A Woman Undefeated (18 page)

Unbeknown to Maggie, his words were spoken in jest, as Jack had believed that Solly was only being jealous, with Jack having a young and slender wife.

“And did he tell yer also that he lay in wait fer me the other day? Called me a whore and tried to do to me what you do to me at nighttime? I’d only bin passin’ the time of day with Jimmy. Yer remember, the young man from the settlement............?”

She dashed after him, as he ran the hundred yards to Thistledown Cottage. There were screams of fright from Solly as Jack dragged him out of his door. He shook the little runt as a terrier shakes a rabbit, until Solly shouted for mercy, which brought Ruthie out of her cottage to join in the din.

“Nobody touches my Solly without good reason,” she shouted, hands on hips and glaring menacingly at the pair.

“Whatever he’s done I want to know about it. Oh, you’re the man he’s bin talking about. Yer should be ashamed of yerself, picking on him.”

Ruthie stood there like a bull ready to charge at them, while Solly went to hide behind her bulk and peered around her sheepishly. It was a sight that made Jack burst out laughing. He shook his head in disbelief, then, taking Maggie by the arm, he marched her back to the cottage.

“Tis a fine house yer’ve set your mother up in,” she remarked later, broaching the subject carefully, as she was still in wonder at the way Jack had flown after Solly, in an effort to protect his wife and thinking that she may as well delay any of her challenges for the time being.

“She had the courtesy of invitin’ me in to look around it, seein’ as it was me own ‘usband that provided ‘er with the means fer it.”

“Tis so,” said Jack in agreement, not seeing her comments as anything more than that. “Tis a fine house, which will be ours to live in when the auld one’s pass away.”

Maggie was kept busy after that fateful day, too tired to argue and too tired to daydream. The wedding of Peggy and Dennis was fast approaching and the farmer’s wife was pulling out all the stops to ensure her daughter had the best of everything.

Mistress and servant were up to their armpits in pickling, cake making and checking the contents of the slow maturing elderberry and parsnip wines. They made meat and potato pies, roasted haunches of beef, pork and ham, sliced breasts of chicken, boiled legs and wings; while a fresh Deeside salmon lay on the cold slab in the pantry, with apple and blackberry pies and an assortment of little cakes and pastries by its side. The wedding cake was a work of art, a three-tiered fruit cake, covered in paste, then royal icing and decorated with a host of dried buds from the garden and pretty coloured ribbon purchased from the hosiery store.

No one was allowed to see Peggy’s wedding dress. That would be collected from Anne Rosemary’s the day before. Maggie thought it was probably a white satin, frothy lace concoction. At least that’s what she heard Peggy discussing with her mother as she was passing the elder girl’s room.

After the ceremony at St Mary’s, the newly wed couple would be transported in a decorated farm cart back to the Briggs’ barn. There, the eating, drinking and dancing would begin, after speeches from Peggy’s father and the bridegroom of course.

But, in the mean time preparation, fell to servant and mistress,
with Peggy and her sisters lending a hand when they could. There were little things, like laundering the table cloths and napkins and cleaning down the trestle tables, which were brought out from a dusty store, begging chairs from any neighbours who could spare them and sweeping out the barn. The outside workers were assigned the task of damping down the hay dust and transferring the bales under cover outside. There was the bridal bouquet to make, long and trailing, and four little posies for the younger girls, all made from lace, dried flowers, ivy and ribbon. The church was to be decked out in flowers, pew ends and garlands, though that job would be left to the church helpers, of course.

Throughout that time Maggie came home exhausted. Beside all the preparation at the farm, there was still the cleaning of her own place as well. And Jack had given up on doing the shopping, saying it was women’s work and that he felt a fool standing amongst the housewives in the grocer’s queue. He had however, stood his ground when she raised her objection to Alice being given all his money, when they could have run a boarding house together instead. Jack insisted that his decision had been the right one. His mother wasn’t young anymore, whereas they had years ahead. They still had time to make themselves a fortune, maybe even having their own farm one day.

He relented though and let her handle her earnings, with dire warnings of what would happen if she spent it on foolish things. That week he had given her three shillings and a sixpence, so with the sixpence she had earned from Jimmy, she had four shillings to spend.

The Neston Market coincided with an afternoon when Maggie had been given some free time, away from the frenetic activity at the farm.

Ruthie had told her about the bargains that could be found at the weekly market, where hawkers, peddlers and traders sold their wares side by side. It was as if the skirmish between Jack and Solly had never happened, although Solly now trailed Jack like an
adoring puppy and Ruthie seemed to have forgotten what the shouting had been about.

Maggie, though, had not taken the incident lightly and was nervous if she crossed the fields on a gloomy afternoon. Jack had laughed at her fears, saying Solly was harmless and that if he hadn’t believe that, then Solly would now be swinging from a tree. She had more to fear, he said, from the “navvies” who were laying the railway track up at Hooton.

By the time Maggie had got to the market, the traders were beginning to pack up for the day. For most it had been highly profitable in the run up to Christmas, with housewives laying in their stores in case of bad weather, or buying thicker blankets and warmer clothes.

She could hear the sing song voices of the Welsh traders, who had sold all their pats of butter, large hens’ eggs and crumbly cheese and were about to make their way back across the Queensferry border, leaving the local farmers to compete last minute, over their prices of vegetables or meat.

Maggie was looking for the woman who brought her wares on a barrow from across the water in Liverpool. Ruthie had said, that the woman went to the houses of the gentry, pretending to be collecting for the poor. She was in a way, because it was the poor who spent their coppers with her. Maggie was looking for a cast off dress, as Peggy’s had become as tattered as the one she owned before.

“Orl right there, la?” asked Lily Dobbs, the proprietor and owner of the shabby wooden cart that Maggie spied at the back of the market.

“Not much left in your size, queen. By the look of yer, yer need something worn by a tall, thin lady.

Still, rummage through, there might be a bodice and may be a skirt that’ll do yer. Not seen yer around before. New to Neston are yer? I’ve bin coming here from Liverpool fer years.”

Maggie nodded and smiled, but didn’t say anything in reply to the small, chatty, middle aged woman. She had come to search for a dress that was halfway decent, not to tell this woman the story of
her life. Triumphantly, she found a black hard wearing looking skirt that would go with her old black bodice. She measured it against herself and found that it was just so.

“Cost yer sixpence, love and if yer like, I’ll keep an eye out on me rounds fer someone like yerself, who would be willing to part with some of their things. I’m here every week. Real easy since the railway started to come along this way.”

She wrapped the skirt in a sheet of old newspaper, and, after grasping Maggie’s sixpence into her dirty palm and handing her purchase over, began to talk to someone else that had come to look at her wares. Maggie lingered a little longer, searching for a chemise and a pair of lace trimmed drawers, but then decided she didn’t really want to buy them second hand.

It was good to have a little money and if she was careful it would go quite far, especially as they were still being fed at the farmhouse and given any leftovers to take home. She shuddered to think how Ruthie managed on Solly’s earnings, that’s if he decided to give her any of it at all. The mistress had told Maggie in confidence that she would never consider employing Ruthie for dairy work or even general scrubbing, having witnessed quite a few of her dirty habits over the past few years, though they were glad of her help at harvest time, as she worked as hard as any man.

Maggie rummaged through Lily’s barrow a little longer, her heart twisting with sadness when she saw a little coat that would have fitted Molly. She wondered for the umpteenth time if her sister was happy with the Filbey’s , cursing Johnny in her head for not taking her back to Ireland with him. She turned away from the clothing cart in despair. What was the point in dwelling on what might have been?

She wandered back to the high street, mindful of the need to visit the grocer on the way back home. There was yeast to buy, some candles, and a packet of tea this time, and she intended to visit the hosiery shop before she walked back home.

“There’s one of them Irish passing by.”

Maggie faltered as she stood on the step of the grocer, after
hearing the accusatory words from within. Was it her that the woman had been speaking of? She quickly looked around.

The grocer stood behind his counter, embarrassed and nervously waiting for some reaction. She dithered. She accepted that she was a stranger, accepted that in a small community newcomers would be treated with suspicion, but she looked nothing like the skinny, dirty looking immigrant that she had been when she first arrived. Good food had filled her body out, gone was the haunted look she used to wear, her cheeks were rosy from walking in the chilly wind and her hair had started to shine. If her dress was a little shabby, she carried herself with a confidence that hadn’t been there before.

Maggie cleared her throat, hopping onto the grocer’s doorstep, ready to do battle with those within. Whatever they had against her, they could say it to her face. She saw the grocer fiddling with a display of jars on the counter, no doubt thinking he was going to witness some sort of cat fight.

“Have I done something to offend you, ladies?” Maggie addressed a couple of women who were standing there, fear flitting across their features, as they saw the Irish girl trying to keep her temper under control.

“Why no,” answered the woman, who Maggie later learnt was called Mrs Adams.

“We were just talking about the amount of fighting and brawling going on, since the Irish navvies appeared in our town.”

“And that has got something to do with me?” Maggie raised one eyebrow at her inquiringly.

“Well, you are Irish and I were just saying, “there’s one of them now.”

Maggie could see that the woman was feeling uncomfortable and probably wishing that she had not engaged in gossip with her friend. She began to cringe as Maggie gazed at her coolly, no doubt worried that the immigrant was going to put the “ankarni”on her. The “ankarni” was an evil eye, put on people who tried to hurt your pride.

The incident in the grocer shop gave Maggie food for thought, as she waited up that night for Jack to return. She had held her tongue, as another customer tried to enter the shop, causing a distraction. The women had fled, not wanting a scornful lashing from the immigrant’s tongue. Peace had been restored, much it seemed to the proprietor’s obvious disappointment.

He beckoned her aside and explained why the two of them had taken a disliking to her and her sort. They were the wives of redundant colliery men and saw newcomers as a threat to their livelihoods. The Irish navvies who were working on the rail track nearby, were paid good money for sweaty, backbreaking work. They spent it freely in the taverns, while local men could only look on. Resentment caused fighting between the Nestoners and the newcomers, and the police had to be sent for from Chester, as the local bobby was unable to cope.

The grocer’s words made Maggie think of Jack and whether he was involved in this fighting? If so, on whose side would he be? She had found it strange that Jack had given in on the matter of her wages, but believed that he had decided to put his trust in her. Had it been a smoke screen, to cover up the fact he was earning money again by fighting and keeping it to himself? Come to think of it, he had purchased a new shirt, neckerchief and corduroys, complaining that his old clothes were dropping to bits and not fit to be seen in. He’d worn his new clothes that evening, saying he was visiting his mother, though he’d call into the
Wheatsheaf first and have an hour with the other men.

Maggie glanced idly at the newspaper sheet she had started to buy occasionally. There was nothing else to do whilst she waited for Jack to come home, except sit on the sofa and dream. There was a small piece written at the bottom of the broadsheet entitled, “Rioting at Irish port, Many people killed.”

It seemed that a grain ship had docked at the Port of Sligo and as the cargo was being transferred to the warehouse, a crowd of hungry people had stormed it, trying to carry away as much grain as they could. The troops had been called in, shooting and wounding anyone who got before them and a local magistrate had been summoned to read them the Riot Act.