Tilly Trotter Read online

  McGrath! And you know what I told him?" She rolled her eyes from one to the other. "I told him I'd sooner walk out with one of Tillson's pigs. I did! I did!" She was now laughing loudly.

  "Court you!" Sitting straight up in the bed and his voice a loud growl now, William repeated,

  "Court you!"

  "Yes, Granda, that's what he said. He wanted to court me because he thought--" The laughter slid from her face, her voice dropped as she lowered her chin on to her chest, and she ended shyly, "He said I...

  I was ready for it... courtin'."

  "That bloody gormless clot!"

  Annie was now bending over the bed pressing her husband down into the pillows, saying soothingly, "There now! There now! Don't frash yourself. Didn't you hear what she said? She'd sooner walk out with one of Tillson's pigs. There now. There now. Settle down, settle down."

  Simon now stood pulling on his coat; his face was set and stiff, and when he fastened the last button he looked down on Tilly where she was still sitting at the table, her hands clasped on it in front of her now, and he said, "Keep clear of him., Tilly."

  She looked back at him and, her voice as sober as his, she said, "Oh, I keep clear of him, Simon, I dodge him whenever I can, but he's been round here a lot lately--"

  Annie's voice cut in on her now, saying,

  "Go and get me some water, we're nearly run dry."

  Tilly got up immediately from the table but stopped in front of Simon and said, "Ta-rah, Simon,"

  and he answered, "Ta-rah, Tilly"; then moving his head to take in both the old man and woman he brought out on an embarrassed laugh, "I came over with me news today but here I am on the point of going and never spilled it ... I'm going to be married."

  "Married? No!" Annie moved two steps towards him, then stopped; William sat up in the bed again but said nothing; and Tilly looked up into his face and after a moment asked quietly, "Who you marryin', Simon?"

  "Mary ... Mary Forster. You wouldn't know her, she's not from this part, she's from over beyond Felling way."

  "So far away from your farm!" It was Annie speaking again, and he turned his head to her and said, "Oh, it's only five miles or so and you know what they say, a warm heart and a galloping horse can jump that."

  "When is it gona be, Simon?"

  He was again looking at Tilly. "We're calling the banns next Sunday," he said.

  "Oh!" She nodded her head and smiled faintly, and there was silence

  in the room until he broke it with a laugh, and his voice was loud now as he bent towards her, saying,

  "And you can come and dance at me wedding."

  "Yes." She nodded at him now, answering his smile. "I'll come and dance at your wedding, Simon."

  "But don't bring the parson's wife with you." He had spoken in a mock whisper and he shot his glance towards the two old people before letting his eyes rest on her again; and she too glanced sharply towards her grandparents before she said soberly, "Don't say nothing about that, will you, Simon, because the Reverend doesn't like her to dance, I mean Mrs Ross."

  "Oh, your secret's safe with me." He had bent forward until his laughing face was on a level with hers, but as he looked into her eyes the smile slid from it, and when he straightened up his voice was hearty and loud once more as he cried,

  "Well now! I must be off, cows can tell the time better than me."

  "Have you still got Randy?"

  He turned to Annie, saying as he made for the door, "Oh yes, yes; but he's so damned lazy, he falls asleep with his head in their ribs and his slobbers almost dripping into the milk. But young Bill and Ally are good lads, they'll come on with the years. Oh, by the way." He turned and directed his gaze now towards William, saying, "I forgot to tell you, you'll never guess who applied to me for a job. He did it on the quiet like, on the side--

  he'd have to of course--Big McGrath's youngest, Steve, the fourteen-year-old you know. He waylaid me one night last week and asked if there would be any chance. I had to laugh at him. I said,

  "Does your da know you're asking to be set on?"'

  but he only shook his head. And then I said to him soberly like, "It's no use, lad. I'd set you on the morrow because you look strong and fit, but you know what would happen; your da would come after you and haul you out. You are all in the pit, and for good."

  "And you know what he answered to that?" He looked from one to the other now. "He just said, "Not me, not me for good, I'm getting out," and turned on his heels. It's funny, that young "un isn't like any of the others, he's not like a McGrath at all; not as we know McGraths, eh, William?"

  "All McGraths are the same beneath the skin, Simon. Never trust a McGrath."

  "Perhaps you're right. Keep rested now." He nodded towards the old man, and William said,

  "Aye. Aye."

  I

  "Ta-rah for now," he said, his glance taking them all in, then went out, closing the door behind him.

  Annie was the first to move. She went towards the open fireplace where the kale pot was hanging from a spit and, reaching up to the mantelpiece above it, she took down a wooden tea caddy and placed the sovereign gently in the bottom of it; then replacing the caddy, she turned and, looking at Tilly, said, "I thought I told you to go for water."

  "You only said that to get me out of the room, Gran; the butt's half full outside, you know it is. What's it you don't want me

  to hear?"

  "Now don't you be perky, miss."

  "I'm not being perky, Gran." Tilly walked towards the table, then round it to the side that faced the fire and her grandmother who was now opposite to her, and her grandfather who lay in the bed to the left of her, and, looking from one to the other, she said, "You're always tellin" me I'm comin' up sixteen and that I should act like a young woman, yet there's things you keep from me, an' always have done. Like the sovereign up there that Simon brings every month. And did you know he was gona be married? Did it come as big a surprise to you as you let on it was?"

  "Of course it was a surprise to me, an' to your granda there." Annie's voice was harsh now. "It's the first breath of it we've heard. We ne backslash er knew he was even courtin', did we, William?" She turned and looked towards the bed, and William shook his head slowly and looked at Tilly as he said, "No, girl, it was news to us.

  Now if it had been Rose Benton, or that Fanny Hutchinson, yes, her who's been after him for years, I could have understood it, but I've never heard of this one. What did he say her name was?"

  "Mary Forster."

  They both looked from under their lids at Tilly, and after a moment Annie, too, said, "Mary Forster." Then shaking her head, she added, "Never heard one of any such name."

  "Well, that's explained that!" The tone of Tilly's voice was such that her grandparents gaped at her in surprise as she went on, "But about the other thing." She nodded her head towards the tea caddy. "And don't tell me again that Simon's paying back some money he's owin' you. I could never imagine you havin' that much to lend him that it would take all those years for him to clear Ms debt, so what's it all about? I'm entitled to know... ."

  William now began to cough, a racking tormented cough, and Annie,

  going to him quickly, brought him up on the pillows and thumped his back and as she was doing it she turned her head towards Tilly and cried, "See what your niggling pestering's done! It's days since he had a turn. Scald some honey and bring it here, sharp!

  ... You an' your entitled to know. Huh!"

  Tilly, her whole attitude changed now, ran towards an oak dresser at the far end of the room and, taking a jar from it, she quickly returned to the table and scooped out two spoonfuls of honey into a mug; she then went to the fire and after dipping the mug quickly into the kale pot of simmering water she stirred the contents with a small wooden spoon, before going to the bed and handing the mug to her grandmother.

  Between gasps the old man sipped at the hot honeyed water; then lay back on his pillows, his chest heaving like bellows all the while.
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br />   Tilly stood by the bed, her expression contrite and her voice equally so as she said, "I'm sorry, Granda. I'm sorry if I've upset you."

  "No, no"--he took hold of her hand--"you'd never upset me, me dear. You're a good girl; you always have been, and I'll tell you something else ...

  when I can get me breath." He pulled at the air for some seconds; then smiling at her, he said,

  "You've been the joy of me life since you came into it."

  "Oh, Granda!" She bent now and laid her face against his hairy cheek and there was a break in her voice as she again said, "Oh, Granda!"

  Then the emotion and sentiment was shattered by her grandmother's level tone, saying now, "I didn't want water but I did want wood an' I'll have to have it, that's if you two want a meal the night."

  Tilly moved from the bed and as she passed her grandmother the old woman turned towards her and they exchanged glances that held no resentment on either side.

  At the back of the cottage, a roughly paved open yard was bordered on one side by two outhouses: one had been a stable and the other a harness-room. The harness-room was now used for storing vegetables and the stable for the storage of wood.

  Outside the stable there was a sawing cradle and on it lay a thick branch of a tree that she had brought down from the wood only that morning. She put her hand on it and, turning her body half round, leaned against the cradle and looked across the paddock and beyond to where the land dropped far away before rising again to the woods that edged the Sopwith estate; and for once, looking over the landscape, she didn't think consciously, by! it's bonny, because she was feeling slightly sick inside.

  Simon was going to be married. She was still under the shock of the announcement; she had never imagined Simon getting married. But why hadn't she imagined it? A good-looking strapping farmer like him with his kindness and sense of fun. She had loved him for so many things, but mostly for his kindness and sense of fun.

  She could remember the very first day she had seen him, it was the day her mother had brought her to this cottage. She was five years old. She could remember what she was dressed in, a black serge dress and a short black coat and bonnet; she was wearing black because her father had fallen over a steep cliff in Shields and was drowned. Her granda took off her coat and sat her on a chair; then together with her grandmother, he helped to get her mother up the steep stairs and to the bedroom because her mother was sick.

  She was sitting by the fire when the door opened and a man and boy entered, and the boy came over to her and said, "And who are you when you're out?" And he laughed down on her; but she didn't laugh back, she began to cry and he said, "There now. There now," and brought a barley sugar from his pocket and gave it to her.

  And when her granda came down the stairs he and the man talked. It was on that day too that she first heard the name McGrath spoken, and also a swear word, for the man said, "Bugger me eyes that for a tale, your Fred to fall over a cliff!"

  The boy then asked her name, and when she told him

  "Tilly", he said "Tilly Trotter! Now that's a daft name, Tilly Trotter." And she remembered her grandfather shouting at the boy, saying,

  "Don't you call the child daft, Simon!

  Her name's Matilda," and the man said to the boy,

  "Get outside! I'll deal with you later. It's you that's daft."

  But the boy didn't go outside. She could see him now standing straight and looking at her grandfather and his father and saying, "I heard tell Mr McGrath was there waiting for the boat an' all, he wasn't on his shift, he had slipped it. Bill Nelson heard his father talking." And at that the two men came up to the boy, and somehow the boy no longer seemed a boy but a man.

  From that time she had always looked upon Simon as a man and someone who belonged to her. But he was no longer hers. She felt a desire to cry, and the desire was strange for she rarely cried. She'd had nothing in her life to make her cry, her days had been free, happy, and filled with love; moreover she hadn't been sent into service, or into the fields--

  or yet down the mine.

  She was seven when her mother died, and she had scarcely missed

  her for the two people back in that room had wrapped her round with loving care from that day until this moment, and she had tried to repay them not only with love but with work.

  Even so, she knew that they could not have survived these past few years since her grandfather had taken to his bed had it not been for that monthly sovereign.

  But why? Why did Simon feel bound to bring that money? He must do, for to her knowledge he had never missed a month during the last six years. And before that he had accompanied his father on similar missions. There was something here she couldn't understand. And look what happened when she probed, it forced her grandfather to have a turn.

  Would Simon's wife probe? She could give herself no answer.

  She turned quickly about and went into the stable and, picking up a straw skip, she flung in small logs; then, scooping up handfuls of chips from a wooden bin, she threw these with equal force on top of the logs. With a heave she lifted up the weighty skip and with her arms stretched wide gripping it she went towards the back door. Here, she pressed the basket against the stanchion and, her head turned over her shoulder, she once again looked at the wide landscape, but now as if saying goodbye to it, for there had come over her a foreboding feeling as if she had suddenly stepped out of one life into another, and she felt that never again would she know the lightness of spirit that had caused her to run down the hills, or skip the burns like a deer; nor yet sit in the moonlight on the knoll and let the day seep from her and the night enter into a silent patch that lay deep within her and from which there oozed understanding--understanding which in turn she could not understand, for she had not as yet served her time in tribulations. But in this moment she sensed that that time was not far ahead.

  As she pushed open the door and went through the scullery her mind skipped back a step into the long childhood she had just left and she said to herself,

  "Perhaps if my breasts had developed more he would have noticed me."

  Simon stood with his back against the farm gate and looked up at his landlord, Mr Mark Sopwith, and he returned the smile of the older man, nodding as he said, ""Tis true, 'tis true; tomorrow as ever was I let the halter be put about me neck." He turned now and nodded towards the head of the horse, and Mark Sopwith, laughing too, said, "There's many a worse situation; it all depends on the temper of the rider."

  "Oh, I know the temper of the rider; I can manage the rider."

  "Oh well!" Mark Sopwith now pursed his lips and made a slow movement with his head from shoulder to shoulder. "You can't wear the halter and be the rider, that's an utter impossibility."

  "You're right there. You're right there." Simon jerked his chin upwards now, and the action spoke against himself and he said, "I've always been one to have me cake and eat it. By the way, sir, may I ask, is it true what I'm hearin"?"

  "It all depends, rumours always have a spice of truth in them." Mark Sopwith's face was straight now. "What have yoa been hearing?"

  "Well--" Simon now kicked at a pebble in the road so raising a cloud of dust, and he watched the pebble skirting away over the surface before looking straight up into Mark Sopwith's face and adding, "They're saying the mine's all but finished since the water's come in."

  Mark Sopwith did not answer but he stared down at Simon., then presently said, "There's such things as pumps. The water did come in, but it's gone. And you can set another rumour around; my mine isn't finished, nor likely to be."

  "I'm glad of that, sir, I really am."

  "Thank you. Ah well!" The stiffness went out of his face and tone again as he said, "I must be off now, but you have my best wishes for a happy life after tomorrow."

  "Thank you, sir."

  Mark Sopwith was just about to press Ms knees into the horse's flanks when his action was checked by the sight of a rider coming round the bend in the road a few yards ahead. The ri
der was a girl--no a woman, and she sat her mount as if moulded to it. A few trotting steps of the horse and she was abreast of them, and she drew the beast to a stop and looked at them, and both men returned her look, their eyes wide with interest.

  "Good-morning."

  "Good-morning, ma'am." They both answered her almost simultaneously. Mark Sopwith raised his hat but Simon, hatless, didn't put his fingers to his forehead.

  "I'm speaking to Mr Sopwith?" She was looking directly at Mark now and he inclined his head and said, "That's so, ma'am."