A Woman Undefeated (17 page)

“Yer can’t be trusted to spend our hard earned money wisely. Look how yer went and blew that shilling yer found and didn’t even bother to share with me. I could have gone out that night and bought meself a flagon. A man deserves to quench his throat at the end of a hard working day. So, I’ve decided that I am going to handle our money and you can tell me what is wanted from the grocery.”

Her eyes had begun to fill with tears when she had heard his words. Suddenly she felt weak and despairing and wondered what she was doing demeaning herself in that way? If he wanted to control the money, who was she to argue or disagree? She was his wife, his possession. A few words said by a priest had taken all her independence away. But she vowed that she would find some other way of making money and Jack could go to hell in a handcart then.

Maggie had left him looking nervous, as she ran back quickly to the farmhouse. Knowing her as he did, she’d have started plotting his downfall straight away.

Maggie sat on the sea wall, looking out at the soothing ripples of waves as they ebbed and flowed creamily onto the shore. It was a lovely autumn day, crisp and cool, with the sun shining weakly and a refreshing breeze tugging at her hair. She turned, as she heard the sound of many people coming down the hill towards her. Now that the church services had ended, people were intent on promenading, or riding by in their vehicles, dressed in their Sunday best.

She felt calmer as she looked towards the Welsh mountains. The view was amazing, with its patchwork of coloured fields on the low land and the different hues of shading on the mountain peaks. It was worth all the tea in China, to be allowed this time to sit and stare.

Her mistress wasn’t so bad once you got to know her. As a Christian woman she couldn’t be. Noticing the girl’s sudden pallor, she had taken her aside to say that she wasn’t looking in the best of health. Maggie had gone red with embarrassment, but thought to herself that nothing ventured, was nothing gained. She’d gone on to tell Ethel that she had her monthly visitor again. With no money, rags or a thread and needle, she’d had to rip off a piece of her old skirt last night, to staunch the flow.

She couldn’t speak with Jack. It was her problem and being newly wed she would have died at the thought of having to mention it to him. But was it fair that Jack was allowed to keep her money, because she was going to have this kind of problem every month?

Mistress Briggs had been very kind and motherly, calling on Peggy to help, but couldn’t go against her husband and pay her servant herself, as she only did the household accounts. Peggy had been a life saver, furnishing her with all the things she needed and listening sympathetically to the young girl’s woes. Her advice was to stand up for herself in the marriage, as that was what she was going to do when she married her betrothed.

Maggie smiled to herself as she thought back to her talk with Peggy. There was a world of difference in their circumstances, and she couldn’t see Peggy having to argue for her pay.

“The top of the morning to yer, Mrs Haines. It is Mrs Haines, isn’t it? You were down at the settlement for a couple of days.”

She turned to see a young man standing before her, who was looking rather uncertain, because she hadn’t answered to her name. It had taken her a moment to wonder who this Mrs Haines was. Surely that was Alice, her mother-in-law?

“Oh, I’m sorry, Jimmy, I was thinkin’ and dreamin’ as usual and didn’t see who it was standin’ there,” she said apologetically.

“You were the one who went working at the tavern, isn’t that so?”

“Tis a wonderful place we’re staying in,” Jimmy nodded, as he sat himself down beside her.

“I come here every morning before me work begins. Just to get the smell of beer and smoke out of me nostrils and breathe in God’s fresh air, is a blessing. Before it starts all over again that is, ‘til ten of the clock each night.”

“Perhaps yer would have bin better with an outside job,” Maggie commented. “You could have taken the farmer’s job if you’d had a mind to.”

“I know, I know,” he gloomily replied. “But it was a sort of impulse that drove me there. That and with me mammy not wantin’ me to have the pot man job. I did it to spite her.”

“Are yer missin’ yer family?” she asked, feeling sad for him, although at least he had a family to miss, whereas she had no one, if you discounted her sister and brother, as she might never see them again.

“Not at all, they’re just a load of squabblin’ eejits, so they are. But there is a person I am missin’. Eileen, me own true love. I had to leave her back in Westport. Her mother got herself between us, said she was too young to tie herself down to a man like me.”

“Perhaps yer could write to her, tell her where yer livin’ now? I could write yer a letter, if yer wanted me to.”

Maggie spoke eagerly, knowing that probably Jimmy couldn’t read or write and would, perhaps, pay a little money for the service. She would be happy with a sixpence, if he would agree.

“It’s very strange you should say that, when yesterday I bought a prepaid letter from the post office, hoping that the landlord or a customer would write to her on my behalf. I hadn’t got the courage to show that I was ignorant, so yes, I would be truly grateful for your accomplishment of a letter on my behalf.”

With that, he pulled out a dogged eared missive from his pocket, followed by the stub of a pencil, which he handed over happily.

“Me talents need to be paid for, Jimmy,” she advised him in a business like manner, with the pencil suspended mid-air, while she waited for his reply.

He proffered sixpence, and once that had safely changed hands she said, “Now what do yer want me to say?”

That was the easiest money she had ever earned, she thought gleefully, as Jimmy went off whistling, his love letter gripped in his hand. When no one was looking she hitched up her dress and put the money in with her rosary, in the small pocket that she had found in her lovely new drawers. There were no shops open for trading on a Sunday, so there was nowhere to spend her coin. With a sigh of resignation she headed back. There was a scrag end of beef that wanted cooking, and perhaps she’d give her dress a wash.

“Coo-ee, Maggie!” came a voice from behind her.

“Coo-ee, over here.....” It was her mother-in-law.

Maggie turned to see Alice waving from the front door of a house nearby. One of a row of three, which had the vantage point of overlooking the sea.

She dithered, undecided whether to ignore her mother-in-law and make her way back to the cottage, but a little voice of conscience whispered that this was her opportunity to save herself from sin. She couldn’t ask for forgiveness if she didn’t forgive others, could she? And Alice was someone she had to forgive. But what was Alice doing there, instead of sitting under a tarpaulin down on the shore?

“Didn’t Jack tell yer we had moved into this fine upstanding house then?” Alice said, looking at Maggie smugly, seeing her surprise when the girl joined her. “That’s why his dad and him were out celebrating last night at the Ship. It was to thank Jack fer the money and us moving in. We got the place cheap. The woman who had it before has gone to live with her sister and there’s three years left on the tenancy. And it’s a boarding house, Maggie, just what I’ve always wanted! And we’ve even got a boarder. A Mr. Arlington has come to stay!”

Before she knew it, Maggie was being bundled through the door of Seagull Cottage. A dwelling aptly named, as the birds themselves were sitting on its roof. Alice hustled her from room to room, proudly giving each room a name and explaining each one’s use. If there was antipathy on the woman’s part, it had gone now, but Maggie fumed at the injustice of it all.

Where had Jack got the money to set his parents up in a boarding house and why was she not told? She’d have some answers later, if not from Alice, then certainly from her husband. If he had got money to throw about, then why take the job at the farm?

She would have loved to live in a house like this one, not dwell in a tied cottage with its ancient furniture and cold stone floors. This one had a parlour, with quality furnishings seemingly included in the deal. A family living room, a kitchen with an up to date cooking range, and water piped to the scullery, instead of a well or a pump in the yard. There were curtains at the windows and proper beds in every upstairs room. The views looked over the sea to the mountains, as far as Chester and to the islands in the middle of the estuary.

She was eaten up with envy as she looked around her, but Alice hadn’t finished yet. Maggie was to take a cup of tea and stay, while Alice explained her exciting plans.

“I’m goin’ to put a notice in the Boat House,” she said enthusiastically. “That’s where the ferry boats come in from Flint, across the estuary. I have heard that a coach takes the passengers over to Hooton Station and then they travel by that new fangled train. I thought, instead of travelling onward, they could spend a few days here and have bed and a breakfast with me. It stands to reason that our good sea air would be far preferable to a dirty city. And this is where you can be of help, Maggie. I need yer to write me a notice, while yer here. See, I’ve been and bought the paper. Just put “Bed and Breakfast” supplied at Seagull Cottage. Price fer a night from 1/3d.”

“That seems a lot of money, Alice, fer a bed and a bit of breakfast. And would they have to share?” Maggie was astounded at what her mother-in-law was thinking of charging and that price was just for starters, it seemed. When Alice had built up a good reputation, her aim was to increase it, causing Maggie to make the comment “that she couldn’t believe her ears”!

It was afternoon when Maggie finally broke free of Alice’s clutches, after swilling back endless cups of tea. She hurried along the shortcut, not caring about the beauty of the landscape, or the black mounds in the colliery as she quickly passed by. She was intent on finding Jack and hoped to see him along the way. Three o’clock could not come quickly enough for what she had in mind to say to him. How dare he sentence her to a life of servitude, when his mother would be living in a proper house, probably employing a daily woman as well!

She groaned when she saw Ruthie in the distance. Her neighbour had a shovel in her hand and seemed to be hitting out at something invisible. The children were hopping around her, shouting their encouragement, or trying to take the shovel away. Ruthie’s trousers were tied up with twine at the bottom, and as Maggie approached, she shouted over that she was in need of a bit
of help from her neighbour. She was catching rats and the “little buggers”, meaning her children, were all getting in the way.

“Yer have to be so careful, Maggie,” she said, advisedly. “They try to bite yer bum when yer sitting on the privy. We’ve got a rats’ nest somewhere, but I’m blowed if I can find it. I’ve been batting the straw in the loft up in the kids’ room. One tried to bite our Lenny, but I managed to get it. I’ve got me trousers all tied up, because they can run up yer leg, yer know.”

Ruthie looked all flushed and angry, glaring around her as if everyone was at fault. But, it was her next words that gave away the truth of the matter, Jack and Solly were up to something and she was venting her wrath on the rats.

“I hear that your man is a poogalist, Maggie. Solly came home last night and told me that he had been given important business by him. He’s to set up meetings and hold the purse, which means he’ll be round all the taverns passing the word. It takes me all me time gettin’ wages off the bleeder. Look at me poor kids wearing parish handouts and eating whatever “Lady”Briggs decides to send.”

Maggie could only gape, she was so taken aback at what Ruthie had told her. First, Alice with her grand boarding house and now Jack resuming his fighting. Without a word or by your leave. There would be more than stew simmering for her husband, when he walked in later through the cottage door.

Ruthie went up and whispered slyly.

“Has the cat got yer tongue, or is it that you’re the last to know about it? Or were you too blind te see what’s goin’ on under yer pretty nose?”

She turned away and banged two of her boys’ heads together for fighting over the shovel, then, with a cackle of laughter, she shouted coarsely.

“Or is it that yer too busy, letting him into yer drawers?”

Red in the face with embarrassment, or maybe anger, Maggie turned on her heel and fled to her own cottage. How dare Jack plot and plan with Solly? He had only met the nasty little man a
few days ago and here he was getting all cosy with the enemy. She would have more than a few words now to say to Jack when he got home.

When she got to the cottage, it was to hear wood being chopped in the back garden. Jack had been stacking logs and tinder outside the lean-to door. He must have been home for a while, because he had also dug up the potatoes and had built up quite a mound by the cottage wall. He was about to cover them with a small tarpaulin, to ensure they would have a winter supply.

“Oh, yer know where yer live then?” Jack’s greeting was scathing, as Maggie appeared at the side of him. “And I hear you’ve bin meeting men on the sea front, that’s what Solly’s bin tellin’ me.”