NANCY CARSON
The Railway Girl

Copyright

Published by Avon

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2016

Copyright © Nancy Carson 2016

Cover illustration © Debbie Clement 2016

Nancy Carson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © March 2016 ISBN: 9780008134860

Source ISBN: 9780008157005

Version: 2017-11-13

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Author’s Note

Keep Reading …

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

1856

The train escaped the tunnel’s blackness, half obscured by a billowing veil of white steam, into the balmy sunshine of a late July afternoon. As soon as she heard the mechanical din of the locomotive, Lucy Piddock turned her head to watch, stepping back from the platform’s edge. She urged her friend Miriam Watson to do likewise with a token pull on her arm. The engine and its unholy racket, offensive to the ears, passed them slowly, delivering its string of coaches to precisely where the rest of the passengers were waiting. As it groaned and hissed to a halt, Lucy smiled at Miriam, opened the door of an empty third class compartment and allowed Miriam to step up inside before her. They were going home after browsing the shops in Dudley.

‘How did we manage to get about before we had the railway?’ Lucy remarked as she and Miriam sat facing each other next to the window. The railway line had been open four years and Lucy did not yet take for granted the novelty of it, nor the convenience. ‘We’d never have gone to Dudley before of a Saturday afternoon, would we?’

‘Better than walking to Stourbridge,’ Miriam agreed. ‘It’s a tidy walk to Stourbridge from Silver End … especially if you got a nail sticking up in your boot.’

‘I sometimes wonder if it’s quicker to walk down to the main station past the castle or this one.’

‘Depends where you am when you’m done, I reckon,’ Miriam surmised. ‘Which end o’ the town you’m at. Neither station’s close to the shops, but you don’t have to put up with going through that dark tunnel when you go from this one.’

‘That’s true,’ Lucy agreed. ‘And it costs a bit less.’

She gazed out of the carriage window onto the platform, while Miriam took off her boot and rubbed her bunion where the offending nail was puncturing it. A young guard, smart in the livery of the Oxford Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway and wearing a cheese-cutter cap, checked the door to the compartment of the four-wheeled coach. He caught Lucy’s eye through the window and smiled, giving her a waggish wink that made her insides churn, then pressed on to check the forward coaches.

‘Miriam, did you see that chap?’ Lucy asked with a broad grin. ‘The guard. I fancy him.’

‘Trust you to fancy somebody you’ll never see again.’

‘Course I shall see him again,’ Lucy said with a certainty that defied argument. ‘He’ll be coming back this way in a minute to get back in his guards’ van.’

‘Well, you ain’t gunna get the chance to talk to him. The train’ll be pulling out in a minute.’

Lucy shrugged. ‘I only said I fancied him. I didn’t say as I wanted to have a chat about the weather, or whether the Queen and Prince Albert will have more children.’

‘Ain’t there no decent chaps where you work?’ Miriam enquired. ‘We’ll have to get you fixed up with somebody soon, else you’ll end up an old maid.’

‘Chaps don’t seem to fancy me, Miriam. I reckon I ain’t pretty enough. Let’s face it, I wasn’t at the front of the queue when they was giving out pretty faces.’ Lucy saw the guard returning and perked up at once. ‘Aye up! Here he comes again. Have a peep at him.’

As he passed the window he turned and smiled once more, so both girls grinned and waved saucily.

‘Well, he seems to think you’m pretty,’ Miriam said. ‘He seems to fancy you. He was smiling at you, not me.’

‘I bet he’d be a bit of a gig as well.’ Lucy felt herself reddening. ‘I hope he gets off the train again at Brettell Lane.’

‘Well, I ain’t hanging about just to see if he does. Get yourself a local chap, Luce. That guard might come from Worcester or even Oxford for all you know. It’d be no good courting somebody from Worcester or Oxford. You want a chap to be where you am. Somebody who can sit with yer nights on the settle, and tickle your feet for a bit o’ pleasure and comfort.’

They heard a whistle, and the locomotive huffed, hauling them forward, slowly at first but quickly picking up speed.

‘Oh, I give up on chaps,’ Lucy pouted. ‘I never seem to get anybody. What’s wrong with me, Miriam?’

‘Nothing, you daft sod. There’s nothing wrong with you. And besides, you am pretty, even if you don’t think so. You got a good figure. You got lovely dark hair and big blue eyes.’

‘Pale blue eyes!’ Lucy repeated with exasperation. ‘I wish I’d got brown eyes like you, or dark blue ones like a baby’s. Pale blue eyes look that washed out. Even green eyes would be better than pale blue.’

‘Be thankful for what you have got, Luce. A good many would be glad of your eyes and your looks.’

‘Then if I have got decent looks, why can’t I get a chap? Have I got a dewdrop dithering off the end of my nose that I don’t know about? Have I got a squint? Do I smell, or something?’

Miriam chuckled. ‘Course not. Anyroad, if you stunk I wouldn’t come a-nigh you.’

‘So what’s up with me? I swear I’ll step out with the first chap as ever asks me, even if he’s the ugliest, vilest freak ever to have worn a pair of trousers … I will … I swear.’

Miriam laughed again. ‘You ain’t that desperate.’

‘Yes, I am. It’s all right for you. You got Sammy Osborne. And before him you had Jimmy Sheldon … and Lord knows who else before him. Crikey, you must’ve collected enough men’s scalps to make a rug.’

‘Oh, Lucy …’ Miriam chuckled and sighed. ‘Somebody’ll come along and sweep you right off your feet.’

‘And that’s just what I want. Somebody to come along and sweep me off my feet, before I’m stuck up a tree and too old. Before I have to start reading the deaths regular to see who’s just become a widower … Oh, no,’ Lucy added after a moment’s pondering. ‘On second thoughts I could never lower myself to go with a chap who’s second-hand.’

‘What’s the rush? I sometimes think as men ain’t worth the bother anyroad. They can’t wait to bed yer, buying yer presents and giving yer all that fancy sweet talk just to get you there. And then, when they’ve had yer, they treat yer like flipping dirt.’

‘I’m sure they ain’t all like that,’ Lucy said distrustfully, and fell quiet.

The train rumbled over the towering wooden construction that was Parkhead Viaduct and she gazed through the window at the busy network of canals that converged beneath it, and at the area’s countless smoking chimney stacks, without really seeing any of it. She was deep in thought, grieving over the imagined monumental flaw in her looks or demeanour that rendered her positively repulsive to men. Even though no such flaw existed, Lucy was lacking in self-confidence because she firmly believed otherwise. This erroneous conviction compounded the problem, rendering her a little bit reserved, which men interpreted as being ‘stuck-up’. And what ordinary factory wench had the right or reason to be stuck-up?

Lucy was not yet twenty years old and most of her friends the same age were courting. Some were even wed. This fact nagged at her, not incessantly, nor obsessively, but sometimes; and this moment was one such time. But when she was among her own friends and family, and not blighted by misgivings over her fancied inadequacies, she was good company, bright and amiable, and even witty on occasions.

‘I think I ought to try and get out a bit more,’ she said to Miriam, releasing herself from her depressing daydream. ‘I think I should try and mix more with folk.’

‘You mean mix more with men,’ Miriam corrected with a knowing look. ‘I don’t know what you’m worried about. Are you sure there’s no men where you work?’

‘None as I’d want. There’s Jake Parsons who’s too old, Bobby Pugh who’s too ugly, Georgie Betts whose feet are too stinky … Then there’s Alfie Mason who’s got a wall eye and a hair lip … Oh, and Ben Craddock who never stops farting.’

‘You’m too fussy.’

‘I could afford to be fussier, if only chaps was falling over themselves and each other to ask me out.’

‘What d’you do nights?’

‘What is there to do nights? I generally sit with my mother, picking my feet and pulling faces at the dog, while my father goes boozing up at the Whimsey.’

Miriam chuckled at the mental image. ‘So why don’t you go with your father up the Whimsey for a change?’

Lucy laughed with derision at the notion. ‘Decent girls don’t go to public houses.’

‘They do if they work there. You could get a job nights serving beer. You’d meet plenty men.’

‘Yes, all fuddled old farts … like my father.’

‘Young chaps as well, Lucy. Hey, it’d be worth a try.’

‘I doubt whether my mother would let me,’ Lucy replied resignedly. ‘You know what she’s like.’ She lapsed into deep thought again, considering the possibilities.

The train was drawing to a halt at Round Oak Station. When it stopped Lucy pressed her cheek against the window, looking again for sight of the chirpy guard. Those who had alighted made their way across the platform while others embarked, bound for Stourbridge, Kidderminster and beyond.

‘Can you see him?’ Miriam enquired, realising why her friend was scanning the platform.

‘No, but I just heard his whistle.’

The train eased out of the little station. As it picked up speed down the incline towards Brettell Lane station, Lucy picked up her basket in readiness for when they would alight in just a minute or two.

When they drew to a halt at Brettell Lane, Lucy opened the door and stepped expectantly onto the platform. She looked longingly towards the rear of the train, hoping to see the guard jump down from his van. She was not disappointed and she lingered, adjusting her bonnet via her reflection in the carriage window for a few moments, hoping he might beckon her to go to him, or reach her before her tarrying seemed indecorous. But Miriam cannily took her arm and urged her to move. Lucy complied with reluctance as she glanced wistfully behind her at the guard. He smiled again and waved and she waved back, with all the coyness of inexperience manifest in her blue eyes.

‘Come on, Luce, don’t let him think as you’m waiting for him. Pretend you ain’t bothered one road or th’other.’

‘Is that the way to play it?’ Lucy asked doubting her friend’s advice. ‘Shouldn’t I let him see as I’m interested?’

‘You already did. It’s supposed to be the man what does the chasing.’

‘But what if he don’t?’ Lucy asked ruefully. ‘He needs to know as it won’t be a waste of time chasing me.’

‘Listen, if we go to Dudley next Saturday afternoon and catch the same train back, he’s ever likely to be on it, ain’t he? You can flash your eyes at him then.’

‘I can’t wait a week, Miriam.’

‘Oh, don’t be so daft. In a week you’ll very likely have forgot all about him.’

The girls went to Dudley again the following Saturday and caught the same train back, but there was no sign of the guard. There was a guard, of course, but it was not the same man, to Lucy’s crushing disappointment. They repeated the exercise over the following three weeks, each time with the same result, and poor Lucy realised she was never going to meet this man who had bewitched her, who had introduced a swarm of butterflies to her stomach.

‘It’s Fate,’ Miriam told her flatly. ‘You ain’t meant to have him. If you was meant to have him you’d have seen him by now, and very likely have stepped out with him a couple o’ times. You ain’t meant to have him, Lucy. Anyroad, if we come to Dudley next week I want to catch an earlier train back.’

During high summer in Brierley Hill a breeze was regarded as a blessing. It not only cooled, but helped clear the air of the grimy mist and the sulphurous stinks perpetrated by the high concentration of ironworks, pits, firebrick works and bottle factories, whose chimney stacks belched out smuts and smoke like the upended cannons of an army in disarray. It was one such breezy summer evening in August 1856, the week following Lucy’s final disappointment, that Haden Piddock, her father, was returning home from his labours at Lord Ward’s New Level Iron Works, more commonly known as ‘The Earl’s’, to his rented cottage in Bull Street. On the way he met Ben Elwell, carrying his pick and shovel over his shoulder like a soldier would carry a pair of muskets. Ben was not only a reluctant miner but also the eager landlord of the nearby Whimsey Inn in Church Street.

‘I’ll be glad to get me sodding boots off,’ Haden commented. The clay pipe in his mouth, held between his top and bottom teeth, was amazingly not detrimental to his speech for, over the years, he had perfected the knack of conversing with clenched teeth. The pipe, however, had gone out and Haden had not been able to re-ignite it. ‘Me feet am nigh on a-killing me. As soon as I get in th’ouse, I’ll get our Lucy to fetch me a bowl o’ wairter from the pump so’s I can give ’em a good soak.’

‘Yo’ need warm water to soak yer feet, Haden, lad. Otherwise you’ll catch a chill.’

Haden turned to look at his mate, surprised he should feel the need to remind him of what was blindingly obvious. ‘Yaah!’ he exclaimed sarcastically. ‘D’you think I’m saft enough to stick ’em in cold wairter, you daft bugger?’ He took his pipe from his mouth and cursorily inspected the inside of the bowl. ‘I’d get our Lucy to warm it up on the ’ob fust.’

‘That daughter o’ yours looks after yer well, Haden.’

‘Better than the missus, when there’s fetching and carrying to be done.’ He tapped his pipe against the palm of his hand to loosen the carbonised tobacco, and allowed the debris to fall to the ground.

‘Yo’ll miss her when her gets wed.’

‘If her ever gets wed,’ Haden replied.

‘I tek it then as yo’ ai’ coming for a drink now?’ Ben said.

‘No, I’ll send our Lucy up with a jug to have wi’ me dinner. I’ll see thee later, when I’n finished me scoff and had a bit of a wash down.’

‘Aye, well I don’t expect I’ll be shifting far from that tap room of ourn.’

‘I don’t envy thee, Ben,’ Haden remarked sincerely as he slid his pipe into the pocket of his waistcoat. ‘Yo’ ain’t content with swinging a blasted pick and digging coal out all day. Yo’ have to serve beer all night an’ all, to them buggers as yo’ve bin working alongside of.’

A smile spread over Ben’s blackened face. The whites of his eyes sparkled and his teeth, which seemed dingy when his face was clean, seemed bright now by comparison. ‘It has its compensations, Haden. I drink for free. As much as I’ve a mind to, eh? And the missus brews a worthy crock, whether or no I’m behind her.’

‘Her does, an’ no question … And that reminds me, Ben … I’ve bin meaning to ask … Our Lucy wondered if you needed a wench to help out nights like. Her wants to get out more. It’d tek some of the load off thee an’ all, give yer a bit more time to yourself.’

‘Funny as yo’ should mention it, Haden. Me and the missus was on’y saying yesterday as how we could do with somebody to help out. Somebody presentable and decent like your Lucy. Honest and not afeared o’ work. How old is she now?’

‘Coming twenty. Twenty next September.’

‘And still single? Still no sign of e’er a chap?’

Haden grinned smugly. ‘Her’s met ne’er a chap yet as matches up to her fairther, that’s why. I doh think for a minute as her’s short of admirers, though, but I reckon they’m all tongue-tied. Not like we used to be, eh, Ben?’

Ben cackled as he was reminded of his youth. ‘No, we was never back’ard in coming forwards.’

‘Anyroad, I want no Tom, Dick or Harry sniffing round our Lucy, so keep your eye on her for me, Ben, anytime I ain’t there.’

‘Bring her wi’ yer tonight, eh? I’ll get the missus to show her the ropes.’

‘That’ll please the wench no end. Yo’m a pal, Ben. A real pal.’

‘How’s your other daughter, Haden?’

‘Our Jane? As happy as Ode Nick now as her’s wed. I’m happy for her that her chap come back from the Crimea, even though he does have to get about on a crutch these days.’

‘Better to walk on crutches than be jed and buried in some graveyard in Balaclava, I’d say. I tek it as he can still get his good leg over the wench, though.’

Haden guffawed. ‘’Tis to be hoped. He’ll be getting boils on the back of his neck, else. But there’s no sign of e’er a babby yet. Mind you, there’s no boils on his neck either.’

They had arrived at the corner where Haden turned off. He thanked Ben Elwell again for agreeing to take on Lucy as a barmaid, waved and went home.

Waiting by the entry was Bobby the shaggy sheepdog, named after Sir Robert Peel. Bobby lay with his nose between his paws and nonchalantly opened one eye when he heard Haden’s footsteps approaching. When he saw his master he stretched, got to his feet and wagged his tired tail, anticipating being fussed.

‘Christ, I bet you’ve had a bloody hard day looking after your mother, eh, Bobby?’ Haden said, bending forward to ruffle the dog’s thick mane. ‘All that shut-eye and lolling about. Christ knows how you keep it up.’ The dog licked Haden’s hand affectionately. ‘Is your mother inside then? Has her fed yer?’ He patted the dog and straightened up. ‘It’s all right for some, all rest and no work. I expect yo’ll want some dinner off me now, eh?’

As he opened the door the smell of cooking welcomed him. He saw a pot of rabbit stew standing on the hob of the cast iron fire grate and knew that he would not go hungry. Lucy was standing half-dressed, tying up her long dark hair.

‘Where’s your mother?’

‘I’m upstairs,’ a voice called.

‘What yer doing up there? It’s time for me vittles.’

‘I’ll be down in a minute.’

Haden looked at his younger daughter as he tossed his snap bag on the settle. ‘I had a word with Ben Elwell. He says if you go to the Whimsey tonight his missus will show you the ropes.’

Lucy’s eyes lit up and she grinned. ‘So he’ll let me start working there nights?’

‘And he’ll keep his eye on yer. I want no drunken louts a-pestering yer. All right?’

‘Course, dad.’

‘Then it’s settled. Lord knows what he’ll pay yer, though. We never mentioned money.’

‘I don’t care. I’d do it for nothing, Dad.’

‘No need to do it for nothing, my wench. Ben’s fair. He’ll pay fair. Now, get yourself dressed and fetch me some water so’s I can wash me feet. When yo’ve done that, tek the brown jug wi’ yer to the Whimsey and have it filled wi’ beer … Here’s sixpence …’

So Lucy, grateful that her father had had a word with Ben Elwell, went to the pump down the street and fetched water. Then she took the brown jug from the cupboard next to the fire grate and stepped out into the early evening sunshine to fetch his beer.

The Piddocks sat down to eat, civilly and with all the decorum of a well-bred household, a habit which Hannah, Haden’s wife, had imported and insisted upon. Her years employed as a housemaid in one of the big important houses in Kingswinford, the adjoining parish, had instilled much domestic refinement into her, which time and their own modest way of life had not diminished.

‘I don’t know as I hold with our Lucy serving ale to all them loudmouth hobbledehoys with their rough manners what get in the Whimsey,’ Hannah remarked with maternal anxiety. ‘No decent young woman should be seen in such a place. And will she be safe walking home at night?’

‘I’ll be walking home with her nights, I daresay,’ Haden said, and shoved a forkful of rabbit meat into his mouth.

Lucy looked from one to the other. ‘I’ll be all right, Mother,’ she affirmed. ‘I’ll come to no harm. They’re not all rough folk that go to the Whimsey.’

‘’Tis to be hoped. But if ever you’m on your own and hear somebody behind yer, run for your life.’

‘I will, Mother. I’m not daft.’

‘I don’t know what you’m a-fretting about, Hannah,’ Haden said. ‘Things am quieter now than they used to be. I mean, there’s nothing to get excited about any more – well, not at the Whimsey, anyroad. There’s no bull-baiting or cock-fighting these days to get folk worked up. All right, there might be the occasional badger-drawing when the Patrollers ain’t about … I remember Coronation Day—’

‘Oh, spare us the details, Haden.’

‘No, Mother, I’d like to hear,’ Lucy insisted. ‘My dad always comes out with some good tales.’

‘Except I’ve heard ’em all afore, our Lucy. Too many times.’

‘Well, I haven’t. So tell us, Dad.’

Haden took a long quaff from his beer. ‘It was June in thirty-eight,’ he began again with a smile for his daughter. ‘It started the day afore the Coronation of our young queen Victoria, God bless her. We’d heard that there was due to be a bear-baiting at the Old Bell up in Bell Street. The bear had been brought over from Wednesbury, and to keep him comfortable for the night they found him an empty pigsty. Next day, everybody as had got a bulldog – and that was a good many in them days – brought ’em along to bait poor old Bruin. So the bear-herd fetched the bear out o’ the pigsty and led him over to the old clay pit. They drove an iron stake into the middle and put the ring at the end of the bear’s chain over the stake, so as the animal could move about easy but not too far. Course, loads o’ spectators lined the clay pit, a chap in a clean white smock among ’em.’

Bobby had installed himself at the side of the table near Haden and waited patiently with imploring eyes for a morsel to descend to the stone flags of the floor. But Haden was in full flow.

‘As it happened, the ground had been softened by rain a day or two before, and as the kerfuffle started nobody noticed that the stake had come loose in the mud. I tell yer, there was plenty fun as them dogs baited the bear, but then it dawned on everybody that the bear had got free. We all ran for our lives, and the poor bugger in the white smock fell over. He was rolled over umpteen times in the mud as folk trampled all over him.’ Haden laughed aloud as he recalled it. ‘He was a sight – the poor bugger did look woebegone.’

‘Then what happened?’ Lucy asked, wide-eyed.

‘The daft thing was, the poor bear was as frit as everybody else, and run off back to the pigsty.’

‘The poor, poor bear,’ she said full of sympathy for the animal. ‘I’m glad they put a stop to all that savagery.’

‘Savagery?’ Haden repeated. ‘I’ve seen savagery. I’ve watched bull-baiting at the Whimsey – in the days when everybody called it “Turley’s”. Once, a bull gored a bulldog, pushing his horns right into its guts. He ripped it open and tossed it higher than the house.’

‘Ugh! That’s enough to put you off your dinner,’ Lucy complained, turning her mouth down in distaste.

‘Another time at a wake,’ Haden went on, ‘I watched a bull, that was maddened by the dogs, break free of his stake and cause havoc among the crowd. When they caught him they slaughtered him without a second thought and cut him up, and the meat was sold to anybody as wanted it at a few coppers a pound. Then they all trooped off to watch the next baiting.’

‘I’m only glad it doesn’t go on now,’ Lucy said. ‘Do you remember it, Mother?’

‘I remember it going on. I’d never go and watch such things meself, though. But then I had you kids to look after.’

‘Yes, they was rough days,’ Haden admitted. ‘We only had one parish constable in them days and he couldn’t be everywhere. Like as not he was paid to turn a blind eye, especially by the street wenches or their blasted pimps. But folk was poor and nobody had any education. They knew no better, knew no other life. These days, there’s work about and while they’m still poor, they ain’t as hard done by as they used to be.’

Bobby impatiently tapped Haden’s leg with his paw to remind his master that he was still awaiting a morsel.

‘Lord, I forgot all about thee, mutt,’ he said, picking a thigh bone from his plate and tossing it to the dog. ‘Here, that’ll keep thee going for a bit.’

Chapter 2

Arthur Goodrich, a man of average height and average looks, was twenty-five years old. He was a stonemason by trade, employed in the family firm of Jeremiah Goodrich and Sons, Monumental Masons and Sepulchral Architects. While Jeremiah, Arthur’s father, tended to concentrate on the sepulchral design and construction side of the business in the relative comfort of the workshop along with Talbot, Arthur’s older brother, poor Arthur, by dint of being younger and thus subordinate, was meanwhile generally despatched to the further reaches of the Black Country to effect the more menial, though no less skilled, work of cutting and blacking inscriptions on existing headstones in the area’s sundry graveyards. For Arthur this was an eternal source of discontent to add to his many others.

Thus it was one Saturday morning in late September. Arthur, complete with a toolbag full of freshly sharpened chisels, several wooden mallets, a cushion to sit on and various other appliances of his craft, had been despatched early to the hallowed ground of St Mark’s church in Pensnett, a good twenty minutes’ walk even for a sprightly lad like himself. The apathetic morning had rounded up a herd of frowning clouds that matched Arthur’s mood. He hoped that the rain would keep off, for today was the last cricket match of the season, against Stourbridge Cricket Club, and he had been picked to play.

He had been assigned two headstones to amend that day and possessed a rough plan on paper of where they were situated within the graveyard. He located the first, a shining black grave, the granite imported at vast expense on behalf of the occupier’s wife. The deceased had been a local claymaster, piously religious and a pillar of local society. Arthur put down his toolbag, sat on the grave and read the inscription to himself:

‘To the memory of Jacob Onions who passed away 15th October 1853.

Farewell dear husband must we now part,

Who lay so near each others’ heart.

The time will come I hope when we

Will both enjoy Felicity.’

Composed, obviously, by a grieving Mrs Onions, hoping for the better fortune of someday lying together again. Well, now that same grieving wife had joined her beloved husband, and Arthur was to append the inscription that confirmed it. He fumbled in the pocket of his jacket for the two pieces of paper that told him which words to cut on the relevant headstones. Just at that moment, an ominous pain convulsed his stomach and he trapped the piece of paper under the grave vase so that he could clutch his aching gut. Within a few seconds the pain had gone.

Wind.

A decent breaking of wind would relieve it. He lifted one cheek experimentally but nothing happened, so he took the cushion from his toolbag, an essential item of kit when sitting or kneeling on cold graves for hours on end, and placed it beneath him near the headstone. He opened a jar of grey paint – some magical kind that dried quickly and could be easily scraped off afterwards – grabbed a brush and daubed the area to be marked out with the lettering. While it dried, he located the other grave and performed the same task there. He read the inscription already carved on that headstone too.

‘In remembrance of Henry Tether who died in his cups 6th June 1840, a free spirit who in his lifetime would have preferred all spirits to be free.’ So poor Henry Tether had a partiality for drink. Now it was time to add the name of Henry’s dear departed wife Octavia after sixteen years of widowhood. He left the scrap of paper that held the words for its appended inscription under its grave vase also, to save fumbling later for it in his pockets.

As Arthur made his way back to the first grave he was gripped again by the menacing pain in his stomach. Perhaps he was pregnant somehow and he was having contractions … No, that was plain stupid. He was a man, and men didn’t give birth. Besides, he was not wed so how could he possibly be pregnant? Of course, it was something he’d eaten that had upset his stomach. He attempted to break wind again but … oh, dear … It was a mistake. Perhaps he shouldn’t, for fear of an embarrassing accident.

He returned to the first grave and checked the paint. It was dry. It would not take long to mark out the lettering that was to be added, and nobody at the firm was as quick as him when it came to cutting letters. He picked up his blacklead to mark it out …

The pains in his gut returned … They were persistent now and he could hear a tremendous amount of gurgling going on there, as if there were some serious flaw in his intestinal plumbing. It was obvious he must hurry his work, for there were no privies within a quarter of a mile that he could discern. He dared not stoop to do it in the graveyard either, for it was on high ground, exposed to the passing traffic of Pensnett High Street, for all to witness. The vicar might appear like the risen Christ just at the crucial moment … it would be just Arthur’s luck. So, in agony, he carried on marking out the letters and words, taken from the piece of paper he was working from.

He had to hurry. It was a matter of dire urgency. He was desperate for a privy, for anywhere, hallowed ground if need be. Hallowed ground it would have to be, he decided … until a youngish woman, evidently a recent widow, accompanied by three of her children, tearfully presented themselves and a posy of flowers at a nearby grave. It would be the ultimate discourtesy to relieve himself in front of her at this moment. So he pressed on, cutting letters now as fast as he could, blunting one chisel and picking up another, till he had finished the first headstone. By this time his guts were about to burst. There was no time to complete the second headstone. He had to depart. Right now. This minute. He could return once he had procured relief. So he threw his tools into his bag and fled as fast as his tormented guts would allow. Clenching his buttocks stalwartly and with a fraught look upon his face, he strode across the graveyard and down the long winding path that led to High Street. If he didn’t find a privy soon, Pensnett would be subjected to the foulest pollution ever likely to strike it, an event that could become folklore for generations.

As he emerged onto the high road, behold, there was a row of houses in a side street opposite with an entry that led to a backyard. He must make use of their facilities without permission, for there was no time to seek it … and what if he did and they withheld their consent?… He could always knock on a door afterwards and confess his trespass, by which time it would be a done deed.

He crept up the entry and was thankful to find nobody in the backyard which served the terrace of four houses. He located a privy behind one of the brewhouses and burst the door open. It was a double-holer. Arthur had never seen a double-holer before. A roosting hen was perched on a shelf above and Arthur impatiently removed the fowl to a squawk of protest. Just in time he managed to lower his trousers and perch over one of the holes …

Arthur was wallowing in the ecstasy of blissful relief for a minute or two afterwards, in no rush to move lest another bout of the vile stomach ache assail him, when the latch rattled and the door opened. A woman about the same age as his mother entered.

‘Mornin’.’

‘Morning,’ Arthur replied, more than a little taken aback.

‘That’s my side …’

‘Oh … I beg your pardon.’ With hands clutched embarrassed in front of him, he shifted across to the next hole and made himself comfortable again.

The woman proceeded to hitch up her skirt and positioned herself over the other hole. ‘The sky’s a bit frowsy this mornin’, ai’ it? ’Tis to be hoped we have ne’er a shower,’

‘’Tis to be hoped,’ Arthur agreed tentatively, hearing the unmistakable trickle of spent water into the soil below them. He was uncertain whether to proceed with the conversation and prolong their encounter, or to say nothing more in the hope of curtailing it. Never in his life had he shared a moment like this with a complete stranger, nor anybody familiar either for that matter. He wanted to get off his seat and scarper, and allow the woman her privacy, but there was the hygiene aspect of his sojourn that had yet to be attended to. He glanced around him in the dimness looking for squares of paper.

Happily, he was released from his dilemma when the woman stood up and allowed her skirts to fall back.

‘I’m mekkin’ a cup o’ tay. Dun yer want e’er un? I’ll bring thee one out if yo’ve a mind.’

‘No, thank you,’ Arthur replied with a shake of his head. ‘That’s very kind. But I’m just on my way. I just popped in for a quick one.’

‘Suit yerself then, my son. Ta-ra.’

Arthur lived with his father, whom he hated, and his mother whom he felt sorry for, in Brierley Hill in a lane called Lower Delph, commonly referred to as The Delph. His older brother Talbot had fled the nest to feather his own when he was married some five years earlier, to a fine girl rejoicing in the name Magnolia. The family business had been founded by his father years ago and was conducted from the workshop, yard and stables which adjoined the house. Arthur was a man of many interests, but his big love was cricket.

The only cricket team he had access to play for was the one loosely attached to the old red brick church of St Michael, which he regularly attended on Sundays. The solemnity of Anglican worship and the richness of religious language appealed to his serious side. St Michael’s cricket team played their home matches on a decently maintained area of flat ground in Silver End, adjacent to the railway line. Now Arthur was afraid that the acute bout of diarrhoea he’d suffered that very morning might manifest itself again on the cricket field, which would be to his ultimate embarrassment.

‘I’ve cut you some bread to go with this, my lad,’ his mother, Dinah, said as she placed a bowl of groaty pudding and hefty chunks of a loaf before him at the scullery table. ‘It’ll help bung yer up.’

‘’Tis to be hoped,’ Arthur said miserably, repeating the supplication he’d made perched on the seat of the Pensnett privy. He wore an exaggerated look of pain on his face to elicit his mother’s sympathy.

‘Your father’s feeling none too well either.’ She returned to the mug of beer she’d neglected while serving Arthur’s dinner, and took a gulp.

Arthur dipped a lump of bread into the stew-like morass. ‘But I bet he ain’t got the diarrhee, has he? You can’t imagine what it’s like being took short in a graveyard with the diarrhee and no privy for miles.’

‘There’s ne’er a privy at the cricket pitch neither, but that ain’t going to stop you playing cricket there this afternoon by the looks of it,’ Dinah remarked astutely. ‘’Tis to be hoped as you’m well enough to knock a few runs without shitting yourself.’

‘’Tis to be hoped,’ Arthur said again and grinned, thankful that his family were not so high-faluting that they could not discuss such delicate matters in plain English at the scullery table. ‘I’m nursing meself so as I can play cricket this afternoon.’

‘I wish I’d got the time to nurse meself,’ Dinah said, and took another swig of beer. ‘I’m certain sure as I’ve sprained me wrist humping buckets of coal up from the damn cellar.’

Arthur contemplated that it did not prevent her from lifting a mug of beer, but made no comment. ‘I’d have fetched the coal up for you,’ he said instead and winced as if there were another twinge of pain in his gut. ‘You know I would.’

‘Never mind, you weren’t here.’

‘It’s just a pity Father’s too miserable to spend money employing a maid. You could have sent the maid to the cellar for coal.’

‘A maid? He’ll never employ a maid. He’s too mean.’

‘That’s what I just said.’

Arthur finished his dinner, fetched his bat from the cupboard under the stairs and walked steadily and circumspectly to the cricket field, looking forward to the game against Stourbridge Cricket Club with a mixture of eagerness and anxiety.

St Michael’s team lost the match. Arthur was the sixth man to bat, surviving the remaining batsmen who came after him. His team needed fifty-five runs to win and Arthur felt it was his responsibility to try and get those runs. But he experienced that dreaded loose feeling in his bowels again and had no option but to get himself run out when they still needed forty-eight, ending the team’s innings. It turned out to be a false alarm, and Arthur sincerely regretted having thrown the match.

‘I couldn’t run,’ he lamented to Joey Eccleston, with whom he had been batting at the end. They walked back together to the tent that was always erected on match days, to a ripple of applause from the attendant wives and sweethearts. ‘I had the diarrhee this morning and I was afeared to shake me guts up too much for fear it come on again.’

‘Well, we tried, Arthur,’ Joey said philosophically and patted his colleague on the back. ‘You especially. But we were no match for Stourbridge today. Next year, maybe. There’s always next year. Next year we’ll give ’em a thrashing … Coming for a drink after?’

‘No, I’m due an early night, Joe. I promised my mother. My guts are still all of a quiver. I got to get myself better for work on Monday. The old man’s already queer ’cause I didn’t finish my job off this morning. Maybe I’ll have a spot or two of laudanum to go to bed with.’

‘It won’t hurt you to come for a drink first. A drop of brandy or whisky would settle your stomach. You don’t have to stop out late. It’s been the last match of the season today. We’ll all be going. You can’t not come as well.’

They reached the tent and Arthur pulled off his old and worn batting gloves. ‘I suppose it’ll be regarded as bad form if I don’t go, eh, Joey?’

‘Sure to be. Anyway, you don’t want to be seen as some stick-in-the-mud, or that you’re mollycoddled.’

Arthur grinned matily. ‘Me mollycoddled? That’ll be the day.’

‘That’s settled then.’

‘So where are we going for a drink?’

‘We’ve settled on the Whimsey.’

The gentlemen of the church cricket team arrived at the Whimsey about eight o’ clock, as the last embers of sunset were finally extinguished. Those who were blessed with wives or lady friends allowed them to attend and they occupied a room they called the parlour and chattered animatedly with each other, while the men stood in three groups in the taproom and got on with the serious business of drinking and analysing their defeat.

The Whimsey had opened for business in 1815. It was situated a couple of hundred yards below St Michael’s church on the busy turnpike road where it was called Church Street. By the time Benjamin Elwell took it over in 1840 it was a well-established concern. Being a Saturday night the Whimsey was busy, and would get even busier. Already, the taproom was hazy with a blue mist of tobacco smoke from the men’s clay pipes, and noisy from the voices of folk trying to be heard over the chatter of their neighbours.

‘Pity you and Joey Eccleston couldn’t keep up your innings a bit longer, Arthur,’ James Paskin, the team captain, commented.

‘I’m sorry, James,’ Arthur answered guiltily, and took a quick slurp of his beer to avoid James’s eyes. ‘I was telling Joey – I had a bad bout of the diarrhee this morning and I was afeared of churning me guts up again on the cricket pitch, so I couldn’t run very well. I didn’t fancy being took short between the wickets.’

‘Good Lord, I didn’t realise,’ James said with concern. ‘In that case it was a valiant effort. Do you feel all right now?’

‘Still a bit queer, to tell the truth.’

‘Well, they beat us fair and square, Arthur. I didn’t have a very good innings myself, nor did old Dingwell Tromans.’

‘We’ll do better next season,’ Arthur said, although such optimism was normally alien to him.

Two youths at a table nearby had pulled the wings off two bluebottles and were betting which would fall off the edge of the table first. Arthur turned his back on such brutal triviality and gazed around the room pretending not to notice, determined not to give the impression that he condoned their puerility.

‘We might not have Dingwell Thomas next season,’ James Paskin was saying. ‘There’s talk of him emigrating to America. D’you think you could take on the job of wicket-keeper, Arthur?’

At that moment, a girl with dark hair, slender and wearing a white apron, was slowly moving in his direction as she collected used tankards and crocks from the tables. She was not excessively pretty but, for Arthur, there was something powerfully alluring about her classic good looks and reserved demeanour. She possessed the most appealing, friendly smile, but also a look of shyness that struck a distinctly harmonic chord within Arthur, a sort of instant empathy. He watched her, fascinated, waiting to see her face again as she leaned forward to pick up more tankards. Then, just before she reached him, she turned and made her way back towards the counter, swivelling her body tantalisingly to avoid bumping into customers.

‘Sorry, James, what was you saying?’

‘About you having a go at wicket-keeping next season.’

‘Oh … I wouldn’t mind giving it a try … I’ve done a bit of wicket-keeping in the past, but I wouldn’t say I was as good as Dingwell. But with a bit of practice, you never know …’

Suddenly Arthur was aware of a commotion behind him. Two dogs, one large, old and lethargic, the other a small, young and animated terrier, were snarling at each other under a table. The owner of the small dog lurched forward to grab it and knocked over his table in the process, sending several tankards of ale flying. They wetted not only the flagged floor but poor Arthur’s good pair of trousers, and the coat of one other man. At once the indignation of the man, who was unknown to Arthur, was high, but mostly, it seemed, at losing his beer. Arthur, however, was largely unperturbed, realising it was merely an accident.

‘I’ll get thee another, Enoch, as soon as I’n gi’d me blasted dog a kick,’ the offender said to his peeved acquaintance, righting the table. He went outside, taking his dog with him, its little legs dangling as he held it by the scruff of its neck.

The owner of the other dog managed to pacify his more docile animal, allowing it to lap beer from his tankard, and it resumed lying quietly at his feet, in a rapture of mild intoxication. Ben Elwell, who disliked such disruptive outbursts in his public house, was over in a flash to investigate, but the flare up had already died down. He saw the pool of beer frothing on the floor and called for a mop and bucket, and the slender girl with the dark hair and the white apron re-appeared to clean it up.

‘Here, I’n got beer all down me coot,’ the man named Enoch told the girl. ‘Hast got summat to rub me down with afore it soaks through to me ganzy?’

‘I’ll bring you a cloth when I’ve mopped this up, Mr Billingham,’ the girl answered apologetically. ‘I’ll only be a minute.’

As she cleaned, the owner of the offending terrier returned. ‘I swear, I’ll drown the little bastard in the cut if he plays up again,’ he muttered, and asked who else’s beer he’d knocked over. He duly went to the bar to make reparations.

‘Fun and games, eh?’ James Paskin remarked to Arthur.

‘That beer went all over my trousers, you know, James. I’m soaked through.’

‘Ask the girl for a cloth.’

‘Think I should?’

‘Course.’

‘I could catch a chill with wet trousers.’

‘It ain’t worth taking the risk, Arthur. Quick, before she goes.’

Arthur hesitated but, just as the girl was about to go, he plucked up his courage and tapped her on the shoulder. ‘Excuse me, miss …’ She turned her head and he saw by the light of the oil lamp hanging overhead that her face was made beautiful by wide eyes which were the most delicate shade of blue, full of lights and expressions. ‘I … I got soaked in beer as well … Would you mind bringing a cloth for me?’

Had it been any of the regulars she would have taken the request with a pinch of salt, knowing it was an attempt at flirting, to get her to wipe their trousers. But there was something in the earnest look of this man that made her realise he was not preoccupied with such triteness. So she nodded and smiled with decorous reserve.

‘I haven’t seen her before,’ Arthur remarked. ‘She’s quite comely.’

‘Fancy her, do you?’

Arthur grinned self-consciously. ‘Like I say, she’s quite comely. She seems to have a pleasant way with her. Don’t you think so, James? But I expect a wench like that is spoken for already. Is it the landlord’s daughter, do you know?’

‘Not that I’m aware of. I’ve not seen her in here before. Not that I’m stuck in here every night of the week, you understand.’

The girl returned and handed a towel to Enoch Billingham, apologising again for his being drenched. Then she turned to Arthur …

‘You wanted a towel as well, sir?’

‘Thank you …’

‘Shall I hold your beer while you wipe your trousers?’ she asked pleasantly.

‘Thank you …’ He began swabbing the spreading wet patch on his trouser leg, feeling suddenly hot. Just as suddenly he felt his bowels turn to water again and knew that he must make another rapid exit. With intense agony he held himself, noticing at the same time that at least the girl was not wearing a wedding ring.

‘What’s your name?’ he managed to ask. ‘I ain’t seen you in here before.’

‘Lucy,’ she said.

‘You live local?’

‘Bull Street.’

‘Funny I’ve never seen you before.’ Arthur was trying manfully to maintain a look of normality.

‘Why, where do you live?’ Lucy asked pleasantly.

‘The Delph.’

‘Fancy. Just up the road.’

Arthur was effecting some severe internal abdominal contortions coupled with heroic buttock clenching, in an effort to maintain not only his composure, but his self respect and his eternal reputation. He was desperate to keep the girl talking as long as he could, to try and find out more about her, but he was even more desperate to win the battle against his wayward bowels. It was a battle he was losing ignominiously, however, for without doubt he had to go.

‘Yes, just up the road … You’ll have to excuse me, Lucy …’ He turned and fled.

‘What’s up with him?’ Lucy enquired of James.

‘Something he ate, I think,’ James replied, being as discreet as he knew how. ‘He’s had a problem all day, I believe.’

Lucy chuckled. ‘Poor chap. Well, he’ll find nowhere to relieve himself that way.’

Chapter 3

Sunday was another lovely September day, a day when women kept open their front doors and sat on their front steps, gossiping with like-minded neighbours. They peeled potatoes and shelled peas which they would have with a morsel of meat for their dinners when their menfolk staggered back from the beer houses. Lucy strolled to the water pump carrying a pail. Bobby the sheepdog ambled wearily but proprietorially beside her, ignoring other animals that pointed their snouts at him and sniffed. Lucy tarried a minute or two with most of the women, pleased to comment on what beautiful weather they were blessed with, but said nothing of the dismal slag heaps and factory yards that rendered the immediate landscape squalid and colourless.

‘It’s a pity there ain’t no fine houses with well-tended gardens in this part of Silver End,’ she commented to one woman known as Mother Cope, who was smoking a clay pipe as she tearfully skinned onions in her lap. ‘’Cause the flowers, specially the roses, would still be in full bloom, and a sight to behold on a day like this.’

‘If you want to see flowers, my wench,’ Mother Cope replied, withdrawing her pipe from between her toothless gums, ‘I daresay as there’s a bunch or two in the churchyard you could gaze at, on the graves o’ the well-to-do.’

Lucy returned to the house with her pail full of water and poured some into a bowl to give to Bobby, before using more to boil vegetables. At about three o’ clock her father returned hungry from the Whimsey and the three sat down to their dinner.

‘I reckon Ben Elwell could’ve done with your help again this morning, wench,’ Haden remarked to his daughter.

‘I’ve got too much to do here helping Mother of a Sunday,’ Lucy answered. ‘But he’s asked me to work tonight.’

‘Ar, well, there’ll be some beer shifted tonight an’ all, if the weather stops like this. Folk like to tek their beer into the fresh air and watch the world go by.’

‘I only wish they’d bring back their beer mugs when they’ve done, instead of leaving them lying around for me to collect.’

‘I reckon you’ve took to this public house working a treat, our Lucy,’ Haden said with a fatherly grin. ‘Her’s took to this public house working, you know, Hannah. Who’d have thought it, eh?’

‘Just as long as she keeps away from all them rough toe rags,’ Hannah replied.

‘Oh, they ain’t all rough, Mother. There’s a lot of decent, respectable men that come in for a drink. One or two even buy me a drink now and again.’

‘As long as nobody expects any favours in return.’

She felt like saying that if there was somebody she liked the look of she might be tempted, but kept it to herself. ‘D’you know anybody who lives down the Delph, Father?’

‘The Delph? Why?’

‘I just wondered. Somebody came in last night who I’d never seen before in me life, and he said he only lived down the Delph. You’d think you’d know everybody who lived close by. That’s all. This chap was with a crowd that played cricket for the church, so Mrs Elwell said.’

‘Lord knows who that might be. Fancy him, do yer?’ Haden winked at Hannah.

‘Not particularly,’ Lucy protested. ‘I only said it ’cause I think it’s weird not ever knowing somebody, even by sight, who lives so close to us.’

As Sunday progressed Arthur Goodrich’s self-willed bowels seemed to settle down. He attended matins at St Michael’s during the morning with his mother, and they circumspectly sat in a pew at the back, lest he should have to dart out during the service. Mercifully, he was untroubled by any such need.

His brother Talbot came for tea with Magnolia and their small son Albert. The extended family, Jeremiah included, once more crossed the threshold of St Michael’s for evensong. It was dark but warm when they finally emerged into the open air, and bats flitted in whispers between the tree tops overhead. Dinah and Jeremiah stopped to chat with some of the other parishioners by the light of a solitary gas lamp that hung over the main door, while the vicar, the Reverend Ephraim Wheeler, bid everybody a good evening with a shake of the hand and a benign smile, and looked forward to seeing them again next Sunday.

‘I’m going for a drink afore we go home,’ Talbot declared to Magnolia who was holding young Albert’s hand as the lad stood beside her. ‘I’ll see you back at Mother’s. Are you coming with me, our Arthur?’

‘I think I got the piles,’ Arthur answered ruefully. ‘Me backside’s that sore.’

Talbot rolled his eyes. ‘It’s because of the squits, Arthur. What ailments shall you be sporting tomorrow, I wonder?’

‘It’s your liver,’ Magnolia stated sagely to her brother-in-law. ‘It’s what comes of eating kickshaws and other such muck. See as your mother gives you a dose of dandelion tea or summat. Or soda and nitre’s good for you every now and again. That’ll sort yer. It’ll help to keep your system cool.’

‘Me system’s already cool,’ Arthur replied morosely. ‘That’s the trouble. It’s working in draughty graveyards what does it. How can you keep in good humours if you’m always cutting and blacking letters in draughty graveyards, sitting on cold graves? I wonder I don’t get pneumonia in me backside.’

‘You can’t get pneumonia in your backside,’ Magnolia asserted.

‘I can in mine. I’m forever catching a chill.’

‘Is that what I can hear wheezing sometimes?’ Talbot said with a grin.

‘Oh, it’s all right for you to mock, Talbot, stuck in a warm workshop.’

‘Somebody has to do the work in graveyards, amending and adding inscriptions and what not,’ Talbot replied. ‘Anyway, it’s skilled work.’

‘You wouldn’t know it from the wages. Anyway, I don’t see you doing it very often. You’re always in the workshop.’

‘Designing and carving gravestones, me, polishing slate and marble …’

‘It’s always me what has to go to these terrible places.’ He gestured with his hand to encompass in a frustrated sweep the very graveyard that now surrounded them.

‘Count your blessings, our Arthur. At least you ain’t got father around you when you’re out and about. But if you’re dissatisfied, have a word with the old sod. Maybe he’ll smile benignly upon you and start an apprentice who can do all them jobs.’

‘Him? Smile? Benignly?’ Arthur scoffed. ‘Anyway, apprentices take time to learn. Years. And they cost money. That miserable old bugger won’t spend any money, he’s too tight-fisted. No, I ain’t very pleased, Talbot.’

‘Well, I’m off for a drink. It’s up to you whether you come or not. But a drink might sweeten you up a bit.’

Then Arthur remembered the girl with the blue eyes who had said her name was Lucy, and he suddenly brightened up. ‘Why don’t we go to the Whimsey? I went there last night with the lads from the cricket team. They keep a good drop o’ beer. And it’s on the way home.’

‘All right, we’ll go to the Whimsey. I’ll ask Father if he wants to come.’

‘No, leave him be,’ Arthur said, not relishing the prospect of his father’s company. ‘Let him go home. I don’t want him around me.’

‘But you can ask him about keeping you away from churchyards.’

‘It won’t make any odds.’

‘Maybe not, but we can’t not ask him to come.’

‘Oh, all right then.’

So Jeremiah joined his two sons.

Outside the Whimsey men were standing in groups, some leaning against the bay windows either side of the door, while some were squatting on the kerb. All were drinking, taking advantage of the evening warmth of an unexpected Indian summer.

‘Shall we drink outside?’ Talbot enquired.

‘I’d rather go inside, in the saloon bar,’ Arthur said decisively, driven by the possibility of seeing this Lucy again. ‘I’ll get the beer.’

He made his way through the small but crowded taproom towards the counter and waited his turn to be served. An older woman, presumably the landlord’s wife, was supping from a crock and serving drinks alongside Lucy. He watched them, trying to decide which one would get to him first, trying to catch Lucy’s eye. When she saw him she smiled reservedly, and asked to serve him, making his insides flutter ominously once more.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, pleasantly surprised. ‘You took off a bit quick last night. Are you all right now?’

Arthur grinned sheepishly. ‘A lot better, thanks.’ He was tempted to mention his suspected piles; it might elicit some sympathy. But he didn’t know this girl well enough, and piles were a bit personal and private to talk about when you didn’t know somebody well … and might easily put them off. ‘Three pints please, Lucy.’

‘Fancy you remembering my name,’ she said amenably, grabbing three tankards. She began to fill them from a barrel behind her. ‘Are your trousers dry now?’ she asked over her shoulder.

‘Yes, thanks.’

‘That’s good,’ she said, then placed the beers on the counter.

He handed her a shilling. ‘Oh, and have a drink yourself.’

‘That’s decent of you. Thank you.’ She handed him his change and he relished the brief moment when the tips of her slender fingers brushed his palm. ‘Are you here with your mates again?’

‘No, my brother and my father this time,’ he replied, passing two foaming tankards to Talbot. ‘We’ve just come from church. D’you go to church, Lucy?’

‘Me? Not since my sister got wed at the Baptist chapel. No, I haven’t got time for church. My mother goes regular though. To the Baptist chapel …’ She turned to her next customer and began serving him.

But Arthur remained where he was, hoping to be blessed with some more conversation with this girl who appealed so much.

‘Is that your brother?’ she asked, evidently content to continue talking to him while he tarried, to his delighted surprise.

‘Yes. His name’s Talbot. And that’s my father with him.’

‘I’ve seen them about. Funny as I hadn’t seen you till last night. Then I see you two nights running.’

‘I know,’ Arthur replied with a grin, his confidence growing, for this girl seemed easy to talk to, and not like the others. ‘It’s a funny coincidence, don’t you think?’

She handed her latest customer his beer and took his money, still looking at Arthur. ‘I bet my dad knows yours.’

‘Oh? How’s that, then?’

‘He says he knows most folk round here. What’s your name?’

‘Arthur Goodrich. I’m a stonemason. The old man’s Jeremiah. So who’s your father?’

‘Haden Piddock. He works at the Earl’s. He’ll be here soon. He generally comes for his beer about this time.’

‘Maybe I’ll recognise him. Does he go to church or chapel?’

The notion evidently amused her, for she laughed. ‘My father? This place is his church … and his chapel.’

Arthur felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Talbot. ‘Is she the reason you wanted to come here for a drink? The doxy?’

Arthur grinned sheepishly. ‘She seems a decent wench.’

‘Her’s got long eyelashes, I’ll grant yer,’ Jeremiah remarked scornfully. ‘But I’ll tell yer this … As long as her can work, cook and bear babbies, the length of her eyelashes is of no consequence. Anyroad, her’s Haden Piddock’s youngest, unless I’m very much mistook.’

Arthur stepped back from the counter. ‘You know Haden Piddock?’

‘Oh, I know him all right.’ Arthur noticed with awful disappointment the scorn in his father’s tone.

‘Well, I don’t know Haden Piddock myself, Father, but his daughter seems a fine young woman.’ He slurped his beer and avoided his father’s look of disdain. ‘And I ain’t getting mixed up in some ancient feud you might have had with him.’

‘Got your eye on her, have yer?’

‘I might have. What’s it matter to you?’

‘Well, if you tek my advice you’ll keep well clear of anything to do with Haden Piddock.’

‘I was telling Father how you fancy a change from working in graveyards all the time, Arthur,’ Talbot said, discreetly switching the topic.

‘And I don’t know what you expect me to do about it,’ Jeremiah said testily. ‘Somebody has to do the stones in churchyards. We’d be better off employing somebody to work the forge and sharpen chisels. A handyman. But even a handyman will cost money and bring nothing in return.’

Arthur glanced back at Lucy, sorry that he had been dragged away from her, even more sorry that his father evidently didn’t think much of hers.

‘Did you hear what I said, Arthur?’

‘I did, Father,’ he said, turning his attention back to the old man. ‘But I’d rather you employed another stonemason. It’s bad enough in the summer with all the rain we get, but in the winter I might as well be a snowman. I’d rather work in the workshop. If you started another stonemason, I could.’

‘And where am I gunna get another skilled stonemason in Brierley Hill?’

‘Advertise,’ Arthur suggested logically. ‘There’s bound to be somebody in Stourbridge or Dudley. Or even Kingswinford. But you’d have to pay him more than you pay me.’

‘I got no sympathy with yer,’ Jeremiah claimed. ‘Respect is better than remuneration.’

‘Well, I don’t think so. Give me remuneration any day of the week. The respect will follow.’

‘Listen to yer. Talking damned rubbish. We’ve all had to work in churchyards at some time, and it’s done we no harm.’ He coughed violently as if to disprove his own theory. ‘And it’ll do you none neither. You’ll have to grin and bear it, our Arthur.’

Jeremiah turned to speak with another man he knew and his two sons drained their tankards.

‘I hate him,’ Arthur said venomously. ‘Cantankerous old bugger.’

‘Let’s have another drink,’ Talbot suggested. ‘It’s my turn.’

‘Give me the money and I’ll get ’em. I want another word with that Lucy Piddock.’

Talbot gave him a knowing look. ‘You heard what Father said.’

‘Sod him. I got no beef against this Haden Piddock, and I certainly ain’t got no beef against his daughter. So why should I be obliged to uphold his petty prejudices? He evidently isn’t about to do anything to help me. No, Talbot, I see a fine wench there, and if she’s free of any attachment I might just try my luck.’

Talbot smiled matily and winked. ‘Go on then, our Arthur, and I hope she’s worth it.’

So Arthur approached the counter again. As soon as she was free, Lucy stood before him and looked into his eyes with a friendly smile.

‘Same again?’

‘Please, Lucy.’ He leaned towards her. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Go on.’

‘Are you courting or anything?’ His heart was in his mouth, eager for her reply and yet dreading it.

Lucy smiled coyly and even by the dim lights of the oil lamps he perceived her blushing. ‘No, I’m not a-courting anybody.’

‘In that case, would you like to come out with me sometime?’

‘If you like.’

Arthur felt a boyish gush of excitement, a whole gallon of joy, surge through him. ‘Honest?’

‘I just said so, didn’t I?’

‘When? What night don’t you work in here?’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Tomorrow then. About eight o’ clock on the corner of Church Street and the Delph?

‘Can we say half past seven? It’ll be dark by eight and my mother won’t want me to go off in the dark on me own, specially round here.’

He smiled. ‘All right. Half past seven … Listen, I could walk you back tonight if you want.’

‘No, it’s all right. Me dad’ll walk me back. He’ll be here soon. He would’ve been here sooner but he fell asleep after his dinner and I reckon he hasn’t woke up yet.’

‘If he don’t come, just give me the nod, eh?’ Arthur responded gallantly.

A consignment of port decanters had been carefully packed with straw and laid in a wooden crate, which Lucy Piddock and her workmate Eliza Gallimore had been filling during Monday afternoon. Now, at last, it was time to go home. Lucy stood erect and placed her hands in the small of her back. She stretched to counter the effects of so much bending, then unfastened the pinafore she wore to protect her skirt and blouse which had been clean on that morning. In the high rafters of the glassworks’ packing room two sparrows were squawking as they flitted from beam to beam in their squabble over a strip of bacon rind that one had picked up in the dusty yard outside.

The foreman, Job Grinsell, appeared. Job was a middle-aged man with a fatherly regard for Lucy.

‘I see as you’ve finished that crate what’s bound for Philadelphia,’ he commented and peered inside it, cursorily checking it for any loose items.

‘It’s all counted and packed tight,’ Eliza affirmed. ‘I bet you’m dying to nail the top on for us, eh, Job? Lucy and me am going home now, ain’t we Lucy? We’ve done our stint.’

Lucy picked up her cotton shawl from the hook on the whitewashed wall where she kept it and slung it loosely about her shoulders, ready to leave.

‘Just steady the lid for me then, one of yer,’ Job requested, ‘and I’ll do it for thee.’

‘Sod off. It’s past our knocking-off time. And Lucy ain’t got time to hang about. She’s got to pretty herself up. She’s seeing a fresh chap tonight, ain’t yer, Lucy?’

Lucy nodded.

Job looked at her intently. ‘Hey, well, mind what yo’m up to.’

‘You sound like my father,’ Lucy said, and compliantly held the wooden lid in place while Job took a handful of nails and a hammer and fixed it onto the crate.

‘I got daughters o’ me own, my wench. I know what a worry daughters am.’

‘Well, you need have no fears about me, nor the chap I’m a-meeting.’

Job guffawed derisively. ‘And if I believed that I’d believe anything. I tell yer – watch what you’m up to. Just watch his hands.’

‘Yes, sir,’ she answered with a mock curtsey.

The weather that early evening was a delight. The sun shone with a rich yellow warmth as Lucy stepped into it from the dankness of the packing room and headed for home. She always walked to and from the factory by way of the railway line; it was much quicker than going the semi-circular route up North Street and down Church Street.

She pondered this Arthur Goodrich. They had spoken no more than a couple of dozen words to each other and she felt no particular excitement at the prospect of meeting him later. She didn’t know quite what to make of him. The only reason she’d agreed to meet him was because it would actually be a bit of a novelty and a change from being stuck in the house with her mother.

She wondered what she could possibly have said to Arthur that prompted him to ask her out. If she had set his heart aflame she had done it unwittingly, but he’d not had the same effect on her – and she doubted that he ever would. Lucy wanted somebody to sweep her off her feet. She needed somebody she could fall hopelessly in love with, and Arthur was not the man. Oh, he seemed decent enough and even polite, but distinctly lacking in sparkle. She was certain she would have no competition from any other girl. Indeed, she would never be interested enough in him to worry about competition, he was so obviously anything but a ladies’ man. Anyhow, she was sure he would treat her with respect, for he gave her the impression that he was a gentle person.

A train was coming up the line, huffing and volleying clouds of white steam and black smoke. Lucy stopped and stood still until it had passed, as close to the edge of the cutting as she could get. She fixed her eyes on the guards’ van, just in case that man was working on it who she’d taken a shine to on the journey back from Dudley weeks ago. But he was not, and she sighed. She would love to see him again, but it was as if he’d disappeared off the face of the earth. Maybe he was just a figment of her imagination after all. Maybe she’d merely dreamed about him and he didn’t actually exist. As she continued walking she was beginning to wonder.

Her thoughts reverted to this insipid character Arthur and what reason she should give her mother and father for wanting to go out. Where would he take her? What should she do if he wanted to kiss her?

At last she reached the bridge over the railway at Bull Street. She clambered up the steep embankment and emerged onto the street, where she met Miriam Watson returning home from the firebrick works. They stopped to chat.

‘I’m seeing somebody tonight, Miriam,’ Lucy said, but there was no light of eager anticipation in her eyes. ‘Somebody who came in the Whimsey on Saturday and Sunday night.’

Miriam grinned her approval. ‘At last a chap. And is he handsome?’

Lucy shrugged. ‘Not particularly, but he’s better than nothing. He’ll do till somebody handsome comes along.’

‘Always supposing he wants to see you again after tonight, eh, Luce? You shouldn’t take things for granted.’

‘That’s true.’ She shrugged. ‘Not with my luck. Maybe I won’t suit him anyway.’

‘Who is he? What’s he do for a living?’

‘He’s a stonemason, named Arthur Goodrich. Me father says his family are well-to-do, but they’re not rich or anything. Just regular churchgoers.’

‘Oh, Lord!’ Miriam rolled her eyes. ‘You don’t want anybody spouting religion at yer, Luce. If he starts that I should give him the elbow quick. He ain’t a Methodist, is he?’

‘No, church. He goes to St Michael’s.’

‘And what’s he look like, this chap?’

‘A bit ordinary. He seems to have some quaint ways about him as well, what I’ve seen of him so far. But he seems decent enough. He was wearing a nice clean collar on his shirt. At least he ain’t rough.’

‘Well, you don’t have to stick with him if you ain’t that fussed. But you did say as you’d go out with the first chap what asked you, even if he was “the ugliest sod on earth”, you said. Remember?’

Lucy laughed. ‘I know I did, but he ain’t that bad, thank God. At least I won’t be ashamed if somebody sees me with him. It’s just that I don’t think it’ll amount to much. I just don’t fancy him.’

‘Well, next time I see yer, don’t forget to tell me how you got on, eh?’

‘I won’t. Anyway, I’d better go. Me belly’s rumbling for want of something to eat.’

Chapter 4

Arthur was particular about punctuality, but then he had a reliable watch in his fob pocket to assist him. Lucy, however, possessed no such device, and she was ten minutes late. Dusk was upon Brierley Hill and the sun, about to dip below the distant Shropshire hills, had daubed the western sky with intermingling hues of red, purple and gold that reflected in Lucy’s eyes, setting them aflame. Arthur was moved by the effect. The air was mild, and the musky, smutsy smell of industry encompassed them, but was barely noticed.

‘Have you been waiting long?’ she asked, an apology in her tone.

‘Only a minute or two,’ he replied with easy forgiveness. He smiled, happy and relieved that she had turned up at all, for he had set much store by this tryst.

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘Well … Nowhere in particular, Lucy … I thought we might just go for a stroll. It’s such a grand night for a stroll.’

‘If you like,’ she agreed pleasantly. ‘Which way shall we go?’

‘Which way d’you fancy?’

She shrugged. It was hardly a decision worth making and not one she’d been expecting to make herself. ‘Oh, you decide.’

‘Downhill, eh? Towards Audnam and the fields. We’ll see what’s left of the sunset as we go.’ So they turned and set off at a tentative stroll.

A horse and buggy drove up towards Brierley Hill on the other side of the road, its wheels rattling over the uneven surface. The driver called a greeting to the lamp-lighter walking in the opposite direction, whose lantern was swinging from the ladder balanced over his shoulder. For the first few long moments neither Lucy nor Arthur could think of a word to say. The pause seemed ominous. Both realised it simultaneously and their eyes met with self-conscious, half-apologetic smiles.

‘What have you been doing today?’ Lucy asked, aware that maybe she ought to set some conversation in train.

‘I had to go to a churchyard in Pensnett and finish an inscription to a headstone,’ Arthur replied, thankful that Lucy had found something to say, for he was inexplicably tongue-tied. ‘I should’ve done it Saturday but I couldn’t.’

‘Oh? Why was that?’

‘’Cause I had the diarrhee bad. I was taken short.’

She burst out laughing.

‘It’s not that funny,’ he said, disappointed that she should appear to mock him so early on. ‘Haven’t you ever had the diarrhee?’

‘Even if I have I’m not about to tell you. But it isn’t the fact that you had the diarrhee I’m laughing at. I know you can’t help that. It’s just that …’

‘What?’

‘Well, the first time I saw you on Saturday night you had to run off afore you’d finished drying spilt beer off your trousers. I thought then as you’d been took short, and when I asked your mate what was the matter with you he said as how it was something you’d ate.’

He laughed with her, realising how ridiculous he must have seemed. ‘So you guessed?’

‘It doesn’t take a genius to fathom it out. I hope you’ve got over it now.’

‘Yes, thank the merciful Lord. I don’t want another bout like that in a hurry, I can tell you. I’ve had a bit of toothache today, though.’

‘Toothache? Maybe you’ll have to have it pulled.’

‘I’m hoping as it’ll go away of its own accord. I don’t fancy having it pulled. It’s one of them big teeth at the back. They can be murder to pull out, they reckon.’

‘Maybe it’s just neuralgia,’ she suggested.

They were approaching the canal bridge where Wheeley’s Glass House stood with its huge brick cone that shielded from view the furnaces belonging to the same company. Over the bridge, on the other side of the highway was Smith’s Pottery.

‘So tell me what it is you have to do to describe a headstone,’ Lucy said, not wishing to discuss Arthur’s unexciting ailments for fear there were more, but veering obliviously onto a subject which had the same potential to assign her to wool-gathering.

‘Inscribe, Lucy, not describe.’ Her error amused him and he smiled. ‘I have to cut the letters into the stone or slate.’

‘So you have to be able to read and write well?’

‘Oh, yes. But I went to school, see? Can you read, Lucy?’

‘Oh, yes, some. My father used to spend two shillings a week to send me to school when I was little. They taught me my letters. I can’t read big words easy, though. But I can count, and do sums. I’m hopeless at spelling though. Hopeless.’

‘Ah well, it isn’t so important for a woman to be able to read and write, is it?’ he said consolingly. ‘Except maybe to write down a list of stuff you need to buy for the house.’

‘I suppose not. All the same, it would be useful to be able to do it well.’

‘Got any brothers or sisters, Lucy?’

‘I got a sister – Jane – a bit older than me. She married a chap called Moses Cartwright. He was a soldier in the Crimea, but they sent him home ’cause he got wounded. He’d been stuck in some makeshift hospital for weeks at the front.’

‘No brothers then?’

‘Yes, four brothers. All wed. One of them lives in Canada, so we don’t see him any more. We don’t see the others very often either … Come to think of it, they might as well all live in Canada … And you’ve got a brother, haven’t you, Arthur? Any sisters?’

‘Just one brother … He’s wed to Magnolia—’

‘Magnolia?’

‘I know. It’s a funny name for a woman.’

Conversation promised to flow naturally at last. They crossed the road at Hawbush Farm and turned into the footpath that led over fields to an area called Buckpool and eventually to Kingswinford parish. But it was getting dark and they would not have been able to see where they were going, so they lingered at a stile. Lucy perched herself on the top bar while Arthur leaned against it. By this time they were easier in each other’s company, to Lucy’s relief and surprise, for she found she was enjoying herself and actually liking Arthur.

Arthur complained how he and his father were always at cross-purposes, how he was expected to do the more menial tasks of stonemasonry and not the more glamorous ones of designing and building graves. It was obvious to her how it irked him.

‘So why don’t you leave home and find lodgings? Then you’d be out of his way.’

‘I might. If I left home I’d have to leave the business as well, and that would show him good and proper.’

‘What about your mother? Do you get on with her?’

‘Oh, she’s all right. It’s just me father I can’t stand. I feel sorry for her having to put up with him.’

‘Is he that bad, Arthur?’

‘He’s a miserable old devil. It always seems to me that he’s tried to do without love in his life, and that’s what makes him so vile. It’s almost as if he’s made a little garden for himself, but if the family’s love is sunshine he’s certainly shaded himself from it. And he’s planted this garden with bitter herbs, not beautiful flowers, yet he believes it’s the whole world – that the whole world is like that. He’s pig ignorant, Lucy. He never says “That’s a good job you’ve done there, our Arthur”, or “I’ll pay you a bit extra for doing that, ’cause you was late getting back”. Oh, not him. He’s too tight. He wouldn’t give you the drippings off his nose.’

‘I don’t think I’d want the drippings off his nose,’ Lucy asserted, which made Arthur laugh. ‘You make him sound vile.’

‘He is vile.’

‘Have you ever courted anybody before, Arthur?’

‘Once. When I was about twenty. A girl from Brockmoor. There’s some pretty girls in Brockmoor. But we split up after about six months.’

‘And you never bothered since?’

‘I never met anybody I fancied since … till I met you the other night.’

Lucy was touched by his sincerity. ‘That’s a lovely thing to say, Arthur. So what was it about me that took your fancy?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t really know …’

‘There must have been something,’ she said, miffed that he could think of nothing.

‘What I mean is, you aren’t flashy,’ he was quick to add, realising he’d unwittingly said the wrong thing. ‘You’ve got such lovely eyes and such long eyelashes, though … and a lovely smile to match.’

Immediately Lucy was mollified. ‘You think I’ve got nice eyes? I think they’re a funny colour.’

‘I’ve never seen eyes such a lovely colour. You’ve got a decent figure as well … and you have a nice way with you. I took a fancy to you as soon as I saw you.’

‘I bet I’m not as pretty as that girl from Brockmoor, though,’ she fished, relishing his compliments that boosted her confidence.

‘She was only pretty, Lucy. But you’re beautiful.’

Lucy’s eyes twinkled in the half light. ‘That’s the nicest thing anybody ever said to me.’ She slid off the stile and planted a kiss tenderly on his cheek. ‘Thank you.’

In return he put his hand on her shoulder and touched her. It was the first time he had touched her in that way and his emotion was too pure for desire, too respectful for sensuality. ‘You kissed me,’ he said with astonishment.

‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she replied, returning to her perch.

‘Lord, no.’

Another awkward pause developed and Lucy realised that maybe she had been hasty, indecorous in kissing him, a regular churchgoer, when she hardly knew him.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, relieving the tension. ‘I shouldn’t have done that. I bet you think I’m a proper strumpet. I’m not, though, Arthur. Honest I’m not.’

‘Oh, I liked it, Lucy. I don’t think you’re a strumpet at all. You can do it again if you like.’

‘I’d better not,’ she replied with a laugh that to him sounded like a silver bell tinkling.

The last of the daylight had all but gone and a full moon was already high, sailing through wispy clouds. In the distance they could hear a locomotive puffing tiredly on its arduous journey up the incline towards the Brettell Lane and Round Oak stations.

‘Tell me about your father,’ Arthur suggested, eager to learn what he could that might give him an inkling as to why his own father evidently didn’t admire the man. ‘What’s he like?’

‘He’s lovely and I love him,’ Lucy answered simply. ‘He’s kind, he cares for us all. He wouldn’t do anybody a bad turn – he’d rather help somebody.’

‘What’s he do for a living?’

‘He’s a shingler at the New Level ironworks. D’you know, Arthur, every time it’s payday he buys me a little present? It might only be a quarter of cough drops, but he always brings me something.’

‘That’s being thoughtful,’ Arthur agreed, and realised that here was a way he too could enhance his standing with Lucy. ‘He sounds the dead opposite of my father … What about your mother?’

‘Oh, she’s a bit fussy. We only live in a little cottage, but it always has to be spick and span. She’d have a fit if she saw a silverfish in our house. Our clothes always have to be spruce as well. She’d have another fit if I went out in something that looked dirty or shabby.’

‘Well, every time I’ve seen you, Lucy, you look nice,’ Arthur remarked. ‘So she must be a good influence.’

‘I just hope I can be like her if I ever get married.’

‘I hope, Lucy – if I ever get married – I’ll be lucky enough to pick a wife like that.’

Whatever was being implied, however inadvertently, and whatever was being likewise perceived, seemed to put paid to their conversation entirely and they remained unspeaking for long embarrassed seconds, until Lucy thought of something to say to divert them.

‘Can you ride a horse, Arthur?’

‘After a fashion. It isn’t my favourite method of transport though. Awkward, stupid animals, horses. I don’t feel comfortable on a horse. Not since I fell off and broke a rib.’

‘You didn’t!’

‘I did.’

‘Well, you’re a real knight in shining armour and no mistake,’ she laughed, ‘falling off your horse.’ It was just like him to do that, she thought.

‘I’d rather drive our cart and have the nag in front of me. The worst he could do is take fright.’

‘You drive a cart?’

‘Course I do. It’s what we lug our stone and masonry around with.’

‘I fancy riding on a cart. I’ve never ridden on a cart in me life.’

‘Honest?’

‘Honest.’

‘Maybe one of these days I’ll take you for a ride.’

‘Mmm, I’d like that, Arthur … You ain’t got a carriage, have you, by any chance?’

‘A carriage? God’s truth, who d’you think we are? Lords of the manor?’

‘I was only wondering. It doesn’t matter. A cart will do. As a matter of fact, a cart will do nicely … I’m getting off this stile, Arthur. I got pins and needles in my bum … Shall we carry on walking?’

‘If you like. Let’s walk to Stourbridge. It’s light enough with the moon as bright as it is.’

So they walked to Stourbridge and back, chattering away, getting to know each other in the process. On the way, Arthur claimed he was parched and they stopped at the Old Crown Inn on Brettell Lane before he returned Lucy home. They stood on the corner of Bull Street, within sight of the Piddocks’ cottage, but at a respectful distance.

‘I’ve really enjoyed tonight, Lucy, talking and walking with you,’ he said sincerely. ‘How about you?’ In the scant moonlight he discerned her smile.

‘Yes, so have I.’

‘Can we meet again then?’

‘If you want,’ she agreed. ‘When?’

‘How about tomorrow?’

‘I help out at the Whimsey tomorrow.’

‘Well, I could come and walk you back after.’

‘My dad will walk me back. We’ll have to leave it till a night when I’m not working.’

‘When’s that?’

‘Thursday.’

‘That’s the night of my bible class.’

‘Oh.’

‘But I could meet you later.’

‘How much later?’

‘Just after nine, say.’

‘My mother wouldn’t let me out that late. She reckons I should be abed by then.’

‘What if I call for you?’

‘And let you meet my mother?’ He saw the look of doubt in her eyes. ‘I don’t know, Arthur. I haven’t told her about you.’

‘What then?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘How about Saturday afternoon? Or Sunday?’

‘Saturday afternoon I sometimes go to Dudley with my friend Miriam. I could meet you Sunday afternoon though.’

‘It’s a long time to wait, Lucy. Nearly a week. I’ll have forgot what you look like by Sunday.’

She shrugged again. ‘Maybe your toothache will have gone by then.’

‘It’s gone already,’ he said brightly. ‘Maybe I’ll come to the Whimsey one night when you’m working. Just to say hello.’

She shrugged. ‘It’s up to you.’

‘You don’t sound very bothered,’ he suggested.

‘I just don’t see the point. I won’t be able to walk home with you. Not with my father there.’

‘But I’ll see you Sunday at any rate, Lucy. Does three o’ clock suit?’

‘Yes. And thanks for asking me out, Arthur.’

She sounded sincere, he thought, and was encouraged. ‘It’s been my pleasure …’ He grinned like a schoolboy. ‘And thank you for the kiss earlier. I shan’t be able to sleep for thinking about it.’ He turned and went on his way, euphoric.

Arthur could not help himself. So taken was he with Lucy Piddock that he could not sleep properly at night for thinking about her. He fought the urge, but found it impossible to keep away from the Whimsey any longer, where he knew she would be. He would have gone on the Tuesday, the evening after their first tryst, but had the sense to realise that he might appear too keen. If he’d had even more sense he would have known he should keep away altogether and let Lucy wonder why he hadn’t been nigh, let her watch the door every night to see if the next customer entering would be him. But Arthur was unacquainted with the foibles of young women and how to better gain their interest. So, on Wednesday evening at about nine o’ clock, just two nights after their outing, he sauntered into the taproom, his heart a-flutter, aching to see again this delightful girl who had turned his world upside down.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ Lucy remarked when she saw him standing at the bar waiting to be served.

‘Hello, Lucy.’ He grinned amiably, but was deflated by what he perceived as aloofness in her greeting. ‘A pint please.’

She held a tankard under the tap of a barrel and placed it, full and foaming, on top of the bar before him. ‘What brings you here?’

He handed her tuppence ha’penny. ‘Well, I’ve a right to come in here if I’m of a mind,’ has answered defensively. ‘But the real reason I came was to see you.’

‘But you can see I’m working, Arthur. I thought I wasn’t seeing you till Sunday.’

‘I just wanted to come and say hello.’ He smiled again perseveringly.

Lucy turned and afforded a polite smile to her next customer, however, a young man who had a confident bluster about him. Arthur leaned on the bar and lifted his tankard to take a drink, watching her and the young man. Her blue eyes seemed even wider by the glow from the lamps that hung from the ceiling, and that look of ethereal gentleness and perilous vulnerability they exuded wrung his heart with longing and a desire to be her guardian angel for eternity. This was how true love felt, this delightful yet sickening feeling that filled his breast, that made his heart hammer inside and his head swim with emotions. It was a sensation that neutralised all physical, gastronomic hunger, save for his raging hunger for her love. He felt no physical lust, no carnal desire for her, for to engage in such activities would be to violate her, and how could he violate somebody so soft and gentle, so innocent and susceptible? Even if she were to consent, which was unlikely.

Lucy smiled coyly at the young man with the confident bluster and he made some comment to her, which Arthur was fortunately unable to hear through the high ambient noise. Then the man turned to his mate who was standing behind him and made a gesture that signified a dark and dangerous lust for the girl. Arthur was incensed, indignant and utterly resentful of the man for having elicited an innocent smile from Lucy with his contrived ingenuousness. He prayed silently that she was not gullible and unable to see through it. Yet what could he do? He was not a fighting man. And even if he was, he was not certain of his standing yet with Lucy. He had no prior claim on her, save for this searing love he felt that so far had not been entirely reciprocated, nor yet showed many encouraging signs. This, he realised for the first time in his life, was how it felt to be jealous, and it was not a feeling he enjoyed.

Nobody else was clamouring to be served just then and Lucy turned to Arthur, moving along the bar to stand closer to him and so obviate the need to shout. ‘How’s your toothache, Arthur?’

‘It’s come back,’ he said and rubbed his cheek gently to indicate where the pain was centred.

‘Oh, that’s a shame …’ He had a short nose hair protruding from a nostril and Lucy focused on it almost to distraction. ‘Where’ve you been working today?’ she asked, managing to look away for a second.

‘Netherton. I had to work on a stone in St Andrew’s churchyard.’

‘Pity the weather’s turned, eh?’ But again she could not detach her eyes from this obnoxious nose hair, and yet she longed to. It was so off-putting.

‘You’re telling me! The wind blows up there at the top of Netherton Hill like it does in St Michael’s graveyard up the road. I swear I’ve caught a chill.’

‘Maybe you should have an early night then,’ she suggested, in the hope of avoiding any embarrassing situation later with her father present. ‘Have a nip of brandy and get yourself tucked up in bed all nice and warm, and sweat it out.’

‘I thought I’d wait and see if your father comes in. If he don’t, I’ll walk you home.’

‘He’s here already,’ she said, and nodded towards a group of men playing crib at a table behind him.

‘Oh? Which one’s your father?’

‘The one scratching his head under his hat.’

‘Maybe I should make myself known to him, Lucy …’

She felt a pang of apprehension at the notion. ‘What for?’

‘To tell him I’m walking out with you.’

This Arthur was taking too much for granted, and much too soon, but she hadn’t the heart to tell him so. ‘Maybe if you bought him a drink …’

‘A good idea, Lucy,’ he beamed, encouraged. ‘If you pour it, I’ll take it to him.’

‘I don’t think he’d take too kindly to having his match interrupted. Better if I beckon him, then he’ll come over when it’s finished.’

Lucy signalled her father and she continued making small talk with Arthur between serving customers. When Haden had finished his crib match he stood up.

‘Arthur,’ Lucy said hesitantly. ‘First I’ve just got to tell you …’

He looked at her anxiously, fearing she was going to let him down badly, that she was about to shatter his dreams by confessing she was already promised to another. ‘What?’

‘You’ve got a little hair sticking out down your nose.’

‘Oh,’ he exclaimed brightly, grinning with relief. ‘Have I?’

‘It’s driving me mad … Your left nostril.’

He found it and gave it a yank, then tilted the underside of his nose towards her for inspection. ‘Better?’

‘Yes, better,’ she said with a smile of gratitude. ‘Look, here he comes. I’ll pour the beer that you’re buying him.’

Haden Piddock presented himself at the bar, his old and crumpled top hat shoved to the back of his head. Arthur was instantly aware of his presence, a hefty man, big chested, but not running to fat. He sported a big droopy moustache and mutton-chop sideboards. His smouldering clay pipe was clenched between his teeth.

Lucy shoved a tankard of fresh ale in front of him. ‘This young man wanted to buy you a drink, Father,’ she said and tactfully moved away to collect empty tankards while they became acquainted.

Haden looked at Arthur suspiciously. ‘That’s decent of yer, son. To what do I owe the honour?’

Arthur felt a tickle inside his nose where he had pulled out the offending hair. He sneezed violently. ‘Oops. Sorry about that, Mr Piddock. I just pulled a hair from down me nose.’ He sneezed again. ‘To tell you the truth, I think I might have a chill coming an’ all.’

‘Sneedge over the other way next time, eh, son?’ Haden suggested pointedly. ‘I ain’t too keen on it tainting the beer what you very kindly bought me.’

‘My name’s Arthur Goodrich,’ Arthur said, stifling another sneeze with a violent sniff. ‘I wanted to make myself known to you, ’cause me and your Lucy have started walking out together.’

‘Oh?’ His eyes searched for his daughter. ‘Since when?’

‘Well … Since Sunday night.’

‘As long as that?’ Arthur thought he detected irony in Haden’s tone, but he missed the look of sardonic frivolity in his eyes. The older man lifted his tankard. ‘I wish you luck, lad.’

‘Thank you, Mr Piddock.’

Haden took a long drink. ‘It’s news to me about anybody stepping out with our Lucy … Did you say your name was Arthur?’ Arthur nodded. ‘I’d have appreciated you having a word with me fust, so’s I could’ve run me eye over thee …’

‘Oh, I would’ve, Mr Piddock, but I didn’t know who you was. Anyway, I’m here now. I thought it only right and proper that you know.’

‘Well then … Tell me about yourself, young Arthur. I hope your intentions towards me daughter am decent and honourable.’

‘Oh, yes, Mr Piddock,’ Arthur replied vehemently. ‘I’m a churchgoing man. A regular worshipper at St Michael’s and at Mr Hetherington’s Bible class. I believe in honour and virtue and clean living, Mr Piddock. Lucy’s honour is safe with me. Safe as the safest houses. You need have no fears.’

‘Well, I’m glad to hear it. ’Cause so sure as ever anything amiss happened to our Lucy, and it was down to thee, I’d separate ye from your manhood.’

Arthur winced at the terrifying prospect. ‘Like I say, Mr Piddock. You need have no fears.’

‘Good.’ Haden lifted his tankard and emptied it. ‘Here, let me buy thee a drink now, just to set a seal on our understanding, eh? Same again, lad?’ In Lucy’s continued absence he called Ben Elwell’s wife to serve him. ‘What do you do for a living, young Arthur?’

Arthur told him.

‘Goodrich, did you say your name was?’

‘Yes. Arthur Goodrich.’

‘Then you must be Jeremiah’s son?’

‘You know me father?’

‘I do, the miserable bastard.’

‘Oh, I agree with you a hundred percent.’ Arthur said. So there was some antagonism between Haden and his father.

‘I knew your mother, see.’

‘Oh? How d’you mean?’

‘Well, lad, I used to be sweet on your mother years ago, when she was Dinah Westwood.’

‘Honest?’ Arthur guffawed like a regular man of the world at the revelation. It was obviously the reason his father had such little regard for Haden Piddock.

‘Oh, aye. Not that your old chap had got much to fear from me. I was never high and mighty enough for your mother, being only an ironworker. Her father had a bit o’ property, I seem to remember, so nothing less than a stonemason, a skilled craftsman, was good enough for Dinah Westwood.’

‘Yes, she is a bit high-faluting, me mother,’ Arthur agreed amiably. ‘Puts on her airs and graces when she’s out.’

Haden guffawed amiably. He quite liked this son of Dinah Westwood, despite who his father was. ‘And who wouldn’t put on airs and graces if they was used to owning property?’

‘Owning property is all well and good, Mr Piddock, but the inside of our house is nothing to shout about. Be grateful that me father got her and you didn’t, else you’d be forever tidying up after her, especially if you was of a tidy nature.’

Haden laughed at Arthur’s candour, and Mrs Elwell put the two refilled tankards in front of them. Haden paid her and turned to Arthur.

‘Well … It done me a favour in the long run, young Arthur, and you’ve confirmed it. I started courting Hannah not long after that, and Hannah is a tidy woman. Very tidy. Hannah’s Lucy’s mother, you know.’

‘I hope to make her acquaintance some day.’

‘And so you might, lad. All in good time, I daresay. So I expect you’ll want to walk our Lucy home after, eh?’

Arthur beamed. ‘If it’s all the same to you, sir.’

‘Aye, well just remember, I’ll be right behind thee, so no shenanigans.’

‘No shenanigans, Mr Piddock, I promise. Thank you.’

Arthur was pleased with the progress he’d made in establishing himself so soon with Lucy’s father. That evening, he walked her home proprietorially, leaving Haden behind in the Whimsey.

‘I like your father, Lucy.’

‘I told you he’s a decent man.’

‘He is, and no two ways. Maybe I’ll meet your mother soon.’

She chuckled. ‘Soon enough, I daresay, at the rate you’re going.’

They were approaching Bull Street where Church Street levelled out like a shelf before commencing its long descent into Audnam, the stretch known as Brettell Lane.

‘Shall I come and meet you tomorrow after me Bible class?’

‘It’ll be too late, Arthur.’

‘But your father knows we’re walking out together.’

‘I’d rather wait till Sunday to see you, like we arranged.’

‘What about Friday? I could come to the Whimsey again and walk you home.’

‘I’d rather wait till Sunday, Arthur,’ she persisted.

Arthur sighed. ‘I want to be with you, Lucy,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t put palings up around yourself as if you was some special tree in a park.’

‘I’m not,’ she protested mildly, but touched by his tenderness.

‘Well, it seems to me as if you are.’ He thought painfully of the young man with the confident bluster whom she’d served earlier. ‘Do you see some other chap some nights?’

‘No, I don’t,’ she replied, as if he had a damned cheek to suggest such a thing.

‘So why don’t you want to see me sooner than Sunday?’

‘’Cause I feel that you’re rushing me, Arthur. I don’t want to be rushed.’

‘You mean you’re not sure about me?’

‘Yes … No … Oh, I don’t know … I mean, I like you and all that …’

Arthur sighed again frustratedly. ‘But?’

‘But I’ve only known you a few days. You can’t expect me to be at your beck and call when I’ve only known you a few days. It takes longer than that.’

‘I’m sorry, Lucy,’ he said pensively. ‘I suppose you’re right. It’s just that I’m a bit impatient …’ He looked at her in the moonlight, his heart overflowing with tenderness. He reached out and took her hands, holding the tips of her fingers gently. ‘Haven’t you ever wondered whether your perfect mate would ever come along, Lucy?’

‘Many a time,’ Lucy answered quietly, content that it was the simple truth.

‘Well, Lucy, I feel that you’re my perfect mate … I know it’s a bit soon to be professing love and all that, and I’m not … not yet …’cause I might yet be wrong. But it’s what I feel at this minute. And knowing what I feel at this minute, I get impatient and hurt that you keep putting me off so as I can’t be near you.’

‘Oh, Arthur …’ Lucy realised right then what agonies he was suffering on her account, and felt ashamed that she should be making another person unhappy – another person who actually held her in high esteem. If the situation were reversed she would not relish being made unhappy. But she really was not sure of what she might feel for Arthur in the future that she did not feel now, and it was no good saying she was. She did need time to discover. Maybe, given time, she might grow to love him; he was a deserving case, he seemed a good man. But she didn’t fancy him enough, and she had to fancy somebody before she could commit herself. Why wasn’t he that man in the guards’ van on the railway? If only he was that man, she would want to be with him every night that God sent, especially if he was as gentle as Arthur.

‘But how can you feel like that, Arthur, when you’ve only known me five minutes?’ she asked. ‘You don’t know anything about me. I might not be worthy of your … your tender feelings.’

‘In the long run, Lucy, you might turn out to be right. I only said, it’s what I feel now.’

‘You’re a really nice chap, you know,’ she said sensitively, and meant it.

‘I am as I am, Lucy. I can’t help the way I am, no more than you can help the way you are. But I’ll heed your words. I’ll make myself wait till Sunday to see you again …’

‘It’ll be for the best,’ she agreed, and stepped forward with a smile and planted a kiss briefly on his lips. ‘I’ll see you Sunday then, like we arranged. Here at three.’

Arthur felt the use drain out of his very being at the touch of her lips on his as he watched her walk away, a silhouette in the darkness. It was such a fleeting but a blissfully tender moment, a moment he would never forget, whatever might befall them.

Chapter 5

Jane and Moses Cartwright lived in a tiny rented house situated on a steep hill called South Street. It was no great distance from Haden and Hannah Piddock’s equally humble abode, but to visit his young wife’s mother and father was a trouble for Jane’s husband, since he had to do it on crutches. Moses had received a gunshot wound in his leg during the siege of Sebastopol, which had shattered the shin bone. His leg had consequently been amputated below the knee, and Moses was still not certain which had been the more traumatic of the two terrifying experiences, the shell wound or the amputation. But at least he had survived both, and he lived to tell the tale. Indeed, he loved to tell the tale. He told it well to Jane Piddock on his return to England. He had courted Jane before he went to war and she was heartbroken when he went. His returning minus half a limb did not deter Jane and she agreed to marry him, despite the fact that everybody said he would be unable to work. She still had her own job moulding firebricks at the fireclay works. She could keep them both on the little money she earned, with a bit of help from her father.

That Thursday evening, they ventured slowly to Bull Street, as they had begun to do on a regular basis since Moses had returned from the Crimea. The light was fading and, at each step, Moses was chary as to where he planted his crutch lest he found a loose stone on which it might slip and upset his balance. They arrived at the Piddocks’ cottage without mishap, however, and Moses was accorded due reverence and made to rest on the settle in front of the fire.

‘Our Lucy, pop up to the Whimsey and fetch we a couple o’ jugs o’ beer,’ Haden said when his older daughter and son-in-law arrived.

‘Give me the money then,’ Lucy answered.

So Haden handed her a sixpence, whereupon she duly found the two jugs and ran to the public house. When she returned, he thanked her and shared the beer between them all, pouring it into mugs.

‘How’s that gammy leg o’ yourn, Moses?’ Haden enquired and slurped his beer.

‘It’s bin giving me some gyp today, Haden, and no question. D’you know, I can still feel me toes sometimes, as if they was still on the end o’ me leg. You wouldn’t credit that, would yer?’

‘Well, at least you ain’t got no toenails to cut there now, eh?’

Moses laughed generously. ‘Aye, that’s some consolation.’

‘There’s plenty of talk about the Crimea and that Florence Nightingale,’ Hannah said as she darned a hole in one of Haden’s socks. ‘I bet you happened on her when you was lying in that hospital, eh?’

‘I was nowhere near Florence Nightingale, Mother.’ Moses referred to Hannah as Mother, but to Haden by his first name. ‘Nor any hospital for that matter. Her hospital was at Scutari, miles from where we was.’

‘So who looked after yer?’

‘There was a kind old black woman they called Mother Seacole.’

‘A black woman?’ Hannah questioned, looking up from her mending.

‘Ar. All the way from Jamaica. A free black woman at that. She crossed the ocean just to help out when she heard about the sufferings at the Battle of the Alma. Her father was a Scotsman by all accounts, a soldier. I reckon she knew a thing or two about soldiering as well as nursing. Anyroad, she set up a sort of barracks close to Balaclava, and she nursed me there and a good many like me. She used to serve us sponge cake and lemonade, and all the men thought the bloody world of her. I did meself.’ Moses smiled as he recalled the woman’s kindnesses. ‘But that Florence Nightingale and her crew would have nothing to do with her, everybody reckoned. Stuck up, ’er was. I could never understand that … It was ’cause Mother Seacole was a black woman, they all said … Anyroad, that Florence Nightingale was generally treating them poor buggers in her hospital what had got the cholera or the pox. And there was thousands of ’em, I can tell yer. We lost more soldiers to cholera than we did in the Battle of the Alma, they reckon.’

‘Did you ever see anything o’ the Battle of Balaclava?’ Haden asked.

‘Not me, Haden. But I heard tales from them as did. Bloody lunatics them cavalry of ourn, by all accounts.’

‘I’d hate war,’ Lucy said. ‘I can’t see any point to it.’

Haden looked at his younger daughter with admiration. ‘Our Lucy’s a-courting now, you know.’

‘Courting?’ Jane queried with an astonished grin. ‘It’s about time. Who’m you courting, our wench?’

‘I ain’t courting,’ Lucy protested coyly.

‘Well, she’s got a chap who reckons he’s a-courting her.’

‘Arthur Goodrich bought you a tankard o’ beer to get on the right side of you, Father. I’ve seen him once or twice, but it don’t mean I’m courting serious.’

‘So what’s up with this Arthur Goodrich?’ Jane enquired.

‘Oh, he’s decent enough, our Jane, and respectable. I’m sure he’d be very kind and caring, but I just don’t fancy him.’

‘You mean he ain’t handsome enough?’ Jane prompted.

‘Handsome is as handsome does,’ Hannah opined, and withdrew the wooden mushroom from the inside of Haden’s mended sock. ‘I married your father for his ways, not his looks. I’d never have married him for his looks. I’d never have found ’em for a start.’

Lucy chuckled at her mother’s disdain and her father’s hurt expression. ‘Poor Father.’

‘I married you for your money, Hannah, but I ain’t found that yet neither. I wonder who got the best o’ the bargain.’

‘You did, Haden. You got me. All I got was you.’

‘He does strike me as being a bit of a fool, that Arthur, now you mention it, our Lucy,’ Haden pronounced. ‘Although he seems harmless enough. But fancy him thinking he can have you when you got your sights set on somebody who’s handsome enough to become a national monument. As if looks mattered, like your mother says.’

‘They matter to me,’ she answered quietly

‘Then, ’tis to be hoped as you grow out of it, our Lucy,’ Jane said in admonishment.

Lucy was at once conscious that Jane had agreed to marry Moses when he was not only very ordinary looking, but also physically mutilated, without one leg, without hope of work or anything approaching prosperity.

‘Every chap can’t be handsome, the same as every wench can’t be beautiful,’ Jane continued. ‘Looks am only skin deep anyroad. What more can you want from a man other than he be decent and honourable and caring? You want somebody who’ll look after you, and who you can look after in turn. Contentment is in being comfortable with somebody, our Lucy, not worrying about whether he’s got looks enough to turn other women’s heads. And you can be sure that some women would move hell and all to get their claws into that sort when your back’s turned, just because he’s blessed with an ’andsome fizzog.’

‘I never looked at it like that,’ Lucy admitted quietly.

‘Then p’raps it’s time you did.’

‘He sneedged into me beer, that King Arthur,’ Haden proclaimed. ‘I dain’t take very kindly to that. Said he’d got a chill coming.’

Lucy giggled. ‘He’s always got something coming. The very first time I ever saw him he had to run off because he’d got the diarrhee.’

The others laughed.

‘Maybe he’s got weak bowels,’ Hannah said. ‘There’s none of us perfect, like our Jane says.’

‘I wonder what his ailment will be when I see him Sunday afternoon?’

‘You’m seeing him Sunday afternoon?’ her mother queried. ‘Then you’d best bring him for tea. I’d like to meet this Arthur.’

‘But that’ll only encourage him, Mother.’

‘It sounds to me as if he’s worth encouraging, our Lucy. I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever find a chap.’

‘There’s nobody handsome enough nor perfect enough for our Lucy, Hannah,’ Haden said sardonically. He turned to Lucy. ‘What if he was the handsomest chap in the world and he still had the squits the fust time you met him? Would that put you off him?’

‘Oh, Father!’ Lucy protested, and everybody laughed. ‘Can we find something else to talk about?’

Next day, Friday, Jeremiah Goodrich was tempering re-sharpened chisels in the forge. Hard stone, like granite and marble, rapidly blunted the tips of the steel tools and they had to be heated in the forge till they glowed red, then quenched in cold water at a fairly precise moment in their cooling in order to harden them properly. As he withdrew several from the flames he heard a tap at the door and looked up to see who it was. The abominable animal that vaguely resembled a sheepdog stirred beneath the workbench and pointed its snout in the direction of a well-dressed man in expensive clothes who was standing in the doorway glowering.

‘Mr Goodrich?’

‘That’s me.’

‘My name is Onions. James Onions.’

The man was well-spoken and his name was recently familiar to Jeremiah. ‘How can I help thee, Mr Onions?’

‘I have a complaint. A rather serious complaint.’

‘Nothing too painful, I hope?’ Jeremiah said flippantly. ‘Mebbe you should be seeing a doctor, not me.’

‘I suppose I should have expected a frivolous reply,’ Mr Onions responded, ‘in view of the nature of my complaint.’

‘Which is?’

‘My wife called in here a matter of a couple of weeks ago to request that you add an epitaph, following the death of my mother, to the grave where she and my father, who passed away three years ago, are buried.’

‘I think you’ll find as the work’s bin done, Mr Onions, if you’d like to go and check.’ Jeremiah walked over to a high desk strewn with paper and started rummaging through them for confirmation.

‘I have checked, Mr Goodrich, which is why I’m here.’

‘St Mark’s churchyard in Pensnett, if I remember right,’ Jeremiah murmured, browsing. ‘So what’s the nature of your complaint? The work’s been completed like I said. Course, if you’ve come to pay for it, I ain’t made out the bill yet, but I can soon remedy that.’

‘Let me save you the trouble. I’m paying no bill until a brand new headstone is installed on the grave.’

‘A brand new headstone?’ Jeremiah scratched his head, mystified as to what could be so wrong that a brand new headstone would be justified.

‘Precisely. A brand new headstone. I have a note here of the inscription my family wanted putting on that headstone, Mr Goodrich …’ He felt in his pockets and drew out a piece of paper. ‘No doubt you already have a note of it still, somewhere …’

‘If you can just bear with me a minute, while I find it …’ Jeremiah rootled about again. ‘Ah! What’s this?’ He adjusted his spectacles and scrutinised the piece of paper. ‘To the memory of Jacob Onions who passed away 15th October 1853.’ He looked at his irate visitor. ‘That the one?’

‘That’s the one, Mr Goodrich. If you would be so kind as to read on …’

‘Farewell dear husband must we now part, who lay so near each other’s heart. The time will come I hope when we will both enjoy Felicity.’ Jeremiah looked up questioningly. ‘A fine sentiment, Mr Onions.’

‘The inscription we intended adding was also a fine sentiment, Mr Goodrich. But do you realise what we have ended up with?’

‘I can see what you was supposed to end up with …’

‘Excellent. Then you will realise that what we ended up with, and I quote, “Here also lies the body of Octavia Tether, obliging wife of Henry. May she be as willing in death as she was in life”, is not entirely supportive of my father’s spotless reputation. You have put him in bed with another woman, Mr Goodrich, and my family is not amused. Worse still, you have obviously despatched my honourable, devoted and alas dear departed mother to the bed of Henry Tether.’

‘Our Arthur!’ Jeremiah exclaimed with vitriol. ‘He did it. I’ll kill him, the bloody fool. I swear, I’ll kill him.’

‘I’m going for a drink in the Bell while you get the dinner ready, Mother,’ Arthur said as they stepped out of the pristine dimness of St Michael’s redbrick structure into the sunshine of a late September noon. ‘It’ll give me an appetite. I seem to have lost me appetite this last couple of days as well as this cold I’ve got.’

‘I’ll boil some nettles up in the cabbage, our Arthur,’ Dinah said sympathetically. ‘Nettles always help to keep colds and chills at bay. Your father could do with it as well. I’m sick of seeing him off the hooks all the while.’

Only Dinah accompanied Arthur to church that Sunday morning, since his father, Jeremiah, was at home in bed feeling out of sorts and very sorry for himself. Not that he was an ardent churchgoer; he would always seek some excuse to avoid Sunday worship.

‘By the way, I’m going out this afternoon, Mother.’

‘Oh? Do you think you’m well enough?’

He forced a grin. ‘I’d have to be dead not to go. Anyway, I’m hoping as your nettles will perk me up.’

Arthur left his mother and exited the churchyard by the Bell Street gate while she took a different way, walking with another woman down the broad path that spilled onto Church Street. He entered the Bell Hotel and ordered himself a tankard of best India pale ale which he took to an unoccupied table close to the fireplace. A man whom he knew did likewise, nodded a greeting and sat on a stool at another table. Arthur blew his nose on a piece of rag he took from his pocket, and sniffed. This damned head cold. He’d picked it up from that blustery graveyard at St Andrew’s in Netherton. By association, his thoughts meandered to that pair of headstones in Pensnett churchyard where he’d mixed up the inscriptions. Of course, it was because he’d been taken short while he was doing them. He’d not been concentrating. And how could he when his bowels had been about to explode? Well, it would cost him dear, for his father was adamant that he pay for new headstones himself as punishment. Nor would he be paid for cutting the letters, and he’d better get them right this time.

He stuffed the rag back in his jacket pocket and pondered Lucy Piddock instead. This day had been a long time coming and he’d been counting the hours till he could see her again. It seemed ages since he’d last seen her, and he was by no means sure she cared anything for him at all. But he was hopeful that at least he might have her father on his side.

Four men approached. Two were familiar.

‘D’you mind shifting along the settle, mate?’ one of them said. ‘We’n got a crib match.’

‘Glad to oblige,’ Arthur replied amenably. He removed his tankard from the table as he shifted along the bench that lined the wall on one side of the room and placed it on the next. ‘Are you playing for money?’

‘There’s no point in it unless yo’ am,’ was the pithy reply.

Arthur watched as they began their play, amazed that grown men could become so absorbed in something which he considered so trivial. He finished his beer, stood up and made his way to the bar for another. When he’d got it he turned around to go back to his seat only to see that somebody else was occupying it. The room was filling up so he decided instead to stand by the bar and quietly finish his drink there. Most of the patrons he knew, some only by sight, but those he was better acquainted with merely nodded. He watched, envious of the banter they shared, and it struck him that nobody was bothering to engage him in conversation. Not that he minded right then; he sometimes found it difficult to converse with folk, especially when he was nursing a cold or toothache, and so preferred to be left alone anyway. He leisurely finished what remained of his beer and slipped out to go home, unnoticed by anybody.

It was strong beer they brewed in Brierley Hill and it had gone straight to Arthur’s head. It was on account of the head cold, of course. Two drinks didn’t normally affect him. It did the trick for his appetite, though, for now he was ravenously hungry, feeling weak and wobbly at the knees.

Arthur sliced the joint of pork that Dinah had roasted in the cast iron range in the scullery, while she drained the cabbage and the potatoes.

‘I could do with a maid,’ she complained, shrouded in steam. ‘Nobody ever thinks of any help for me.’

‘Tell Father.’

‘Your father wouldn’t pay out good money for a maid,’ Dinah said. ‘Mind you, he has a lot of other expense … Here, our Arthur … Take his dinner up to him. He wants to see you anyroad.’

‘Shall I take him some beer up?’

‘No,’ Dinah snapped. ‘Why waste good beer on him? I’ll finish it meself.’

Arthur did as he was bid. He found Jeremiah lying flat on his back, his eyes closed and his hands pressed together as if in supplication. He opened one eye when he heard Arthur enter the room.

‘What’n we got for we dinners?’

‘Pork.’

‘Blasted pork! Your saft mother knows as pork serves me barbarous. So what does her keep on giving me? Blasted pork! It’s a bloody scandal. It’s a bloody conspiracy. I swear as her’s trying to see me off.’

‘Well, when the time comes I’ll do you a nice headstone, Father,’ Arthur replied, inspired by the thought.

‘Oh, ar? Then mek sure as yo’ get the inscription right this time.’

‘Oh, I’ll dream up a good one for you, Father. Anyway, I apologised for that one,’ Arthur said defensively. ‘I told you, it was the time I was took short.’

‘Well, sometimes I think you’ve bin took short of brains, if you want my opinion.’

‘I wasn’t concentrating, I told you. My mind was on other things.’

‘Be that as it may, you owe me compensation for making me look such a fool.’

‘Compensation? What do you mean, compensation? I’ve already agreed to pay for two new headstones out of me own wages.’

‘I want you to collect a debt this afternoon,’ Jeremiah said, making a meal of sitting up in bed so that he could take the old wooden tray on which his Sunday dinner was presented.

‘What debt?’ Arthur asked suspiciously. ‘And why this afternoon?’

‘I want you to fetch some money off a customer called George Parsons. Money he’s owed me too long. He’ll be expecting you, but he reckons he’ll be gone out by three o’ clock.’

Arthur handed Jeremiah the tray. ‘But I’m supposed to be going out this afternoon, Father. It’s been arranged all week. I’m meeting somebody at three and it’s two already, and I ain’t had me dinner yet.’

‘Well, it can’t be helped.’ Jeremiah picked up his knife and fork and began hacking at the pork that served his system so barbarously. ‘It’s money I’ve been trying to get hold of for ages. If I was well enough I’d go meself, but I ain’t, and there’ll be no other chance till next Sunday. He works away, see, does this George Parsons – Stafford way. He only comes home at weekends.’

‘But, Father, I’ve arranged to meet somebody and I’m not going to let them down. Anyway, where’s he live, this perishing George Parsons?’

‘Pensnett. Near to Corbyn’s Hall. I’ll tell you the address.’

‘But I shan’t have time to go there.’

‘Damn me!’ Jeremiah exclaimed huffily. ‘After that stupid sodding blunder you made last week …’ He shook his ruefully. ‘After all I do for you, and you can’t run one little bloody errand for me. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, our Arthur. Anyroad, it’s firm’s money. It’s for your own benefit as it’s collected. When I’m dead and gone …’

‘Tell me the damned address then,’ Arthur said with exasperation. It was typical of his father to spoil whatever he’d planned. ‘I ought to charge you commission for debt-collecting.’

Jeremiah told him the address and Arthur went downstairs disgruntled. If it took longer than he thought he was certain to miss Lucy. So he bolted his Sunday dinner and left the house without even having any pudding, losing no time in putting a hastily formed plan into effect. He didn’t want to give Lucy the impression that he didn’t care or that he was unreliable. Already the ground was slipping from under his feet where she was concerned. He must not make matters worse by any perceived disregard for her.

Corbyn’s Hall was a couple of miles away, too far to walk there and back in the time allowed. The only answer was to go on horseback. He harboured a distinct dislike of riding and horses. Or was it merely a dislike of their own wretched horses? He seemed to hold no sway with them, even when he drove the cart. But the weather was fine for a ride and, at a steady trot, he should be there and back in the three-quarters of an hour that was left before he was due to meet Lucy.

The equestrian stock of Jeremiah Goodrich and Sons, stonemasons and sepulchral architects, comprised two sturdy but ageing mares whose terms of reference suggested that they generally hauled the cart, for they were seldom ridden. They were the equine embodiment of lethargy, artfulness developed over years, and not a little spite. Arthur took down a set of reins from the stable wall and forced the bit into the mouth of one of the mares, called Quenelda. She was the older and scruffier of the two, but usually the most co-operative, a quality Arthur had taken into account. Quenelda’s mane sprouted only in places, like sparse tufts of grass poking through a neglected pavement. He coaxed the horse outside and mounted without a saddle, since he didn’t have time to find it and tack up. But the horse’s sharp-edged back and broad girth elicited concern for his manhood and the potential for damage to it.

Seated on the horse, he looked around him pensively, first gazing towards Withymoor, then across the valley to Audnam and Stourbridge in the opposite direction to that which he must go. His fingers clutched the reins tensely as a barge and attendant bargee glided as one along the Stourbridge Canal, drawn by a hack almost as unattractive as his own. The bargee was singing some unsavoury ditty as he headed for the Nine Locks where doubtless he would get his belly, and his wife’s, filled with ale.

Arthur pulled on the rein. ‘Gee up, Quenelda!’ As the horse turned around he looked up the yard and onto the Delph in anticipation.

But Quenelda had ideas of her own. Sunday was her day of rest, and long years of experience had led her to recognise it. If man did not work on the Sabbath, then she did not work on the Sabbath either. The mare thus made her way back to the stable with no regard for Arthur who was tugging manfully at the reins. Passing through the stable door, Arthur was not quick enough to duck, by dint of the alcohol he had consumed, and ended up banging his head and acquiring a nasty cut across his eyebrow. Angry and frustrated, he got down from the horse and dabbed the cut with the rag from his pocket.

‘Listen, you,’ he snorted impatiently, punching the animal hard on the nose, ‘we’d better sort out who’s gaffer here.’ He grabbed a stick for good measure and led the horse out again. When he mounted Quenelda she made for the stable once more. ‘The other way, you varmint.’

Arthur hit the mare on the rump with the stick, pulling hard on the reins. He succeeded in turning her around, but she veered again crab-fashion towards the stable. Cursing bitterly, he lashed at the horse’s rump once more. As far as Quenelda was concerned this was the limit. She reared up on her hind legs in an attempt to unseat him. Arthur saved himself by grabbing one of the tufts of mane and gripping his legs tightly around her belly. It was a war of wills. For what seemed like an eternity Arthur clung on while Quenelda was bent on throwing him off. While he could hold on to her sparse mane Arthur felt secure enough … but his hands were becoming sweaty with the exertion, and the tuft was becoming slippery. He lost his grip.

It became desperate. Quenelda reared up high and whinnied, beating the air with her front hoofs. Arthur snatched at the mane, held on and righted himself just in time, as much to save messing up his best Sunday clothes as to avoid hurting himself more.

‘You won’t get the better of me,’ he rasped determinedly. ‘Enough of your vile behaviour.’

The mare spun round and round on her hind legs and Arthur caught sight of their conjoined shadow spinning beneath him. But he had no time to study the aesthetics of shadow dancing, for his legs had become tired and weak, aching inexorably from perpetually pressing into Quenelda’s sides for grip. He lost hold and, as he became unseated, he felt his body twist around violently while the mare bucked and pranced with all the vigour of a whirlwind. In frantic desperation he reached out and grabbed what he thought was the patchy mane to save himself from falling to the ground and hurting himself. In that same instant, the mare was under the impression that she had at last thrown her rider and returned all four feet to the ground. Arthur quickly realised that his position on the horse was quite unorthodox as he clutched its tail. Then he beheld his mother emerging from the scullery wiping her hands on a towel.

‘Th’oss’ll think yo’m saft, sitting the wrong road round.’

‘I don’t care much what it thinks.’

‘What yer doing with her?’

Arthur sighed with impatience at having to explain. ‘I’m trying to teach her the gentle art of wrestling, Mother,’ he answered with measured sarcasm. His collar was agape from the tussle and his waistcoat had parted company with his trousers, leaving his shirt half hanging out.

‘Couldn’t you find ne’er a saddle?’

‘I thought I hadn’t got time to look.’

‘Hold on …’ Dinah went into the stable and came back lugging an old mildewed saddle. ‘Get down.’

He got down.

‘Put this hoss back in the stable and fetch out the other un.’

‘Why?’

‘’Cause this’n’s took umbrage at thee, that’s why. Yo’ll do no good with this’n today.’

‘Oh.’ Arthur did as he was told and emerged from the stable leading Roxanne, an equally tatty mount.

‘Now fasten this saddle on her,’ Dinah said. ‘Roxanne won’t mind you trying to ride her. I’ll help you, shall I?’

‘I’d be obliged.’

Together, they saddled up Roxanne and Arthur mounted the mare, but gingerly. To his immense relief, this mare made no fuss and actually responded to his signal to go. He rode out of the yard and was on his way.

They did the journey to Pensnett at a steady trot that shook Arthur’s dinner and his beer about somewhat. He contemplated the tussle with Quenelda. He had stuck doggedly to the task of making the mare see who was master. Horses were like women. If only he could apply the same resolve to women. If only he could apply it to Lucy.

Chapter 6

Lucy Piddock waited and waited for Arthur Goodrich to show up. She reckoned she’d been waiting a good quarter of an hour before she realised it was futile to wait any longer. Evidently she’d put him off with her indifference when he walked her home on Wednesday. Well, who would have thought it? Yet who could blame him? If she returned home now and had to tell her folks that King Arthur – as her father had started calling him – had not turned up she would be a laughing stock. Jane would say that it served her right for being dissatisfied with him just because he didn’t have the looks of a god. So would her mother. Her father would think it the funniest thing out and would guffaw for the rest of the afternoon and possibly into the night as well.

It was a dirty trick, not turning up when you’d arranged to meet somebody. All morning she’d worked hard, getting her domestic chores done while her mother was at the Baptist chapel, so that she could spend the afternoon with him. Well, he obviously didn’t deserve it, the charlatan. All the time this Arthur must have been stringing her along …

But she remembered his words on Wednesday night, that he believed he’d found his perfect mate in her. It was a gloriously tender moment and, if she was honest with herself, it had registered in her heart. She’d thought about those words a lot, his sincerity, his reserve. Of course, after what she’d said to everybody, it would be hard to say now that she’d changed her mind about Arthur, but he had definitely gone up in her estimation. It was a pity he was not going to show up now to reap the benefit.

So she waited a little longer, hurt and disappointed. Yet the longer she waited, the more the hurt and disappointment diminished and were replaced by agitation. If he had the gall to turn up now after keeping her waiting so long, all he would get would be her scorn. She adjusted her shawl ready to cross the road back to Bull Street, determined to wait no longer.

As she looked up the hill towards the church she spied a mangy horse going at a tidy canter, the rider waving his hat like a lunatic. She could hear him calling something, warning everybody that the animal had taken fright and he had lost control, she supposed. But, as he got closer, she could see that the madman was none other than Arthur Goodrich. Torn between her pique at having been kept waiting for so long and a natural curiosity that must be satisfied as to what the hell he was up to, she stood waiting for him to reach her, unsure quite how she should behave towards him now.

‘Whoa!’ he yelled and there was a clatter of hoofs on the cobbles as the forlorn mare scraped to a halt. Arthur was out of breath. ‘Sorry I’m late, Lucy.’

‘It’s too late to be sorry,’ she replied, deciding to manifest her scornful side. ‘I’m going back home.’

‘Oh, wait, Lucy.’ He sounded irritated and impatient at what he deemed unreasonableness. ‘If you knew the trouble I’ve had you’d be very understanding. I didn’t mean to keep you waiting. I’ve gone through hell and high water to get here on time.’

‘You didn’t get here on time.’

‘I know that. But I still went through hell and high water.’ He dismounted and stood before her. ‘I had to run an errand for my old man. He’s bad abed.’

‘What’s up with him?’ she asked indifferently.

‘God knows. With any luck it’ll be terminal.’

‘I thought you didn’t like riding horses,’ she said, softening.

‘I don’t. I loathe and detest the bloody things. Damned stupid animals. But if I’d walked I’d never have got here.’

‘What’ve you done to your eyebrow? It’s cut and bleeding.’

‘I know.’ He put his fingers to it gingerly.

‘Let me have a look at it.’

Obediently he bent his head forward and she inspected the wound, putting her gentle fingers to his temples. He felt a surge of blood through his body at her warm touch.

‘I think it’ll be all right,’ she said softly. ‘It needs a smear of ointment on it. How did you do it?’

‘I banged my head on a lintel.’

‘Banged your head on a lintel?’ she repeated, incredulous. ‘You aren’t that tall.’ He explained in detail how it had happened and her pique melted away with her peals of laughter. ‘I’ve never known anybody like you for getting in the wars,’ she said. ‘It’s one calamity after another with you.’

‘So do you forgive me, Lucy … for being late?’

‘Oh, I suppose so.’

‘I won’t do it again.’ He sniffed audibly.

‘You’ve got a cold.’

‘I know. A stinker.’ He snivelled again to emphasise the fact.

‘So where are you taking me? And is the horse going to play gooseberry?’

‘If it’s all the same to you, Lucy, we’ll take the horse back together and put her in the stable. After cricket practice last evening I went rabbit shooting over Bromley, and there’s a brace of the little buggers I want to give you for your mother. They’ll make a fine dinner.’

She smiled appreciatively. ‘That’ll please her. Thank you, Arthur. I’ll give one to our Jane.’

As they made their way towards the Goodrich’s house and yard Lucy explained about the poverty in which Jane and her new husband lived, on account of his handicap.

‘She’s a brave girl, marrying somebody lame like that,’ Arthur commented, leading the horse by its halter.

‘She loves him,’ Lucy conceded. ‘But I’d think twice about marrying a cripple.’ She shuddered at the thought. ‘I don’t think I could do it.’

‘But he’s a hero, Lucy. He was fighting for queen and country. He has to be admired. And your Jane is his just reward for his self-sacrifice. Besides, love overcomes all.’

They arrived at the yard and Arthur tacked down while Lucy looked about her at the separate stacks of both cut and unhewn stone, the slabs of marble and slate, the various urns and vases that would end up adorning graves.

She patted Roxanne’s long, dappled face. ‘He’s a scruffy devil in’t he, this horse?’

‘He’s a mare, Lucy.’ Arthur grinned with amusement at her failure to recognise the fact.

‘He’s still a scruffy devil, mare or no. Don’t nobody ever groom him?’

‘You can come and do it, if you’re so concerned.’

‘Would I get paid?’

‘By my old man?’ Arthur lifted the saddle off the mare and turned to take it into the stable. ‘You’d be lucky to get a kind look,’ he said over his shoulder and pointed resentfully to an upstairs window. ‘You’d have to catch him on one of his better days, and they’re few and far between.’

He backed the mare into the stable, made sure she was settled and emerged into the sunshine to shut the door behind him with a self-satisfied grin on his face.

‘That Quenelda was a bit fidgety when I went in there just,’ he said smugly. ‘She knows I ain’t standing no more messing off her. Come on, Lucy, let’s go in the house. You can meet my mother.’

‘D’you think I should?’

‘Yes, course. I want her to meet you.’

It was a large house compared to the tiny cottage that Lucy and her family lived in, but it was by no means grand. Her own mother would have a fit if she walked into this hallway and saw all the clutter, the unswept flags, and the dust that lay like a dulling film over the wooden furniture. Lucy felt like taking a duster and a tin of wax polish to everything to freshen it up, to try and eliminate the dusky smell that pervaded the place.

They found Dinah in the parlour peeling an apple into her lap, a tumbler of whisky with easy reach. Her mouth dropped open when she saw a pretty girl at her son’s side.

‘Mother, this is Lucy. Lucy’s my girl, and I brought her home so you could meet her.’

‘I wish to God I’d a-knowed yo’ was bringing a wench back here,’ Dinah admonished. She rose from her seat, grabbing the apple peel to save it falling on the floor. ‘I’d have put me a decent frock on and done me hair. He never tells me nothing, you know … Did he say your name was Lucy?’

Lucy nodded and smiled uncertainly, afraid that Arthur had not chosen a good moment to present her to the unprepared and disorderly Mrs Goodrich.

‘Never mind about your frock, Mother,’ Arthur said. ‘We ain’t come to see you in a mannequin parade. We’ve come to get a couple o’ them rabbits what me and our Talbot shot yesterday. I said I’d give a couple to Lucy for her mother.’

‘Do I know your mother, Lucy?’ Dinah asked trying to show an interest in this vaguely familiar face. She put down the apple, together with its cut peel and the knife she was using, on top of a news sheet that lay on the table beside her.

‘No, but you used to know her father,’ Arthur replied for her, with a look of devilment.

‘Oh? Who’s your father, then?’

‘Haden Piddock.’

‘He used to be sweet on you, didn’t he, Mother?’ Arthur was grinning inanely.

‘Haden Piddock … By God, that was a long time ago.’

Lucy noticed the instant softening in Mrs Goodrich’s eyes as she recalled the lost years. Maybe, all those years ago, there had been a spark of something between her father and this woman. She could hardly conceive of him giving her a second glance now, but she might have been a pretty young thing once. It was such a shame, Lucy thought, that age and the years eventually robbed everybody of any gloss and sparkle, which was generally at its brightest around the age of twenty … in women anyway. Some men never sparkled at all though. You only had to look at Arthur …

‘Well, fancy you being Haden’s daughter. I tek it as you’m the youngest.’

‘That’s right, Mrs Goodrich.’

‘Well, why don’t you stop and have a drop o’ summat to drink? I got a nice bit o’ pork pie on the cold slab an’ all, as I’m sure you’d enjoy. It was made from one o’ Mrs Costins’s pigs up the Delph … and you look as if you could do with feeding up a bit.’

‘No, we ain’t stopping, Mother,’ Arthur reasserted. ‘We’ve only come to get the rabbits. But Lucy can come another Sunday, eh, Lucy?’

Lucy nodded politely. ‘Yes, I’d like to.’

Arthur went to the brewhouse and returned with four rabbits wrapped in old newsprint. ‘There’s two for your mother and two for your Jane,’ he said proudly.

‘How many did you shoot?’ Dinah asked, as if he might be giving too many away.

‘Eighteen. Me and Talbot had nine apiece.’

‘It’s very kind of you, Arthur,’ Lucy said sincerely. ‘Thank you. My mother and sister will be ever so pleased.’

Arthur smiled, delighted that he’d earned some esteem from his girl. ‘Come on, we’ll go and deliver ’em now, eh?’

‘I can see now why he was in such a rush to get out afore,’ Dinah said, looking judiciously at Lucy. ‘’Cause he’d arranged to see you, young Lucy. He was getting into a tidy pickle with that cantankerous old mare we’n got when he knew he’d got to run an errand for his father.’

‘How is Mr Goodrich?’ Lucy enquired. ‘Arthur tells me he’s bad a-bed. What’s the matter with him?’

‘Mrs Costins’s pig,’ Dinah replied matter-of-factly. ‘He had some pork yesterday. So sure as he touches a bit o’ pork it’s all over with him. When I went to fetch his plate after his dinner I swear as he was praying to the Lord, asking Him to ease his suffering.’

‘He should be ashamed troubling the Lord of a Sunday afternoon for the sake of a bit o’ wind,’ Arthur remarked acidly, ‘when a dose of bicarbonate of soda would set him straight.’

‘I’ll tek him some up after,’ Dinah said.

‘No, let him suffer.’

‘Our Arthur’s got no respect for his father, you know, Lucy. Am you sure you won’t stop and have a bit o’ pork pie? It’s beautiful. I doubt whether I ever med better. I’m sure as the good Lord must’ve bin in the oven with ’em a-Friday when they was a-baking.’

‘I told you, Mother, we’re going now.’

Dinah gazed at her visitor critically. ‘But look at the wench, our Arthur, her could do with feeding up a bit. A bit o’ me pork pie would do her the world o’ good. Am yer sure yo’m all right, young Lucy? You look pale to me, an’ all.’

‘I feel perfectly well, Mrs Goodrich—’

‘Well, I’m glad to hear it. Mind you, I’ve heard it said as pale folk am often the healthiest, though they mightn’t be the handsomest … But it’s better to be healthy than handsome, I always say. Mind you, him upstairs is neither … Shall I cut a piece o’ me pie to take to your father? He could have it for his snap tomorrow at work.’

‘That would be ever so kind, Mrs Goodrich …’

‘So this is Arthur,’ Hannah Piddock said, standing up to welcome the young man who had seen fit to start stepping out with her youngest daughter. She looked him up and down circumspectly. ‘Well, he ain’t as bad looking as you made him out to be, our Lucy. I expected somebody with a face like a bag o’ spanners.’

‘I never said any such thing,’ Lucy at once countered, embarrassed that her mother should have been so tactless as to repeat in front of Arthur what she had said.

Arthur looked first at Lucy, then at her mother, and grinned sheepishly. ‘I know I’m no oil painting, Mrs Piddock. I couldn’t blame Lucy for saying so.’

‘Arthur’s given us some rabbits, Mother. Haven’t you, Arthur? Two for us and two for our Jane.’

‘And there’s plenty more where they came from,’ he said stoutly. ‘My brother and me often go shooting ’em over Bromley.’

‘That’s ever so kind, Arthur. Why, our Jane will be ever so grateful an’ all.’

‘It’s no trouble, Mrs Piddock. I understand her husband can’t work. I’m glad to help out.’

He looked about him. The room was tiny with a small cast iron range in which a coal fire burned brightly, a polished coal scuttle stood to one side. The mantel shelf above was edged with pristine white lace. On it stood two small crock urns, one at each end, and in the middle a sparkling mirror hung. In front of the hearth was a wooden settle with chenille covered squabs neatly placed. A rocking chair was set beside it turned in towards the fire, and in it dozed Haden Piddock after his drinking spree at the Whimsey. Under the window that looked out onto the street stood a small square table covered in a lace-edged cloth, and three chairs set around it. All modest and unassuming, but its unsullied cleanliness and cosiness struck Arthur. Nothing was out of place, and it all looked invitingly spruce and bright, unlike his own home.

‘Arthur’s mother’s sent some of her fresh pork pie for me father’s snap,’ Lucy said.

‘That’s very thoughtful of her, Arthur. Be sure to thank her for me.’

‘I will, Mrs Piddock.’

‘That’s a stinking cold you’ve got there, young Arthur. Let me give you a drop of hot rum with some sugar in it.’

Arthur grinned with appreciation. ‘That sounds too good to miss, Mrs Piddock.’

‘Well, one good turn … And I warrant as it’ll make you feel better.’

Haden woke himself up with a sudden rasping snort, and looked about him, disorientated for a few seconds. ‘Well, I’m buggered,’ he said and rubbed his eyes. ‘It’s King Arthur …’

‘He’s a king and no two ways, Haden,’ Hannah declared. ‘He’s bought us some rabbits for a stew, and his mother’s sent yer a lovely piece o’ pork pie for your snap.’

‘His mother, eh?… What’s that he’s a-drinking?’

‘Hot rum and sugar.’

‘I thought I could smell rum. I’ll have some o’ that, an’ all, our Hannah.’

On the afternoon of the last Saturday in September Lucy Piddock and Miriam Watson decided to treat themselves. They took the train to Wolverhampton to visit the shops, a rare and exciting excursion. The journey took them through the Dudley Tunnel, when all was suddenly converted to blackness. The insistent rumble and click-clack of the iron wheels, traversing the joints of the iron track, took on a gravitas that was not only unheeded in daylight but augmented by the close confines of the tunnel. The two girls clutched each other for reassurance, lest they were each suddenly ravished by one of the occupying male passengers, even though they looked such ordinary and harmless men by the light of day.

‘Lord, I hope this thing don’t come to a stop while we’m in here,’ Miriam whispered. ‘What if the roof fell in and half of Dudley was to come crashing down on us?’

‘You’re full of pleasant thoughts,’ Lucy murmured. ‘I wish you wouldn’t say such things. You scare me.’

‘What if one o’ these Johnnies here jumped on we?’

‘I thought you liked men.’

‘I don’t mind ’em if I can see ’em. But it’d be just my luck to get the ugly un. And there must be nothing worse than realising you’ve had the ugly un when all of a sudden it gets light again and you’ve imagined you bin with the handsome un.’

However, they soon emerged into daylight at the new Dudley Station, which was still only half built. The train stopped to disgorge passengers and take on others before it resumed its journey through a stark and bewildering landscape of factories, pits and quarries interspersed with small impoverished-looking farms. Brown smoke swirled into the air from chimney stacks which were sprouting like bristles on a scrubbing brush. At Wolverhampton Low Level Station the locomotive hissed to a halt, and the coaches behind it nudged each other obsessively in their commitment to line up behind it.

The two girls stepped down from their third class accommodation onto the paved platform. There was a distinctly autumnal nip in the air, a sudden and drastic change from the Indian summer they’d enjoyed hitherto. As Lucy pulled her shawl more tightly round her shoulders as protection against the blustery wind, she instinctively glanced behind her towards the guards’ van. It was just possible that he might be on duty. But evidently he was not and, disappointed, she returned her attention to Miriam who had been telling her in hushed tones about the scandal of her cousin being put in the family way by a young lad of thirteen.

‘Serves her right,’ Miriam said as they walked out of the station. ‘She must’ve bin leading him on, showing him the ropes if I know her, the dirty madam. I mean, you don’t expect a lad of thirteen to know all about that sort o’ thing, do yer? A wench, yes, but not a lad. Lads of that age am a bit dense when it comes to that sort o’ thing.’

‘So how old is this cousin of yours?’ Lucy asked.

‘Twenty-six. It’s disgusting if you ask me. Mind you, she’s nothing to look at. You couldn’t punch clay uglier. She’s got a figure like a barrel o’ lard an’ all, and legs like tree trunks. Couldn’t get a decent chap her own age, I reckon.’

‘So is she going to marry this young lad, Miriam?’

‘It’s what everybody expects, to mek an honest chap o’ the poor little sod. Mind you, if I was his mother I’d have summat to say. I’d tell him to run for his life and not come a-nigh till he was old enough to grow a beard that’d hide his fizzog and save him being recognised.’

‘So you think it’s her fault?’

‘I do, and no two ways. But who in their right mind would want to get married anyroad, let alone to her? Do you ever want to get married, Luce?’

‘Yes, some day … to the right chap.’

‘But the Lord created us all single, Luce. If He’d wanted us to be married, we’d have been born married. If you look at it that way why fidget to get married? Why rush to bear a chap’s children and his tantrums?’

‘I ain’t fidgeting to get married,’ Lucy protested. ‘But someday I’d like to be married. If I loved the chap enough. If I was sure of him.’

‘You can never be that sure of men. Look at my Sammy. You’d think butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, but show him a wench in just a chemise and he’d be after her like a pig after a tater.’

‘I reckon I could be sure of Arthur.’

‘Then he’s the only man alive you could be sure of. But tell me, Luce, ’cause I’m dying to know … do you love this Arthur?’

Lucy smiled diffidently and shook her head. ‘No, I can’t say as I do, Miriam. But I do like him. I wasn’t bothered at first, but I like him now despite all his quirks. There’s something pathetic about him that makes me want to mother him. And me own mother’s as bad, or as mad – she’s took to him as if he was her own. Our Jane as well. Ever since we took ’em them two rabbits he’d shot she thinks there’s nobody like him. There must be something about him.’

‘What about your father? What does he think of him?’

‘Oh, he thinks he’s a bit of a joke. He thinks Arthur’s quaint and a bit too gentrified, and he’s puzzled as to why he should bother with the likes of me. Well, he’s quaint all right, but he ain’t gentrified at all. He’s just a stonemason working in his father’s business. His father ain’t gentrified either from what I can make out – and his mother certainly ain’t.’

‘So … he’s got a trade, and you can be sure of him,’ Miriam mused. ‘Well … It seems to me that he’s as good a catch as you’m ever likely to get …’

‘If only I fancied him …’

‘Oh, fancying’s nothing,’ Miriam declared. ‘When you’m lying with him in the dark just imagine it’s that guard off the railway you keep on about.’

‘I don’t lie with him in the dark, Miriam,’ Lucy protested. ‘I don’t lie with him at all.’

‘No? Well, I daresay you will sometime …’

Wolverhampton’s Low Level station was blessed with platforms that were long and wide to prevent overcrowding. The single span roof was an impressive construction of iron and glass. There was a grand entrance hall with booking offices, the company offices, waiting and refreshment rooms. The whole blue brick pile was not too far distant from the shops, and soon the two girls were in a warren of narrow streets teeming with folk and horses hauling carts or carriages. An omnibus drew up alongside them as they were about to cross the street and disgorged its passengers. Soon, they were surrounded by haberdashery shops, furniture shops, tailors, cobblers, bakers, an ironmonger’s, silversmiths and goldsmiths, an apothecary and a host of butchers; and that was only in one street. As well as the many licensed premises Lucy saw a printing works, hollow ware workshops, a saddlery, a chandlery, a corn merchant and a blacksmith. They wanted for nothing in this town. On a corner of one street a man was roasting chestnuts, and the eddying smoke from his cast-iron oven made Miriam’s eyes run until they had moved upwind.

‘I want to find me a decent Sunday frock from a second hand shop,’ Miriam said. ‘Sammy says as how he’d like to see me in summat different of a Sunday afternoon.’

‘I’ll have a look as well, Miriam. Now I’m stepping out with Arthur I ought to make an effort. Specially of a Sunday. Just so long as it’s cheap.’

Lucy and Miriam scoured the second hand shops and, in a back street called Farmer’s Fold where they were content that each had happened on one that was suitable and offered good value. As they emerged into the street they espied on the corner an ancient black and white timber-framed building, which evidently served as a coffee house. They decided they needed refreshment, and rest for their tired feet before the walk back to the station, now some distance away. Duly refreshed and giving themselves plenty of time, for they were not sure how long it would take them, they left the coffee house carrying their new second hand clothes with them.

As they entered the station, a man wearing a guard’s uniform was walking in front of them and Lucy’s heart went to her mouth. She nudged Miriam.

‘There’s that guard,’ she whispered excitedly.

‘How can you tell? He’s got his back towards us.’

‘Miriam, I can tell. Of a certainty. Oh, I wish he’d turn around so I could see his face.’

The guard hailed a porter coming towards him and they stopped to talk. Lucy tugged at Miriam’s sleeve and they loitered very close to where he stood.

‘You should be ashamed, Luce,’ Miriam quietly chided. ‘You’ve got a perfectly decent chap and you’m hankering after him.’

‘But he’s so lovely, Miriam. Oh, me legs am all of a wamble now that I’ve seen him. I’ll have to see if he smiles at me again. I wonder if he’ll be on our train?’

‘There’s one way to find out …’ Miriam stepped brazenly up to the guard. ‘Excuse me, where do me and me friend catch the train to Brettell Lane?’

The guard looked at Miriam, then to the friend she referred to. He smiled in recognition. ‘Hey, I’ve seen you before, eh, miss?’ Lucy nodded and felt herself go hot as her colour rose. ‘I could never forget a face as pretty as yours.’

‘We normally go to Dudley of a Saturday afternoon,’ Miriam said, ignoring his compliment to her friend, ‘but today we thought we’d treat ourselves and come to Wolverhampton. The trouble is we don’t know the place, and we forgot what time the train goes as well.’

The guard took his watch from his fob and smiled. ‘It leaves in a quarter of an hour, ladies. That’s the one, standing at the platform over there, being hauled by locomotive number two …’ He pointed to it. ‘I’ll be working on that train, so I’ll keep me eye on you. Where d’you say you want to get off?’

Lucy found her voice. ‘Brettell Lane.’

‘Brettell Lane. Live near the station, do ye?’

‘Not far. Bull Street. Just across the road.’

‘I’ll surprise you one day and pop in for a quick mug o’ tea, eh?’ he teased.

‘You’d be welcome.’

‘Her chap wouldn’t be very pleased though,’ Miriam wilfully interjected, and received an icy glare from Lucy for her trouble.

‘Oh, aye,’ he grinned. ‘Here, let me carry your bags and I’ll take you to a nice comfortable coach …’ He bid goodbye to the porter and turned back to Lucy. ‘Here, give us your bag, my flower …’

‘It’s all right,’ Lucy said. ‘I can manage, it’s no weight.’

‘No, I insist …’ He stood with his hands waiting to receive the two bags and Lucy handed them to him, blushing vividly again. ‘So what’s your name?’

‘Lucy Piddock. What’s yours?’

‘Everybody calls me Dickie. What tickets have you got, Lucy?’

‘These …’

‘Third class, eh? Well, I reckon we can do better than that for you. Here …’ He opened the door to a second class compartment and winked at Lucy roguishly, which caused her insides to churn. ‘We’ll install you in second class, eh? More comfortable, and more space to stretch your pretty legs. Nobody’ll be any the wiser, but if anybody should say anything refer ’em to Dickie Dempster. Here y’are, Lucy, my flower …’ He offered his hand and helped her up into the coach, then handed up her bags. ‘Have a comfortable journey and I’ll come and open your door for you to make sure you’m all right when we get to Brettell Lane.’

‘Thank you, Dickie,’ she said politely. ‘But are you sure we’ll be all right in second class?’

‘Trust me.’ He winked again, then turned to Miriam. ‘Now you, miss …’ He handed her up, closed the door and waved as he went on his way.

Lucy sat on the upholstered seat and put her head in her hands, unable to believe what had just happened. Her face had turned red when she looked up, wearing an expression of elation and astonishment, at Miriam. ‘Oh, I’ve gone all queer, Miriam. You know, I get the strangest feeling that he fancies me.’

‘Fancies you?’ Miriam scoffed. ‘I’ll say he fancies you. He never so much as looked at me. He didn’t offer to carry my bags, did he?’

‘Oh, I hope he asks to see me again when he opens our door at Brettell Lane.’

‘And if he does, what about Arthur?’

‘I ain’t married to Arthur – nor ever likely to be,’ Lucy protested. ‘I ain’t promised to Arthur.’

On the journey back Lucy was full of Dickie Dempster. She giggled and speculated wildly on what might happen when they arrived at Brettell Lane station.

‘If he don’t ask me out, should I ask him, do you think?’

‘I do not,’ Miriam answered emphatically. ‘Act like a lady, for Lord’s sake. Don’t get throwing yourself at nobody. It’s the road to ruin. What’s the matter with you? I’ve never seen you like this before. You’m like a bitch on heat. Your mother would be ashamed of you.’

‘But it’s fate that we met again, Miriam. Don’t you see?’

‘Twaddle! It’s nothing o’ the sort, Lucy. It’s a coincidence. Nothing more. The trouble wi’ you is that you’ve bin starved of a chap for too long. Get that Arthur up the churchyard and lie him down on one o’ them graves and make a man of him.’

‘Ooh no, not Arthur. Besides, the churchyard is the last place he’d want to go, seeing as how he spends half his life in churchyards already. Anyway, I’m not getting my bum all cold on the freezing slab of somebody’s grave. Not for Arthur … For Dickie I might though.’

‘Then take poor Arthur somewhere else. Over the fields by Hawbush Farm. Give him a good seeing to. And once he’s given you a good seeing to, you won’t look at e’er another chap again.’

‘And I was starting to take to Arthur as well,’ Lucy said dreamily. ‘Now I’m all unsettled again.’

‘Lucy, just forget this Dickie Dempster,’ Miriam chided. ‘Be satisfied with what you’ve got.’

As the train slowed to a stop at Brettell Lane Lucy waited with baited breath for Dickie to come along and open the door for them.

‘I ain’t waiting,’ Miriam exclaimed, deliberately teasing. ‘I’m opening the door meself.’

‘No, wait. Wait just a minute, Miriam.’

Miriam rolled her eyes.

‘Just a minute … Please …’

Dickie’s beaming, handsome face was soon framed in the window of the door. He opened it and stood aside, then offered his hand to help Lucy down.

Again she blushed to her roots, smiling self-consciously. ‘Thank you, Dickie.’

‘My pleasure, Lucy.’ He turned to Miriam to help her down next. ‘Happy to be of service. Thank you for using the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway,’ he added in an amusing parody of formality.

Reluctant to move, Lucy seemed stuck fast to the platform. ‘How often are you working on this train?’ she asked.

‘Well, nearly every day. The time depends on me shift.’

‘I’ll look out for you. I’ll wave if I see you.’

‘I’ll look out for you, Lucy.’

‘If I knew when you was coming through our station I could bring you a bottle of tea and something to eat, ready for when you stop.’

‘Oh, aye,’ he said doubtfully. ‘That’d be good, but it’d upset the station master. Do you work, Lucy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you’m most likely at work the same hours as me.’ He drew his watch from his fob and looked at it. ‘Look at the time,’ he said with a smile. ‘This train has got to be going else we’ll never get to Worcester. Like I say, I’ll keep me eye open for you.’ He winked again.

Lucy winked back saucily. ‘I’ll keep me eye open for you as well.’

He scanned the train for open doors then skipped back along the platform to his guard’s van. Lucy heard his whistle and, as the train began moving forwards she stopped to wave, disappointed that evidently nothing was going to come of this encounter after all.

‘Why did you let him know as I’ve got a chap, Miriam?’ Lucy asked, frowning as they walked along the platform to the gate. ‘I bet that’s why he didn’t ask to see me.’

‘You don’t want to see him,’ Miriam replied, looking straight ahead. ‘He’d be no good for you.’

‘I don’t know how you can say that. You don’t know him.’

‘Neither do you, Lucy … But I know you.’

Chapter 7

Arthur made it to the Whimsey just before nine that evening. He immediately searched for Lucy across the room, and saw her serving an elderly customer. She had a soft, dreamy look in her blue eyes, a look which enchanted him just as surely as if a spell had been cast on him by some benign love witch. He approached the bar.

‘How do, Lucy. You do look nice.’

She smiled serenely. ‘Thank you, Arthur, it’s nice of you to say so,’ she said, taking money from the elderly man.

‘She does, don’t she?’ he said to the man who was standing beside him waiting for his change.

The ageing customer crinkled up his rheumy eyes and nodded. ‘Her meks me wish I was young again. But still, I’n had my day. They say as every dog has his day, and I’n had mine – more’s the pity.’

Arthur nodded his acknowledgement of the man’s reply and grinned matily. He turned to Lucy. ‘A pint please, Lucy. And have a drink yourself.’

‘Thank you, I will.’ She filled a tankard and placed it on the bar. ‘How’s your cold today?’

‘Oh, much better …’ He handed her the money. ‘But I’ve hurt me back lifting a slab of marble.’ He put his hand to the small of his back and grimaced as if in pain.

‘How did you do that?’

‘Me and our Talbot was fitting a new counter top at Mr Guest’s shop this morning – you know, the haberdashery. I tried to lift it on me own, but it was too heavy. Now I’m in agony.’

‘Maybe you’d best not stay here then,’ she suggested. ‘Maybe you should go home and rest.’

‘No, I’ll be all right. What time’s your father due?’

‘Any minute.’

Another customer came and stood at the bar seeking service, and Lucy served him before turning to Arthur again.

‘So you’ve done nothing this afternoon?’ she queried. ‘On account of your back.’

‘Yes, I have. I went and had me likeness taken in Dudley.’

‘Had your likeness taken? I bet that cost a fortune. Did you have that same look of agony on your face?’ she asked impishly.

Her irreverence amused him. ‘I’d like you to have yours taken, so’s I can look at it when I’m home and you’re not with me. I forget what you look like sometimes and it drives me mad. If you had your likeness taken it would remind me.’

She laughed self-consciously and wiped the top of the counter with a cloth. ‘How can you forget what I look like?’

‘By trying too hard to remember, I reckon. I think about you a lot, Lucy … Anyway, you can have a copy of my likeness when its done. You never know, you might take to it.’

She smiled, endeavouring to hide her conscience at both her inability to reciprocate his feelings and her eagerness to yield hers to Dickie Dempster, should he ever ask. ‘Look, I’m getting busy, Arthur,’ she entreated. ‘I can’t talk now, or I’ll get into trouble. I’ll see you later.’

Haden Piddock appeared just at that moment, accompanied by another man. ‘Why, it’s King Arthur.’ He turned to his companion. ‘Arthur’s a keen cricketer, you know, Enoch. You know what he calls his bat?’

‘What?’

‘Excalibur …’

The two men guffawed.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, shall I?’ Arthur suggested as he and Lucy stood outside the Piddocks’ cottage after walking her back.

‘Oh, Arthur, I don’t know …’

‘What d’you mean, you don’t know? Don’t you want to?’

‘I need to set one or two things straight …’

They were standing about a yard apart and Arthur was itching to get close to her, to take her in his arms.

‘About what?’ he said quietly, dreading hearing what she was about to say.

Lucy shrugged, sighing profoundly. ‘It’s just that … I don’t want you to think I’m leading you on, Arthur,’ she whispered guiltily. ‘I know that you’re keen on me …’

‘I am keen on you. So?’

‘Well … I think you’re keener on me than I am on you.’

‘Then you should be flattered,’ he said, outwardly undaunted by her reticence, but inwardly agonised.

‘But I don’t want to hurt you, Arthur. It’s the last thing I want. You’re such a decent, gentle chap.’

Arthur emitted a great sigh. ‘Well, you’re hurting me just by saying such things. If I’m such a decent, gentle chap why are you holding back from me? I don’t understand, Lucy. I think the world of you …’

‘I know you do, Arthur. That’s what makes it all so difficult … But I think it’s best if we don’t see each other for a bit.’

‘Why?’ he protested. ‘I only see you a couple of nights in the week and Sunday afternoons as it is. It’s not as if I get the chance to get fed up of you … or you of me, come to that.’

‘But it might be best for you,’ she said, his best interests at heart. ‘If I find myself missing you, I’ll know I’ve only been fooling myself. I’ll know better how I feel.’

‘Are you sure there ain’t somebody else you’m seeing on the quiet, Lucy?’ he said perceptively.

‘I swear, Arthur. I ain’t seeing anybody but you.’ It was actually no lie, but how could she confess she was preoccupied with another man who actually knew nothing about her devotion, and possibly cared even less. She would seem so stupid.

He plucked up his courage and wrapped his arms around her, hugging her to him. To his relief and encouragement she snuggled to him like a kitten, laying her cheek on his shoulder.

‘You poor, mixed up madam,’ he said softly, accidentally tilting her bonnet as he nestled her to him.

‘Careful, Arthur,’ she complained. ‘You’re knocking me bonnet askew. Oh, that’s typical of you.’ She straightened it, tutting to herself at his unwitting clumsiness, which marred even his feeblest attempts at romance.

‘Sorry.’ He could have kicked himself for his ineptitude. ‘I didn’t mean to knock your bonnet over your eyes. Are you all right now?’

‘Yes,’ she said stepping back from his awkward embrace.

‘Good … Well, if you ain’t seeing anybody else, what do you do on Saturday afternoons?’ he asked, returning to the problem in hand. ‘I mean, even Saturday afternoons you don’t want to see me.’

‘I generally see my friend Miriam …’

‘I don’t know this Miriam, do I?’

‘Not that I know of, but you might.’

‘What do you do when you see her?’

‘We go somewhere. Generally Dudley. We went to Wolverhampton today on the train.’

‘Wolverhampton? What’s the point of going there?’

‘To have a look round. I bought a new Sunday frock in Wolverhampton.’

‘Oh, a new Sunday frock.’ He grinned hopefully. ‘Then you’ll have to meet me when you’re wearing it, so’s I can have a gander at you.’

He caught her flattered smile in the spilled light from a window, and was again heartened.

She shrugged resignedly. Arthur was not going to be easy to shake off. ‘But what about your poorly back?’ she asked.

‘It don’t stop me walking, does it? Nor will it stop me working next week either … more’s the pity.’

‘All right,’ she agreed softly, relenting.

‘And you’ll wear your new frock for me?’

‘Yes, all right. Where shall we go?’

‘Depends on the weather, I expect. If it’s fine we could walk to Kingswinford over the fields.’

‘But not if it’s cold and raining.’ There was a plea in her voice.

‘Then I’ll take you to a few graveyards so you can see what it’s like working there in the cold and wet.’

‘No, you won’t,’ she declared emphatically. ‘So where will you take me?’

‘I’ll think of somewhere.’

Arthur spotted an opportunity to inveigle himself into Lucy’s heart as he sat in the Bell Hotel after church the following Sunday morning. A man, whom he knew vaguely, was showing a very young mongrel pup to another customer, and they were bartering for it.

‘I’ll give thee a shilling,’ Arthur heard the second man say.

‘Two and a tanner and the mutt’s yourn,’ replied the first man.

‘Two and a tanner for a mutt? No, a bob’s me limit.’

‘But it’s mother’s got a lovely nature.’

‘So’s mine. But what d’you know about it’s fairther?’

Arthur stood up with his tankard of beer and made his way towards the men. ‘Excuse me, but if this gentleman don’t want the pup, I’ll give you a florin for it,’ he said hesitantly.

The second man looked at him curiously. ‘If yo’m saft enough to pay that much for a mutt, then yo’m welcome.’

‘Two and a tanner is what I’m asking,’ the seller reaffirmed, instantly able to recognise somebody bent on making a purchase. ‘I’ll not budge on that.’

Arthur sighed. Two shillings and sixpence was just too much, especially in view of the extra expense he was committed to because of the two wrongly inscribed headstones he’d had to pay for. Besides, he would look a fool if he bid higher when the other man was only prepared to spend a shilling. ‘Ah well,’ he said. ‘That’s all I’m prepared to pay.’ Disappointed, he moved away from the two men to resume his seat.

‘Fair enough,’ the seller called after him. ‘I’ll tek the little bugger home with me then and drown it, like I drowned the other four out the litter. I kept this’n ’cause it was the strongest, but if nobody wants it …’

Arthur turned around, a look of astonishment on his face. ‘You wouldn’t drown it, would you?’

‘It’d cost money to keep it. Course I’d drown it.’

‘But then you’d have neither the pup nor any money for it,’ Arthur argued logically.

The man shrugged. ‘That’s up to me. Why should it concern you?’

‘Because there’s no logic in it. I’ve just offered you two bob, but rather than accept it, you’d rather drown the poor little mite. I hope you can sleep in your bed at night,’ he added indignantly

‘I hope you can sleep in yourn,’ the man replied with equal resentment, ‘when for an extra tanner you could have saved it.’

Arthur smiled in acknowledgement of the way the owner of the puppy had turned the tables on him. He felt in his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins, counted out two shillings and sixpence, and offered the money. ‘Here … I couldn’t have the poor little thing on my conscience for the sake of another tanner.’

The exchange was made, the man pocketed the money and, with a self-satisfied grin, turned to the second man. ‘It generally works, does that ploy,’ he said quietly.

Arthur held the little bundle of fur in one hand and stroked its head gently with the other. ‘I know somebody who’ll just love you,’ he said softly to the puppy.

That afternoon, he put the puppy in his jacket pocket and walked to Bull Street, trying to imagine Lucy’s delight at seeing it. As he approached the Piddocks’ cottage, Bobby their sheepdog sauntered up to him sniffing suspiciously.

‘I got a little pal for you,’ he murmured to the old dog. ‘Just you wait and see.’

He tapped on the door and Lucy opened it with a smile. ‘I thought it would be you,’ she said. ‘Come on in.’

‘Is that your new frock?’ he asked, stepping over the threshold.

‘Yes,’ she answered expectantly. ‘Do you like it?’

‘The colour I like, it matches your eyes. I like the shape of it as well, but it could never outdo those blue eyes of yours, Lucy.’

‘But do you think it looks nice?’

‘I think you look lovely in it, yes.’

‘You do say lovely things sometimes.’

Inside, the smell of dinner still lingered, but as usual, the place was clean and tidy. Haden came in from the privy, greeted Arthur and sat on the settle.

‘How’s your back?’ Hannah enquired of Arthur.

‘Tolerable, Mrs Piddock, thank you.’

‘Would you like me to rub it with some goose grease? That would ease it, I reckon.’

‘That’s very kind, Mrs Piddock, but I’d better not. I’ve got a clean vest on today.’ He turned to Lucy. ‘I brought you a present, Lucy,’ he said proudly and felt in his jacket pocket. With a broad grin, he pulled out the warm bundle of fur.

‘Oh, Arthur!’ she shrieked with delight, carefully taking the animal from him. She put it to her cheek and felt its soft fur warm against her face. ‘Oh, isn’t he beautiful? Oh, thank you, Arthur.’

Haden, facing the fire grate as he sat on the settle, could only hear what was going on behind him. ‘What’s he bought thee?’ he asked, turning around.

‘A puppy, look … and he’s beautiful.’

‘A puppy?’ Haden grinned. ‘Let’s have a look at him …’ Lucy handed the little dog over to her father. ‘This dog’s a bitch,’ he exclaimed with obvious disappointment.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Lucy said with a laugh of joy, taking the puppy back. ‘I still love it.’

‘And in no time it’ll be in pup itself and we shall have a house full o’ bloody pups, most likely from that dirty bloody Bobby we got outside.’

‘Oh, I doubt that,’ Hannah countered. ‘Our Bobby ain’t got it in him.’

‘What are you going to call it, Lucy?’ Arthur asked.

‘I don’t know. I think you should choose a name, since you bought her. Can you think of anything?’

‘Well, she likes being tickled, by the looks of it. Why not call her Tickle?’

‘Tickle,’ Lucy mused. ‘Yes, I like that.’

‘Tickle!’ Haden mocked, rolling his eyes. ‘Fancy calling a bloody dog Tickle.’

Lucy sat down and played for ages with the puppy in her lap. Arthur watched, revelling in his newly won glory. Hannah, meanwhile, boiled a kettle and made a pot of tea while Haden and Arthur talked about the new fireclay works that were being built near Silver End and the increased employment it would bring.

As she fondled the puppy, Lucy was in her own world. She pondered her relationship with Arthur. Never had she met a kinder, more well-meaning man, and she felt guilty that she could not find it within herself to reciprocate his obvious devotion. She was fixed on her dream of eventually winning the love of a handsome young man. He did not have to be wealthy; she did not aspire to wealth. She would be perfectly content living in a little cottage, like her sister Jane did, romantically cuddled up with this handsome new young husband she craved, in front of a homely fire. And what did her ideal man look like? That was easy. He had to look like Dickie Dempster.

Try as she might, she could not purge her mind of Dickie Dempster and thoughts of them eventually being together. She lay awake at night and imagined him in bed with her, engaged in passionate embraces and hungry kisses, which almost left her breathless. She imagined the manly scent of him, his firm skin rubbing gently on hers. She stroked her inner thighs, her breasts, making believe it was his touch, and left herself ever hungrier for him. Dickie Dempster was becoming an obsession and it was not fair. It was certainly not fair on Arthur, for in every other way Arthur would be an ideal mate for a gentle soul like herself. He was not only kind and thoughtful, but he made her laugh with his unwitting antics. When he told her about adding the wrong epitaphs to the two graves in Pensnett churchyard she howled with laughter. And so did he; they laughed together so much. When he told her about the trials and tribulations with the horses she could picture him in her mind’s eye, and it tickled her for days afterwards. If only she could feel desire for Arthur, this same desire she felt for Dickie Dempster, he would be exactly right for her and she could make a commitment to him. But she did not feel desire so ardent, nor would she ever, so she could not commit herself. Arthur was not handsome, Dickie Dempster was. Dickie possessed a sort of animal magnetism that for her was overpowering, Arthur did not.

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