Authors: Freda Lightfoot
Amos drove Ella into town on the farm cart, and as he dropped her off at the gate to Angel House, he promised to collect her at four o’clock sharp.
‘Aren’t you coming in to pay your respects?’
‘When I return, happen. I’ve some jobs to do in town. I can’t sit about blathering with womenfolk.’
Ella regarded her husband from beneath her lashes. ‘Don’t think to spy on me, Amos. I have no intention of seeking out Danny Gilpin, or doing anything I shouldn’t. You have nothing to fear on that score.’ And she climbed down from the cart without waiting for his reply, knowing that she’d caught him out and that was exactly what he’d intended. But before she got halfway along the drive, the front door burst open and Maggie and Livia came racing to meet her, and all such concerns flew out of her head.
The three sisters fell upon each other on a burst of laughter and joy, all talking at once and none of them listening to the other. It took several cups of the tea that
Kitty brought them before they calmed down sufficiently to begin to take in all their news.
Livia told them the story of the riot. ‘It was really quite dreadful. It’s a wonder more people weren’t injured or someone killed, and the weather didn’t help of course.’ For some reason she chose not to mention Jack Flint, keeping the memory of the part he played that day to herself. Not out of shame, because she was proud of his heroic acts that day, more a fear that she might too easily reveal her growing attachment to him. ‘Father, of course, brought the militia and would have had the rioters all shot if he’d had his way.’
‘Typical!’ Ella grumbled. ‘But why do those poor people stay in that dreadful place? Why don’t they go to live somewhere else?’
Maggie and Livia looked at their sister askance. Livia said, ‘Ella, have you no sense at all? Where could they go? Do you know of anywhere in Kendal with cheaper rents, as well as better conditions? And some of these people are managing on very little money, thanks to the likes of Henry.’
‘You need to speak to Henry then,’ Ella said, flushing slightly over her own foolishness.
‘Yes, I think you do,’ Maggie agreed. ‘You are the only one he’s likely to listen to.’
Livia frowned, not much caring for the sound of this plan but reluctantly agreed that her sisters might be right. Certainly something needed to be done.
Ella said that she was far from happy in her work on the farm, and still battling to bring some light into
the lives of Amos’s young children, then frowned at her younger sister.
‘You’re looking almost as peaky as I feel, but then I’m working from dawn to dusk so I’ve a good excuse. Are you taking proper care of yourself, getting the right nourishment and enough fresh air and exercise? It can’t be good for you hibernating in this dreadful house day after day, with only the servants for company.
‘I’m quite all right, thank you. Stop fussing, Ella.’
‘But have you no news of any sort?’ Ella persisted and Maggie wondered how they would respond if she told them that she was pregnant. And by their own father.
‘No,’ she smiled. ‘I have no news of any kind, save for making petticoats for the poor girls in the workhouse. Father has generously donated this bolt of pink flannel. Would you like to help me cut them out? See, I’ve pinned on patterns cut from old newspaper.’
‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ Ella objected with her customary pout. ‘Work, work, work, that’s all I ever hear back home. I’ve come to see
you
, to chat with my adored sisters, not to do yet more work. I’m glad to escape it for a while, thank you very much. Besides, I’ve only got a couple of hours before his lord and master returns.’
‘I don’t mind helping,’ Livia offered, picking up the scissors to start the cutting. She smiled at Ella. ‘Don’t worry, I can listen at the same time. Tell us all about the farm. Amos doesn’t really lord it over you, does he? How are things between you two?’
* * *
Ella talked and talked, a huge outpouring of self-pity and tears. She told her sisters about all her concerns and worries, her jealousy of a dead wife, her failure so far to reach the distant Mary, the loneliness of her empty marriage bed. She told them everything, save for the vision of her husband in the river, and their encounter in the attic. These incidents she believed too private to share.
At a loss to know how to deal with so much trauma, Livia abandoned the cutting-out to hold her sister close, to stroke her hair and wipe her streaming eyes. And she worried over the further burden she would add to her lot before the afternoon was over when she told her two sisters about Mercy.
‘Marriage is not at all as I imagined,’ Ella huffed.
‘Do you love him?’
‘I don’t know, do I? I haven’t really had much chance to find out.’
‘Do you like him?’
Ella considered. ‘I don’t
dislike
him.’ Excitement stirred in her even now as she recalled his lovemaking, although Amos seemed to be filled with shame since, as if they’d done a shocking thing.
‘Has he hurt you?’
Ella shook her head, tears bright in her lovely eyes. ‘He never so much as touches me, not willingly. I sleep in the big bedroom, he sleeps in the loft.’
‘Aren’t you at least grateful for that?’ Maggie quietly asked.
‘No, I want a proper marriage. I want love and affection. When he’s not telling me how much better the
wonderful Esther managed things, and what she might or might not have approved of, its all “do this”, “do that”. I have the poultry to see to, and the calves. I must clean the dairy and the hen house, and all of that on top of helping Mrs Rackett with the cooking and the cleaning. He even expects me to help him bring in the sheep when he needs to dose or worm them.’ Ella shuddered. ‘I never have a minute to myself from dawn to dusk. And in the evening he reads his Bible the whole time, or works his dratted loom. He never
talks
to me.’
‘Perhaps,’ Livia tentatively suggested, ‘you might help with the weaving. At least you’d be doing something together and may grow companionable.’
‘
What?
’ Ella pouted. ‘He did have the cheek to ask if I was interested in helping to spin the wool into yarn. I told him I had quite enough to do already, thank you very much. He has never asked again. The impertinence of the man.’
Livia and Maggie exchanged a brief speaking glance. If Ella was taking this attitude it did not auger well for the future of the marriage. And yet she was their sister, and they loved her and wanted her to be happy.
‘I might just as well not be there. He doesn’t want a wife at all, only a dairymaid, and a mother for his children. And if I complain about how lonely I am, how utterly
exhausted
, he just looks at me and says life isn’t all tea parties and romance, that as a farmer’s wife I’m expected to do all of these things.’
Livia tried to stifle a smile as for a brief second she saw the situation from Amos’s point of view. Instilling
any sense of duty and work ethic into Ella would not be easy. She herself had tried on numerous occasions, and failed miserably.
‘Are things getting any better with the children?’ Livia hoped that mention of her stepchildren might lighten Ella’s mood. Not so. The question only brought a fresh spurt of tears and recriminations, which needed to be mopped up with copious clean handkerchiefs and several more cups of soothing tea.
‘I believe I could win over little Tilda, if the older girl would only give me half a chance,’ Ella said. ‘Mary is so like her father, so cold and distant. I think she’s glad I’m unhappy.’
‘Don’t be unkind, Ella,’ Maggie gently scolded. ‘And what about the boy?’
‘Emmett is quiet, very placid, and still grieving for his mother, I think.’
‘Of course he is, poor child. It’s barely fifteen months, I suppose, since she died. Not very long. I do wonder if Amos, too, might still be grieving,’ Livia suggested.
‘Then he shouldn’t have married me.’
‘No, you’re right. He should have waited till he was properly ready.’
Maggie said, ‘Why not concentrate on the little ones first. If you win them over, then Mary might soften too. Younger children are surely much easier to deal with. Although you didn’t actually give birth to them so how can you feel…’ She stopped, seemed to flinch, as if she might have said the wrong thing, then fell silent, gazing into space.
Ella and Livia waited patiently for her to finish whatever it was she’d been about to say. When she said nothing more, Livia decided to snatch her opportunity. The hour was flying by at record speed and she was growing anxious that she might never find the right moment to drop her bombshell.
Paying no attention to Maggie’s dreaminess or the sulky droop to Ella’s lip, Livia began. ‘If I may change the subject for a moment, there’s something important I need to tell you both. And I’m afraid you aren’t going to like it very much.’
Maggie at once set aside her sewing. Ella glanced at the clock on the mantelshelf, sighed dramatically and said, ‘Oh, all right, what have you done that’s so wonderful? Ah, you’ve met a man. You’re in love; I can see it in your eyes. Who is he? Go on, tell us all about him. I promise not to be jealous, well, not too much anyway.’
‘It’s not that at all. I certainly haven’t fallen in love or anything of the sort,’ Livia protested, nonetheless blushing to the roots of her hair as an image of Jack Flint came unbidden into her mind.
She had no wish to confess to this growing fancy she had for him. If she was behaving like a lovesick schoolgirl then not for a moment would she admit as much to her sisters. Besides, the news she had to tell was far too serious.
Livia briefly explained all that Jack had told her about their father’s dalliance with various mistresses, and of Mercy being their half-sister; of her losing her mother
and going to him for help. It didn’t take long, only a few telling moments to blow their last hopes of normality right out of the water.
Clearly shaken, they were both looking at her as if she were speaking a foreign language and hadn’t understood a word. Livia finished by explaining how she had very nearly got caught looking for the letter in Father’s office.
‘There was nowhere to run so I hid under Father’s kneehole desk, my heart beating loud enough for anyone to hear. The door opened. Silence. Was someone looking in, I thought, or even now walking towards me? I can’t begin to tell you how scared I was. I held my breath, praying that it wasn’t Father, that he wouldn’t come over to sit at the desk. Then after the longest moments of my life, although it was probably only a matter of seconds, the door closed again and I knew by that different sort of silence that I was alone again, and safe.
Ella was wide-eyed. ‘Oh, my goodness! Was it Father do you think?’
Livia shook her head. ‘I suspect it was Miss Caraway. Fortunately, she failed to see me tucked under that big kneehole desk. Look, here it is,’ she said handing over the letter for them to read. ‘I know it’s a bit of a shock to discover we have yet another sister, albeit a half one, but what do we do about the fact she is missing? And where do you think I should look next?’
Ella, appalled by the whole shocking tale, quickly read through the short letter then handed it over to Maggie. Her sister seemed oddly subdued and distracted, saying nothing as she stared unseeing at this incriminating piece
of paper. No one had any advice on what to do next. Livia realised they were too stunned to think straight, rather as she had been initially.
Ella made a few suggestions, none very helpful, and then surprisingly it was Maggie who finally came up with the answer. ‘That poor girl. Poor, poor girl,’ she said again. ‘And none of this is any fault of her own. Try the workhouse. If she was found wandering about the streets with no job and no money, that might be where she’d end up.’
Livia wasted no time the next morning in cycling over to the workhouse, asking to speak to the master in person. He was most respectful, knowing he was speaking to the daughter of one of the town’s most upstanding citizens. Livia doubted he would have been quite so deferential had Jessie or Jack Flint come asking the same questions.
Sadly, it turned out that she was too late. To her complete dismay Livia learned that Mercy had indeed been in the workhouse for some months, but had run away a short time ago with one of the other inmates.
‘When she is found, as she surely will be, Miss Angel, I fear she’ll be facing a custodial sentence.’
‘Let us hope not,’ Livia crisply responded, and left. Oh, but she could kick herself for being so foolish. Why hadn’t they thought of the workhouse before? They’d wasted all this time when it was surely the obvious place to look? Now what should she do? Where did she go from here?
As she cycled wearily up the drive to Angel House
she knew at once that something was wrong, if only by the wails of distress coming from within. Flinging the machine to one side Livia raced into the house, knowing in her heart it was too late. She saw Maggie the moment she entered the hall. She had hanged herself with her dressing gown cord from the topmost banister.
Everything changed when Maggie died. Something inside of Ella also shrivelled and died that day. Perhaps that was when she started to grow up, when it finally dawned on her that this life was all she was going to get and, like it or not, she must make the best of it.
Despite Amos’s disapproval, she turned instinctively to Mrs Jepson. As a near neighbour, the older woman offered not only the comfort Ella craved during that initial period of shock and sadness, but also the kind of support she needed in the dark months following it. Consequently, Ella learnt much from her new friend, and she would regularly take tea in her parlour, or chat in Wilma Jepson’s kitchen as she made soup or jam or pickled beetroot.
Twelve months on Ella was coping much better, and despite it having been a long, hot summer, her garden was
flourishing. She’d picked her first luscious raspberries, blackcurrants and gooseberries, as well as the blackberries that grew wild in the dale. Ella and Mrs Rackett had spent hours in the kitchen making preserves, so they now had raspberry jam to put on their toast at breakfast.
Ella was also an expert in the dairy now. She would put the milk from the family’s small herd of shorthorns into earthenware bowls and leave them standing overnight, for the length of three meals, dinner, supper and breakfast, before skimming off the cream. When the cream had been kept for a week or two, she would churn it into butter, knowing instinctively when it was ready. Mrs Jepson, who took it into Kendal for her each week to sell, along with the eggs and cheese, declared it to be the creamiest butter she’d ever tasted.
Ella was flattered by the compliment, and found an odd sort of satisfaction in the rhythm of the task, enjoying the hour or so of solitude and peace in the cool dairy, away from the dust and heat.
Oh, but how she envied her new friend. How Ella wished she could go with her into town each week.
Since the funeral, Amos had allowed one brief visit to Kendal each month to see Livia, but he still refused to let Ella travel alone, or visit the shops where she might be tempted to waste his hard-earned brass, or to personally attend the weekly market to sell her produce. Why he was so hard on her, or saw Kendal as some sort of Sodom and Gomorrah, she had no idea, but since the death of her lovely sister, Ella had lost the will to fight. What did it matter if she was trapped in a sterile, loveless marriage?
She accepted her lot now without question or argument.
But the deficiencies of the farm continued to irk her. Ella was frequently forced to walk an extra half mile to fill her water buckets at the spring because the private water supply from the pump had dried up, as it did every summer. Amos kept promising to dig a new well, or fix the leaks, but never got around to the task. And even this precious resource must be kept for drinking only. Water for washing had to be collected in rainwater barrels, or drawn from the river, yet another long walk.
Ella hated the earth privy round the back of the house, little more than a wooden shack with a zinc roof hidden in a clump of nettles. Whenever she had to face that trek on a dark wet night, she would recall with longing the smart modern bathroom at Angel House with its high ceramic bath and gold taps. She would remember how carelessly she had taken such wonders as hot running water entirely for granted.
Mrs Rackett’s laziness was also a source of great irritation. The old woman could often be found in her clogs and shawl and cotton poke bonnet, sitting in the orchard doing nothing at all, or hiding in the wood shed smoking a twist of tobacco in her clay pipe.
The first time Ella had caught her smoking, she’d been astonished, recalling how she’d once asked for a clay pipe for the children to blow bubbles and been told there wasn’t such a thing in the house as Amos didn’t approve of smoking, it being a filthy habit. But when she challenged her on the matter, the old crone paid not the slightest attention. The woman was either stone deaf
or pig-ignorant so far as Ella could see, for she never responded to instructions, and only heard half of what she was asked to do.
This afternoon on her walk, Ella stubbornly set down her water buckets, lay back on a hump of grass beside the beck and gazed around at mountains and sky. The skies here seemed endless, constantly changing and always rushing on as if to some other, better place. When Ella had first come to the dale she too had longed to go with it. Now she accepted that this was where she lived, and where she must stay. She must make of her life what she could, and not give up on it as darling Maggie had done.
She heard the plaintive whistle of a golden plover, the slap and gush of water bubbling over the boulders in the stream, and these familiar sounds brought a strange sort of comfort.
Clouds were gathering over Rainsborrow Crag, indicating, as its name implied, that there would be rain later. The flank of Yoke, its near neighbour, seemed to loom ever closer as the sky darkened. Glad as Ella would be to see an end to this heat, a change in the weather presaged autumn and the cold winter ahead, a season when the loneliness of the dale nearly drove her mad.
A year or more ago, when she’d first driven up the valley with Amos in the cart, she’d found little comfort in her surroundings, the steep slopes of the surrounding mountains too dramatic, their silent presence sombre and disturbing. Now she could appreciate their majesty and beauty. She saw how fortunate she was to live in such a
spectacular setting. Even so, there were times when the solitude of the place made Ella want to scream, simply to hear the sound of a human voice.
To her surprise, she’d discovered a passion for walking. Not the adventurous kind that would take her climbing over the summit of Ill Bell or Froswick, but she loved to meander by the river, skirt the heaps of slate waste to explore the old quarries. These Sunday rambles gave her precious time alone with her thoughts to remember Maggie, and to think about what was happening in her own life.
Unencumbered by water buckets, she would have liked to have walked further this afternoon, perhaps to climb the craggy outcrops as far as the waterfall, or to gaze upon the glimmering waters of the reservoir. Once, Ella had again climbed Nan Bield Pass, albeit in better weather, to take the children to see the wild fell ponies on Lingmell Fell. It had felt like the end of the world. But it had been worth the effort because even Mary had been entranced by the sight of these sturdy beasts. Today the weather was too uncertain, and her time limited.
Instead, she sat hugging her knees and let her thoughts turn to Maggie. She rarely had a minute to herself, a private moment to remember her beloved sister.
How they had all got through those dark days following her death, she’d never know. First came the horror, then the blame, and most horrendous of all, the funeral, with everyone asking the same question: why would she do such a thing? Why would such a lovely young girl take her own life?
There seemed no answer to that, and Ella still couldn’t believe that her young sister was dead, that she would never again see her sweet smiling face, never hear her bubbling laughter, nor see those soulful grey eyes as clear as a mountain stream. Her patience and tolerance, her sweet nature, were legendary, and her love for her two older sisters unquestioning.
Ella’s mouth curved into an instinctive smile as she recalled how Maggie would scold Livia if she should scramble up a tree in Serpentine Woods to grin cheekily down, as if challenging them to prove they were half so agile as she. Maggie would be unimpressed, too afraid that she might fall.
She would sternly scold Ella that she really had no need for rouge or artifice, that she was beautiful and elegant, and any young man must fall in love with her at first sight.
As they had done, and she with them. But what good was beauty when her own husband saw it only as the devil’s work, and hated the sight of her?
Ella let out a sigh, heavy with sadness. Maggie had thought little of herself. She’d never claimed to have Livia’s energy, her ambition or intelligence. And she saw her own prettiness as a feeble thing by comparison with Ella’s lovely elegance. She’d taken refuge in a private world of her own. She would write little stories, talk to her stuffed toys and dolls, reveal her thoughts only in her secret diaries, and neither Livia nor Ella would ever dare to invade this need of hers for privacy. Since her death, Livia had searched every scrap of paper, trying to find a
clue to their youngest sister’s state of mind. So far as Ella was aware, she’d found nothing.
The tragedy had ripped them to shreds. Livia was beside herself with grief, quite unable to remain at home. For some reason she blamed their father. Not so surprising, perhaps, since they all knew him for a bully. But what he had done to Maggie that was any different to his normal bullying – what trigger had finally made her snap so that she could bear no more – Ella had no idea. It was all quite beyond her, but the pain was no less to bear now than it was twelve months ago on that sunny autumn day when a neighbour had come galloping up the valley on his old mare to tell her the dreadful news.
Amos had at once taken her back to Angel House, and she and Livia had clung together, sobbing with bewilderment and grief. What had gone wrong? Why hadn’t they noticed how depressed she was and been able to help her? They didn’t even know what had caused the depression in the first place. So far as Ella could see, it was a complete mystery, coming right out of the blue.
But then Maggie had been far too good for this world. Ella and Livia may have grown inured to their father’s constant bullying and iron control, but it had clearly been too much for the more fragile, vulnerable Maggie. Her tolerance and saint-like patience must finally have snapped. She simply hadn’t been able to take any more.
Ella suspected she might never get over their sister’s
death, that she and Livia would forever carry a sense of guilt because they hadn’t been there on that last fateful day to help her deal with her final cry of despair.
Ella returned to the farm with her water buckets, setting them in the cool of the larder and praying the rains would come soon to refill the private reservoirs closer to the house. It was a Friday and she was baking a cake for the children, who would be home this evening as usual. Wilma Jepson had given her the recipe for a Victoria sponge and it had become quite a favourite.
Ella had made some progress with Tilda and Emmett, although not as much as she would have liked. They at least talked to her now, and the older girl, Mary, was not quite so over-protective. But they maintained their distance, never wanted a cuddle or thought to come to Ella with their worries and concerns. They still attended school in Staveley and were away all week, except for Mary, who had gone into service at Whitsun, having been taken on as kitchen maid by a doctor. Ella hoped her relationship with the younger children might improve now they had only their stepmother to turn to.
Each Friday they were brought by a neighbour of their aunt’s in a trap to the end of the dale, where they were dropped off by St Cuthbert’s church. From there they walked the rest of the way to Todd’s Farm, a distance of some four miles.
Ella had been keeping a lookout for them for some time now, a pan of hot broth and herb dumplings simmering on the hob in readiness for their supper. She kept going
over to the window to glance along the lane, anxiously watching the great black clouds roll up.
As she took the cake from the oven and set it to cool in the larder, she noticed that the rain had indeed started. By the time she had split the sponge and filled it with raspberry jam and butter icing, which they loved, it was coming down in stair rods; the kind of relentless downpour they were well used to in the Lake District.
When the first crack of lightening came, swiftly followed by a huge clap of thunder, Ella turned to her husband. ‘There’s a storm starting, Amos. You’d best go and meet the children. Tilda will be scared.’
Amos was seated at the table reading his Bible, as he usually was after a long day on the land. He didn’t even look up when she spoke.
Ella tried again. ‘Amos, did you hear what I said? There’s a storm brewing and you know how nervous Tilda gets when there’s thunder and lightening. They’ll both be soaked in seconds, it’s absolutely bucketing down.’
‘There’s no point then in us all getting wet, is there?’ he said, and turning over the page, continued reading.
Ella stifled a sharp retort. They were his children, after all, not hers, as he frequently reminded her. Their regime of school and weekend chores was as unchanging now as it had been when she’d first come to the farm. And if she ever suggested that perhaps they might be allowed a little more free time to play, it was explained to her that Todd Farm had been in the family for generations and would one day belong to Emmett. It was therefore imperative that he learn from the start what would be required of
him. Tilda, too, must be taught certain chores so that when she was old enough to wed she would be a good help to her husband.
These arguments were irrefutable, but it seemed a bleak sort of life to Ella. She assumed that Esther, Amos’s first wife, had set down the regime, perhaps disapproving of bringing children up soft. And it was true in a way that you needed to be tough and self-sufficient on these fells.
But Ella was weary of Esther’s rules, which still reined supreme in this household; no books allowed save for the Bible, no games and toys for the children to play with, no fairy stories. All of this and more was apparently down to Esther’s fierce brand of Puritanism, which Amos continued to follow to the letter. Ella longed to bring some joy into their little lives, to hug them and show them some love and affection, tuck them up with a kiss and tell them bedtime stories, none of which was allowed either.
But she could at least save them from the rain.
Ella wrapped her shawl about her head, picked up a handful of sacks and without another word to her husband, lifted the latch and let herself quietly out.
Amos had been quite correct, of course. It was pitch black outside with no sign of a moon, and within seconds Ella was drenched to the skin. Nor did the lamp she had picked up as she passed through the porch offer much light beyond her own feet. As if on cue, a crack of lightening suddenly illuminated the path ahead, empty for some distance so far as Ella could see. A great clap
of thunder followed almost at once, proving Kentmere must be close to the eye of the storm.