The Dressmaker’s Daughter

‘Where’s Uncle Tom, Stanley?’ Lizzie enquired.

‘In The Freebodies. He wanted a quick pint before the service. Said he was thirsty.’

She felt Jesse’s eyes on her again, but she could afford to disregard his admiring stares now she’d found less controversial company in Stanley. She said: ‘We’ll see the new vicar tonight, Stanley. That’s why a lot have come, I daresay. There’s folk here I haven’t seen for ages. If ours don’t hurry up and finish their chin-wagging, we’ll never get a seat.’

‘How about me and you going in now, Lizzie? We could sit by ourselves. We needn’t wait for them. We needn’t sit near ’em, come to that.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she answered, in two minds. ‘I shouldn’t leave my mother.’

‘Aunt Eve’ll be all right. My folks’ll keep her company. Hang on, I’ll tell ’em we’m going in without ’em.’

Lizzie smiled and said all right, then turned away self-consciously. It all seemed to be happening tonight. The two men she was most interested in were as good as dangling on her string. The realisation excited her. She fancied Stanley more each time she saw him, and it was just as easy to turn to him as to Jesse. Probably easier; at least he was attainable without controversy. A bird in the hand and all that.

As Lizzie moved away she turned to make sure that Jesse Clancey had noticed. He had, but concealed the fact, striking a casual pose and laughing extra-heartily at something Sylvia had said. Lizzie smiled contentedly. Two men patently interested in her; two gorgeous, dashing men. If only she could have both. She had the capacity to handle both until she finally decided which one to marry.

But who to choose? It was so confusing.

Now, with Stanley’s hand in the small of her back guiding her into church, she felt another flush of excitement at the thought of sitting with one admirer while the other yearned jealously for her. She allowed Stanley to lead her into the back pew, the prime location for courting couples. They would have it all to themselves, for it wasn’t a full length pew; one of the massive columns supporting the vaulted roof occupied much of it.

Stanley gallantly opened her Hymns Ancient and Modern and found the first hymn for her. ‘I’ve wanted just the two of us to sit together for ages.’ His smile was devastating. ‘I’ve never been able to pluck up the courage before to ask you. I thought you might laugh at me … being second cousins and all that.’

Lizzie hunched her shoulders with delight, and an exhilarating warmth surged through her at the prospect of a romance so unexpected. ‘Being second cousins doesn’t matter, Stanley. I’m glad you did.’

‘Even first cousins can marry, you know, Lizzie.’

His very words made her hot. Funny how romance could be so spontaneous.

Their folks walked down the centre aisle. Tom Dando, back from The Freebodies, acknowledged Lizzie and Stanley with a nod, and courteously allowed Eve to enter the pew before him. When the women had settled their long skirts and taken off their gloves, and the men had placed their best hats under the pew, they all knelt down and prayed. Lizzie smiled at Stanley over the success of their spontaneous assignation, and with increasing regularity as the service progressed. During the sermons – for there were two; the first, a valediction from the exiting Mr Crowshaw; the second, a greeting from the new vicar – Stanley shuffled close and shamelessly took her hand. Lizzie felt her heart start pounding at the contact, and she blushed once more, in half a mind to withdraw. It was, after all, a liberty and, besides, it could surely never be proper to hold hands in church. But she brazenly allowed her hand to remain in Stanley’s, and a dangerous glow of pleasure enveloped her.

After the service, everyone filed out through the main door. While Mr Crowshaw thanked all for their support in the past, the Reverend Mr John Mainwaring and his wife met his parishioners for the first time, shaking their hands warmly. Many lingered in the churchyard afterwards, chatting, saying what a nice man the new vicar seemed. Since Ezme Clancey was the relief organist, she, Jack and Jesse were expected at a welcoming party at the vicarage, along with other church dignitaries, as were Beccy and Albert Crump. Albert had taken the pledge years ago and was secretary of the Band of Hope in the St. John’s Church of England Temperance Society. Despite Albert, however, Tom Dando claimed defiantly that he and his family were going for a drink or two at The Shoulder of Mutton.

‘Why not come with us, Eve, and bring young Lizzie?’ Sarah suggested. ‘It’ll be a bit o’ company.’

Eve automatically cupped her hand to her good ear.

‘I daresay Eve’s got other things to do, Sarah,’ Tom chided. ‘Leave her be.’

Eve glanced at Tom. She had not caught his words, but his expression alone forbade her accepting. It was unlike him.

‘No, we’ll go home, Sarah. Our Joe and May’ll be expecting their suppers.’

‘Let ’em get their own suppers,’ Sarah scoffed.

‘And I’ve gotta be up early to light the fire under the wash boiler … Anyway, while I’m here I want to tidy up Isaac’s grave.’

Albert and Beccy bid them goodnight and joined the other group that included Ezme and Jack Clancey, ready to leave to attend the welcoming party at the vicarage.

Lizzie and Stanley deliberately lingered by the lych gate meanwhile, teasing each other and laughing in their new-found understanding that had transmuted them into another kind of relationship; more adult; more thrilling; where emotions could suddenly run amok; where your heart thumped ever so often, and for a long time.

‘Shall you come to our house with your mother and father on Wednesday night?’ Lizzie asked him, her eyes alight.

‘I don’t know,’ he teased. ‘Think I should?’

‘’Course. Why not?’ Her enthusiasm was fuelled by the witnessing of Jesse’s apparent shift of interest twenty or so yards away. He was talking intently to Sylvia again, and Sylvia was laughing coyly. ‘We could go for a walk. We could go for a walk over Oakham fields. To the Dingle.’

As they drifted out into the street through the lych gate Stanley foresaw the possibilities …

They made their way over to the rest of the group standing on the pavement outside. Lizzie felt quite breathless after her encounter. Eve was saying her goodbyes to Tom and Sarah, when Sylvia came flouncing towards them. As she approached in the reddening light she tried to act normally, but there was no hiding the self-satisfied look on her flushed face. She smiled self-consciously and, despite Stanley, Lizzie felt acutely aggrieved that one of her admirers might have defected to her pretty cousin.

*

‘You’d best go and fetch some fresh water from the butt for these flowers, our Lizzie,’ Eve said, and poured what remained of the stale water out of the enamelled grave vase onto the ground. ‘They could do with a drink, it strikes me.’

She handed Lizzie the vase and watched her step back towards the church up the steep slope, picking her way between the other gravestones in the lengthening shadows, lifting the hem of her skirt to avoid getting it dirty. A blackbird swooped down and perched on the arm of a stone cross surmounting another grave, and began its persistent song.

Eve contemplated Isaac. His grave lay on the north side of St. John’s church. Every time Eve visited it she had vivid recollections of the funeral more than four years ago that sometimes stayed with her for days afterwards. On the day of the funeral the wind had freshened, blowing in rain from the west, rustling the tops of the hawthorn trees and the bright bunches of daffodils that had been lovingly arranged on surrounding graves. Family and friends had stood around the hole in the lee of the church, each thinking their own thoughts, she reckoned, each recalling some moment of pleasure or pain Isaac had brought.

She’d tried hard to shed tears that day, for she felt she ought; but no tears would come. God knew she’d spilled enough already over the others. Nearly thirty years ago her second son had died of peritonitis at only five years old. Helplessness and grief had sickened her then. Why her child? The anger and frustration she’d felt was overwhelming, as was the seeming futility of loving and caring for a life that was tenuous and so easily snuffed out. Fifteen years ago her eldest son died at the age of twenty-one in a preventable pit accident at the Bunns Lane Colliery; another cherished life wasted. Two years later, her eldest daughter, unmarried, died in childbirth, and refused to name the man who devised her ruination. Another son died of typhoid in a field hospital in South Africa barely six years ago, his tragic reward for volunteering to aid queen and country in the Boer War. Had he died in battle, she could have accepted it more readily. And then there was the daughter she carried full term but was still-born.

Eve resented more than anything this useless waste of life; those sudden, unexpected ends that had made a nonsense of all her striving. Little wonder she had not been able to weep for Isaac.

Eve recalled that as the funeral service drew to a close she at last felt a tear roll down her cheek. But it was not a tear for Isaac; it was for herself. It was for all the doubts, the misgivings, the love she’d been prepared to give him which so often had been spurned. Yet in more recent years, since the birth of Lizzie, he had mellowed. He became more attentive, more appreciative of her efforts; life with him became easier and more agreeable, as if he was finally repenting of his waywardness. She was glad of the change in him, and had embraced it with all her heart.

Now she looked across the valley towards the castle on the next hill, as she had done that grey, gusting March day in 1902. A billowing cloud of white steam, spouting from a locomotive as it emerged from the Blowers Green tunnel in the middle distance, was instantly dispersed in the wind. So, too, was life itself dependent on the unpredictable consequences of other peoples’ whims, Eve pondered; and on events that do whatever they like with us.

Lizzie returned with the vase filled with fresh water. ‘Is it true that cousins can marry, Mother?’

Eve put her hand to her ear. ‘What say, our Lizzie?’

‘I said, is it true that cousins can marry? I mean, for instance, Stanley and me might start courting by the looks of it. Could we marry? He says we could.’

‘Our Stanley?’ Eve’s expression was one of concern. ‘Stanley Dando?’

Lizzie nodded.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t want you to marry Stanley, our Lizzie. I definitely wouldn’t want you to marry him. You can do much better for yourself than Stanley.’

Lizzie was disappointed at her mother’s response, so decided it best to say nothing more. At least not yet. She picked up a flower and broke an inch off the bottom of its stem before stooping to replace it in the vase. She did another. Then another. Thinking about Stanley and what might come of a romantic interlude with him, it was some time before she stood up and spoke again to her mother.

She said, ‘Why did we come here to Father’s grave so soon? It was only Friday after tea we came last time and put some flowers on.’

‘I didn’t fancy going to The Shoulder of Mutton with your Uncle Tom and Aunt Sarah.’

‘Oh.’ Lizzie pondered the lost opportunity with bitter regret. ‘I’d have liked to have gone,’ she pouted. ‘I’d have loved to have gone.’

Eve did not hear, but she saw the disappointment in Lizzie’s eyes. Silently, between them, they rearranged the carnations and Lizzie picked up the ends of the stems she’d broken off, then stood up again. She read to herself the inscription on her father’s headstone; an inscription she knew by heart.

‘In loving remembrance of Isaac Bishop who died tragically and unexpectedly 15th March 1902, aged 59 years.They have sown the wind. Thy Will be done.’