A Country Girl

‘You must make Kate see sense, Algie.’

‘She won’t take any notice of me. You know what it’s like between brothers and sisters.’

‘Then I’ll have a word with her when I see her – discreetly, of course.’

He considered Marigold and how Kate might reveal his secret desire for the girl, a mere boatman’s daughter, if she thought Harriet was poking her nose into her liaison with Reggie Hodgetts. ‘No, don’t,’ he blurted earnestly. ‘It wouldn’t do any good. Our Kate’s too headstrong to take any notice of anybody. She’d only resent you for it. She’d think you were meddling.’

‘All right, if that’s what you think, Algie.’

They arrived at the door of the old red-brick hulk of St Michael’s Church which stood loftily at Brierley Hill’s highest point, sensing at once the cool reverential ambience as they entered. Harriet bid a pleasant good evening to the sidesman who handed her a hymn book, and made her way to the family’s regular pew on tiptoe, so that her heels did not echo off the cold hard floor. Algie followed in her wake.

When the service finished the congregation gathered outside by the light of a solitary gas lamp installed above the main door; a collection of nodding bonnets, top hats and fawning smiles, all content in their self-righteousness. Some merely drifted away into the night in a random procession while others tarried, determined to elicit recognition from or conversation with the vicar, or even the curate. By now there was a chill in the air as the Meese women and Algie lingered outside waiting for the head of the family. When Eli Meese rejoined them he announced that he was going to the Bell Hotel for his customary two pints of ale, which would give him an appetite for his supper. He would be about an hour.

‘I take it as you’ll see me girls and me wife home safe and sound, young Algie?’ Eli said patronisingly as he parted.

‘Course I will, Mr Meese.’

Actually, it had occurred to Algie to leave the company of Harriet and the rest of the Meeses as soon as the service was over, with the idea of seeking Marigold again; her father was likely to be in the Bottle and Glass for the evening getting pie-eyed, so why not take advantage? But to make an unusually early departure, on whatever flimsy excuse he could quickly invent, would only draw comment and speculation after he had gone, especially when he had given Eli his undertaking to see the family home safely. So, as they ambled down the path through the churchyard to the road, he decided to exercise discretion, to remain patient and wait till Marigold’s next passage through the lock at Buckpool.

While the others walked on ahead, Priss attached herself to Algie and Harriet.

‘I thought the sermon tonight was a bit of an unwarranted rebuke to us all,’ she commented airily. ‘The vicar’s wrong about God being just, you know. I hardly think He’s just at all, not all the time anyway. I’ve come to the conclusion that He is often unjust. Look how so many good and kind people suffer, while too many evil rogues prosper. What did you think of the sermon, Algie?’

‘Me? I didn’t listen to it.’

‘Algie was daydreaming as usual, Priss,’ Harriet said with measured scorn.

‘I was contemplating more earthly things,’ he replied.

‘Oh, but you shouldn’t of a Sunday,’ she reproached. ‘Anyway, what earthly things?’

Actually, he’d been contemplating Marigold Bingham; her smooth skin, her fine complexion, her beautiful face and her delicious figure. She’d been the cause of a troublesome disturbance in his trousers during the sermon as he’d allowed himself to imagine her lying warm and playful with him in some soft feather bed. He could hardly admit as much to Priss or Harriet, though.

‘I was thinking about the bike I’m going to buy,’ he fibbed judiciously.

‘Can you afford a bike?’ Priss queried, sincerely doubting it. ‘Surely they cost a fortune?’

‘I’ve been saving up for months. Now I’ve got enough money to buy one.’

‘But a bike? Couldn’t your money be more wisely spent?’

‘On what?’

‘Well, you’re two-and-twenty now. The same as me. And our Harriet is only two years younger. Have you not considered the future?’

‘Priss!’ Harriet hissed indignantly, digging her sister in the ribs with her elbow as they walked.

‘Don’t prod me, Harriet … I only mean to say that if you are contemplating marriage, then it would be far more sensible to save your money, rather than buy a bike.’

‘Who says we’re contemplating marriage?’ Algie remarked clumsily. ‘We’ve never discussed marriage, have we Harriet?’

‘You’ve never discussed it with me.’ There was a catch in her voice, which suggested antagonism at the lack of any such conversation.

‘I just assumed …’

‘Assume nothing, Priss,’ Harriet said with resignation. ‘Algie obviously has other priorities … and so have I, come to that.’

Eli Meese, Harriet’s father, having risen from humble beginnings as the son of a house servant, had embarked on his road to fortune buying bolts of cloth and selling them in lengths to whoever would buy. He viewed this as a means of escaping the pits and the ironworks. His first enterprise involved the purchase of two thousand yards of flannelettes at tuppence ha’penny a yard, which he sold at fourpence ha’penny a yard from market stalls in several of the local towns. Business prospered and he rented a shop in Brierley Hill as a permanent base. Soon afterwards, he met and married Mary, from whom his daughters inherited their uninspiring faces and would, in time, also manifest her stoutness. When their first child, Priscilla, was born he bought the building which was still home and workplace to him and his family. Eli was proud of being a self-made man. He had raised himself from obscurity to his present position, one of considerable standing in the community. He had made money a-plenty and, as money always commands influence, so Eli grew to be a man of some consequence in Brierley Hill, being not only churchwarden at St Michael’s but Guardian and Justice of the Peace as well. In his social elevation he sought to do his best for his daughters, and ensured that each received as decent an education as he could reasonably afford at the Dudley Proprietary School for Girls, to and from which they took the tramcar every day.

Eli was not entirely comfortable with the thought that his second daughter, easily the most appealing of those of marriageable age, could feasibly end up with the inconsequential son of a lock-keeper. He had hoped she would have set her sights higher, but was wily enough to realise that to forbid the liaison would only serve to launch it into more perilous waters, the consequences of which could be devastating and too painful to contemplate. In time, Harriet’s superior education would reveal itself to both of them, and Algernon Stokes would come to recognise his social and mental inferiority – and so would she. Meanwhile, he tolerated Algernon without actually encouraging him at all. Besides, Algernon’s father, Will, used to be Eli’s regular playmate in those far off days of mutual impoverishment. The lad’s mother, Clara, too … Indeed, when Clara was a young filly and Eli was a young buck with a weather eye for a potential mate, she had been a feast to the eye and a definite target. The trouble was, she was too preoccupied with his rivals and would have nothing to do with him. So he had to content himself eventually with Mary, who he’d put in the family way. Mary would never fetch any ducks off water. Her plainness, though, had proved an advantage in one respect, Eli pondered; she was never attractive enough to appeal to anybody else, which ensured her fidelity. On reflection, perhaps he had been too hasty in agreeing to marry her. The acquisition of wealth had made him much more appealing to other women – better-looking women – he’d noticed over the years.

Such were the ruminations, contemporary and nostalgic, of Eli Meese as he supped alone in the saloon of the Bell Hotel sucking at his clay pipe, his head enveloped in an aromatic cloud of blue smoke. Because he was an important citizen and a Justice of the Peace, few of the lesser locals these days considered themselves socially fit to sup in the same room with him. One man, however, walked into the hotel some little time after Eli, greeted him as an equal, and asked if he would allow him to buy him a drink.

Eli grinned in acknowledgement. ‘A pint of India pale, please, Murdoch.’

Murdoch Jeroboam Osborne paid for the drinks and took them over to the table where Eli was sitting. ‘You was deep in thought when I walked in, ha, Eli? Summat up?’

Eli swigged the last inch of beer that remained of his first helping, then sighed as if deeply troubled. ‘What d’yer mek o’ Will Stokes’s lad, Murdoch?’

Murdoch pulled a stick of tobacco from his pocket and began cutting it into workable pieces with his penknife as he pondered the question. ‘Can’t say as I know him that well, but he seems a likeable enough lad. Ain’t he a-courtin’ your Harriet? I’ve seen him a time or two come to meet her from the Drill Hall after our rehearsals, ha?’

‘Between me and thee, Murdoch, that’s what’s troubling me. I ain’t so sure he’s quite up to the mark, if you get me drift.’

Murdoch laughed. ‘I seem to recall as his mother was well up to the mark at one time, ha? Still is, if you want my opinion.’

Eli grinned conspiratorially. ‘Aye, you’m right there and no mistake. Proper little poppet, was Clara Bunn. Many’s the time I’ve wished …’

‘And the daughter takes after her,’ Murdoch remarked with a twinkle in his eye.

‘Ain’t set eyes on e’er a daughter so far’s I know,’ Eli replied. ‘But is that right? Another poppet? Like her mother was, eh, Murdoch?’

‘The image.’

‘I ain’t surprised. D’you see anything of Clara these days?’

‘Calls in me shop regular.’ Murdoch began rubbing the pieces of tobacco between the palms of his hands to render it into shreds. ‘If there’s e’er a boiling fowl or a rabbit spare I generally let her have it cheap. She’s grateful for that. I’ve always had a soft spot for Clara.’

‘She could’ve done a sight better for herself,’ said Eli, secretly meaning that she could have had him if she’d played her cards right. He gazed blandly into the clear golden depths of his beer. ‘She could’ve had the pick of the chaps in Brierley Hill – and beyond, but she settled for Will Stokes. Who’d have thought it at the time, eh? Will was never gunna be anything but a lackey to the Stourbridge Canal Company.’

‘Oh, Will’s a decent enough chap, but we can’t all be businessmen, Eli, ha?’ Murdoch scratched his chin, then took his pipe from his pocket and filled it with the shredded tobacco. ‘You got your drapery and I got me butchery. But it ain’t in everybody … So do I conceit as you ain’t too keen on young Algernon’s attentions to your Harriet, ha?’

‘I got no intention of encouraging it, Murdoch, let’s put it that way. She can do better for herself.’

‘Is she took with the lad?’ Murdoch struck a match and lit his pipe, his head quickly shrouded in waves of pungent smoke as he sucked and blew to get it to draw.

‘I wouldn’t like to say as she’s took with him. It’s hard to say for definite. But these attachments have a way of creeping up on folk. ’Specially these young uns what don’t know their own minds. I’m afeared that afore I know it, he’ll be telling me as he’s got to marry her and asking for me blessing. I don’t want to be asked for me blessing.’

‘Aye, well when she’s one-and-twenty – and that can’t be too far yonder – he won’t even need to ask, will he, Eli, ha? If he wants the wench he’ll just do it. Anyroad, I reckon as she could do worse. A lot worse, ha? The lad’s young, he’s working as far as I know. He might mek summat of hisself yet.’