A Country Girl. Nancy Carson
… Are you mooring up close by?’
‘Parkhead Locks tonight, me dad says. He wants us to get to the ironworks so we can load up first thing in the morning.’
‘You’ll be going through the tunnel tomorrow then?’
Marigold nodded.
When they’d done asking each other how everybody was, Clara commented, ‘I can never get over how a family the size of yourn can manage to be so comfortable living on a narrowboat. You must be under one another’s feet all the time.’
Marigold laughed. ‘Oh, it ain’t so bad, Mrs Stokes. We got all we need and we do spread out between the two boats.’
‘I know, but there’s all the stuff you have to carry as well.’ Clara said, rolling out a ball of pastry. ‘All your clothes, tools, a mangle, a dolly tub and what have you.’
‘Oh, that reminds me, Mrs Stokes … me mom wants to do a bit o’ washing while we’re moored up. Can we use your tap in the brewhouse for some clean water? She asked me to ask you. There ain’t a pump at Parkhead Locks. We can fill some buckets and the tin bath if you don’t mind.’
‘Course I don’t mind. Course you can, my flower. Shall you be helping her with the washing?’
Marigold nodded emphatically, as if there could be no other way. ‘We each help her all we can. We’ve all got our jobs to do. But she says I can still see your Algie after, if we get it done in time and hung out to dry. Will you tell him, please, Mrs Stokes, as we’ll be moored up at Parkhead Locks when he comes back from work?’
‘Course I’ll tell him,’ Clara said. ‘Have you got time for a cup o’ tea?’
‘That’s ever so kind, but I’d better not,’ Marigold replied, regretting the lost opportunity to get to know Algie’s mother better. ‘The sooner we get on, the sooner we’ll be finished. You wouldn’t believe how black your clothes get carrying coal, like we’ve been doing last trip. I daresay we’ll have to get in the tin bath as well, while we’ve got it out, heating buckets o’ water up.’
Clara smiled. ‘As long as you’ve got a tarpaulin to put round you, eh? You don’t want no peeping Toms.’
‘Oh, we got a tarpaulin, all right.’
Clara dried her hands and wrote out the promised chit, which she handed to Marigold. ‘I’ve made some jam tarts already this afternoon. Would you like to take some for the family?’
‘Oh, if you can spare them,’ Marigold said, and Clara found a paper bag to put them in.
‘There’s seven there. One a-piece.’
Marigold took them gratefully and rewarded Clara with a smile. ‘That’s ever so kind, Mrs Stokes. Thank you ever so much. They’ll love these.’
‘Well, go and fill your buckets, my flower, and I’ll see you next time you’re this way.’
‘I hope it’ll be soon, Mrs Stokes.’
On his ride home from work, Algie decided that he must call on Harriet Meese to explain his absence last night and to tell her he wished to end their courtship, unaware that Kate had already done so. He turned over in his mind the things he would say, mentally rehearsing them, imagining her replies and reactions. He was not looking forward to it, but it had to be done. It was for Harriet’s own good, too, for it would release her, make her available to somebody more deserving of her refined qualities.
It was not that Algie didn’t like Harriet. He liked her well enough, he respected her. She was exactly the sort of girl he should court seriously, exactly the sort of girl he should marry. He could hardly conceive of her ever going against his wishes, of her ever doing anything without his consent. She would be eternally faithful and loyal, raise his children faultlessly, and seldom, if ever, be shrewish. If only he could have fallen in love with her … But he had not fallen in love with her, nor ever would. It might have helped if she’d been blessed with a pretty face. But she had not, and that would never change either, and so her face, the foremost obstacle to her potential to fascinate, remained irresolvable. He regarded her as cold and aloof, as shying away from physical contact, but in this Algie was mistaking her instilled chastity for frigidity. Anyway, he did not enjoy kissing her at all; she had a faint, furry moustache that really put him off. On those occasions when he had kissed her he’d imagined he could feel it tickling him; hardly a pleasant sensation, and he could not foresee having to endure that for the rest of his virile manhood. He could not imagine fulfilling his marital bedtime duty without wishing he were fulfilling it with somebody else. In any case, as she grew older she was bound to become stout – you only had to look at her mother to see how the daughter would turn out …
It was best that he ended it, he reassured himself. He had the perfect reason now. He had found a girl he wanted, a girl he liked, with whom he would be less half-hearted.
Algie rode on, assiduously avoiding getting his wheels trapped in the tramlines as he was jolted over the cobbled surface. Between Queen’s Cross and Brierley Hill town it was mostly downhill, save for a slight uphill gradient at Holly Hall, which was hardly likely to trouble him. He coasted to a halt at Meeses’ drapery shop and leaned his bicycle against the stone window sill.
The bell chinked with reliable monotony as he thrust the door open and there, facing him over the bolts of cloth that adorned the counter, was the stern, fat, uncompromising countenance of Eli Meese. Eli rose from his stool at sight of Algie, bridling like a frenzied bull that had been goaded by the proverbial red rag.
‘What do you want?’
‘I’d like to see Harriet, please, Mr Meese.’
‘Oh, yes?’ He nonchalantly scratched his fat backside, partly for effect, partly because it itched. ‘The trouble is, our Harriet don’t want to see you.’
‘Oh? Why not?’
‘’Cause you’m a bad un, that’s why.’ Eli looked Algie squarely in the eye. ‘I know all about you and your shenanigans. I know you was off with some slattern from the cut last night when our Harriet was here waiting for yer like the true soul she is, mythered to death over yer ’cause yo’ hadn’t showed up and she knows no better. I waited with her an age meself, like a mawkin, till I could see as you was never gunna show your ugly fizzog. I’m churchwarden, you know …’ He prodded his chest importantly with his forefinger. ‘And I tek me responsibilities serious. Not to be hindered by the likes of you.’ With consummate contempt, he wagged the same forefinger at Algie. ‘So from now on, I forbid you to see our Harriet. Besides, you’m neither use nor ornament. Her can do better for herself, can our Harriet, than a ne’er-do-well like you as’ll never mek anythin’ of himself. So bugger off, lad, and if I ever see or hear of you sniffing round our Harriet again, I’ll draw blood, so help me.’ The bull swelled up threateningly and seemed to snort. ‘Now sod off!’
Algie considered that to retreat while he was still standing was his best option.
‘Will you just tell her I called, Mr Meese?’ he said feebly, opening the door to make his ignominious exit, which made the bell chink annoyingly again.
‘I’ll tell her all right, have no fear. I’ll tell her what I’ve just told you an’ all.’
Outside in the warm early evening air, Algie blew out his lips, perplexed, which hurt the fragile split that he’d acquired last night. As he cocked his leg over his bicycle to ride away, feeling ever so humble, he gently touched the wound and looked at his fingers circumspectly to see whether there was blood on them. There was, and he rode away, nursing it.
How in God’s name had the Meeses found out that he had been with Marigold last night? News travels fast in communities like Brierley Hill, but surely never that fast. It would never have occurred to Algie that his own sister was the culprit.
Anyway, he had better things to contemplate. He had Marigold to see. He wondered if the Binghams had passed through Buckpool yet, or whether they were still stuck in