tomatoes!’