Endure My Heart (2 page)

I did not want to leave the neighborhood at all. I had never known any home but Fern Bank, any village but that of Salford, four miles away. I like everything about the Salford area amazingly. It is on the east coast of England. There where Felixstone sticks like a toe into the ocean you will find it on the map, halfway up the arch of the foot, nestled among the cliffs and dunes.

The sky of Salford, as with the rest of East Anglia, is a beautiful pearl blue shade seen nowhere else. At least it was not so at London when I was there, choking on the smoke fumes, nor did I see such skies during my one trip to Devonshire. I like the fenland fields, which foreigners will call marshes still, though they have been drained and cultivated since the seventeenth century. (A foreigner, in these parts, need hail from no farther afield than the next county.) The countryside is not at all flat as you may think. We have beautiful hills and valleys, caught on canvas by some of the best painters of this century.

But most of all we have the sea. No one who was reared up here on the coast could be completely happy elsewhere, I am convinced. The regular old East Anglians have an independent spirit surviving still from the days when we were cut off from our neighbors by the marshes. This independent spirit caused me to stick at writing to Mama’s sister, Mrs. Harvey, begging for charity.

In the morning, Andrew and I loaded up the gig with our few belongings and went into Salford. We stopped at Miss Aldridge’s place, where I dropped a few loud hints as to my dread at taking up lodgings at the boardinghouse with Miss Plum. “You must not think of it, my dear!” she exclaimed at once. “Tell Squire Porson of your plight. He will let you have the rectory. I made sure it was settled long since. Why, I never thought anything else for a moment. Young Andrew can help him out with the church-business, and you will keep house for your brother. Your papa was one of the overseers of the poor; the post must go to Andrew surely.”

“Sir Elwood Ganner will have something to say to that,” I answered. I have little experience in political or business matters. I don’t know how it may be elsewhere, but I expect it is not much different from Salford. Here, Sir Elwood Ganner, KBE, runs the town. If you want to get a job or permit for anything, if you want to hire a parish child for a servant or apprentice, if you want a road opened or closed, if you want any improvement made in the town, or in your taxes, you speak to Sir Elwood. He is the parish officer, and a number of other things as well, including the husband of Lady Ann Burack, whose late papa was a gentleman of great importance. This last is more than a coincidence, I expect.

“A new overseer must be chosen. Certainly he will pick Andrew. Go to see him at once. Meanwhile, you must speak to the squarson.”

I explained in vague terms that this was impossible. So vague was my explanation that she misunderstood it entirely, and leapt to the conclusion I feared only his advances if harbored under a roof belonging to him.

“He is a shocking flirt to be sure, but would never make improper advances to Magistrate Anderson’s daughter.”

“To be expected to marry him is worse,” I replied.

“Unthinkable!” she laughed. “He is ancient enough to be your papa, child. What a ninny he would look, making up to a slip of a girl. A rare laughingstock; he is much too proud to risk it. Stay right where you are, and I’ll send a note off to Holly Hill this minute telling him what you are about. You’ll be in the rectory before nuncheon. See if you ain’t.”

I opened my mouth to object, but thought better of it. He had got the lion’s share of my father’s considerable income out of him over the past decades. It was no more than just that he pay the small interest of letting us have the use of an empty house. If it could be done, I wouldn’t say a word against it. I doubted he would announce to the village he had been turned off by me. Refusing to let us have the house would make him look as mean as he is, which would not please him, for he makes some attempt at a good reputation.

Miss Aldridge was slightly out in her reckoning. We were not into the house till three. We took luncheon with her, and while we were at table, Porson arrived. I did not go into the parlor to meet him, but let Andrew do it. Within a quarter of an hour, he was gone, and Andrew told us with a great deal of disinterest that he had been appointed church warden, and was to help the squire write up his sermons, keep up the parish register, and perform other such functions. The house, sans any servants or salary, was to be ours.

It seemed a small, mean and crabbed little cottage after the grace and spaciousness of Fern Bank. But then next to the boardinghouse, it was a mansion. In actual fact it was a decent whitewashed house two stories high, with eight habitable rooms. There was a parlor done in oak paneling, rather like my little sewing room at home. But comparisons are pointless. It was a roof over our heads—that was the important thing.

The church sits at the east edge of town, the rectory about two dozen steps away from it, toward Salford. On the other side of the church stands the bell tower. The bells have not been played within my memory, but Miss Aldridge thought a few of the old men might still know the method. The church itself was not pretty. Interesting architecturally is the strongest praise overheard in its honor. It is rather low and dark, dating from a very early age. The nave, folks say, is from the fourteenth century, the huge baptismal font at the front fifteenth, the pulpit (dark, oaken and very high), late sixteenth. A hundred or so years later the horsebox pews (the cause for the high pulpit) had been replaced by more modern boxes. There was a strange set of carved stairs at the back of the church that went halfway up to the ceiling, then stopped, leading nowhere at all. Andrew thought they were rood stairs, leading in days gone by to the rood loft, demolished by Edward VI.

The most modern item in the church is a sumptuous organ in the gallery, which has not been there but three years. It is a gift from Lord Aiken, an earl who has a summer home nearby. They do say he collected it in payment of a gambling debt and had nowhere else to put it. Inasmuch as there is not a single person in the parish who can play it, and as a gift it was particularly inappropriate, one is inclined to believe this story.

Andrew amused himself with this expensive toy while I set to the chore of bringing our house to order. It had stood vacant for more than ten years, which will give you some idea of the gargantuan task before me. My hands, white as a lily, became red and roughened from the strong soaps required to clean the place up. When Dame Aldridge noticed this, she sent me over a couple of girls to help. I scrimped on household finances to buy a few bits of bright curtain material, while I regretted we had not had the foresight to bring some of our own furnishings from Fern Bank to make us look respectable.

We settled into our new home, becoming familiar with all its nooks and crannies, its drafty windows and creaking doors. We discovered there was an old crypt beneath the church, a thing I had never known before. While investigating the grounds behind for the possibility of growing a vegetable garden, I espied an old slanted door. Curious to see where it led, I tried all the keys till I found the one that fit it. Later I also discovered a door to it from the vestry, hidden under the parish chest.

We had taken the giant step of getting a roof over our heads, but there was very little money to live on, only the pittance paid to Andrew as overseer of the poor. It was my turn to pitch in and raise a wage. There was an old piano in the place. I gave lessons to some of the local girls, but it provided only a mite. Many’s the night we went with only bread and cheese for dinner, too proud to beg and too accustomed to better fare to be satisfied. Folks visited us, trying to be sociable, but giving them even tea and cake was a strain on our budget. It got so that I dreaded to hear the door knocker sound. Five times out of ten it would be Mrs. Everett too, complaining about some new fault she had unearthed at Fern Bank, and never offering us a basket of vegetables or fruit or a thing, though she knew very well we were needy.

I asked her quite pointedly on one visit what she was doing with all the fruit from the succession houses. “When my father was alive, we used to distribute many baskets to the poor,” I told her.

“Succession houses? I don’t know how your poor father ever contrived to grow a thing. Jerome says they will have to be rebuilt before they can be used. He has an architect coming in to see what can be done with them. We have let those puny orange trees and pineapples wilt away and will set up a proper orangery one of these days.”

As summer turned to fall, I began taking in a little embroidery, claiming I did it for amusement. It paid for fuel, but still it was clearly not enough to live on. I needed a regular job.

The squire never came next or nigh us. On Friday Andrew took the gig up to Holy Hell to deliver the squire sermons he could scarcely pronounce, and on Sunday they both remained after church juggling the books and discussing church business—i.e., Andrew told him what parishioners stood in want of christening, marrying or burying.

I said “How do you do?” in arctic accent when I met him in the town. He lifted his hat and nodded, without smiling. His pride had been dealt a blow, and I had some misgivings the situation between us would not remain forever so peaceful. In short, he was plotting a revenge, but what form it might take was impossible to tell.

Chapter Two

When my aunt, Mrs. Harvey, finally perceived an inkling of our circumstances, she was at pains to help us. We declined an offer to go to her, only to receive within a month another offer too interesting to disregard. There was a parish living opening in her neighborhood paying three hundred per annum, along with a very nice cottage and a kitchen garden. She would finance the matter of Andrew’s taking holy orders. It would be madness not to take it. My brother went to inform Porson of our plans, and came home with a new notion. The squarson had offered him substantially the same deal. Andrew would take holy orders and take over this parish, where he was already doing more of the church work than Porson.

I wondered whether I was instrumental in this plan to keep us here. I was being leered at again in a certain way, which made me suspect he wanted Andrew out of the rectory so that I would be alone and undefended. If that was his scheme, he was thwarted. My ex-governess, Miss Edna Halka, was residing in the boardinghouse inhabited by Miss Plum and others. She was between positions, and agreed to accompany me till Andrew returned.

Miss Halka had not been happy at the boardinghouse. She told me tales of bad food and unaired beds that made me thank heaven I had avoided it. I soon formed the intention that Miss Halka would become a permanent part of our household. That is odd too, for we had not been bosom bows or anything of the sort when she was my governess. She had used to nag and pinch at me; she no longer did so. I discovered that she made a better friend than she had a teacher. I daresay it was our reversal of roles that made us both more comfortable. She was not born to boss, nor I to take orders. Edna—she asked me to call her Edna—was not physically attractive. Tall and thin, with brown hair turning to gray at the temples, though she was not much above forty. She seemed eager to get into old age.

Miss Aldridge often came to call. As the fall school term rolled around, she offered me a post at her dame school. She was beset with aches in her joints, and would welcome the luxury of being able to stay at home on a wet or windy day. The rowdier boys had taken advantage of her creeping infirmity to get quite out of hand. There is no point being polite to wretches who bring a badger into the classroom to frighten you, or who keep frogs and mice in their pockets. I instituted a rigorous regime of keeping them in after school when they pulled these stunts on me.

It was my being still there at four-thirty one afternoon that first introduced me to my life of crime. I had just released Tommie Jenkins and Bill Marson (the worst of a bad lot) and was locking up the doors. This was in late autumn. They were not much needed at home or I would not have kept them in.

Glancing out the window to gauge how long I had to get home before the rain came down, for of course we get a great deal of rain on the coast, I chanced to see two young fellows fleeing down the road at a great rate, peering over their shoulders in fright. I tapped at the window to get their attention, and noticed it was the Hessler brothers, which told me the pursuer would be the revenue officer, Crites. He is no favorite in our community, Crites.

The boys (they were about sixteen and fifteen) saw me and fled to the school. You would need a heart of forged steel not to like the Hesslers, despite their many pranks. They are about the most common sight in the district, their black heads bouncing along the road together, always with a smile for everyone, while their dog—a beautiful collie named Lady—tags at their heels, sniffing at whatever bit of meat or fish they have poached and have slung over their backs in a bag. No, it is not quite fair to use the word “poached,” though I haven’t a doubt they are into that business as well as their legitimate ones. Jemmie, the elder though he is the smaller, is our local higgler. He is often to be seen in his little red cart pulled by a mule, traveling around to all the farms peddling such urban wares as lace, ribbon, pots and brooms in exchange for any little oversupply of vegetable or fowl that the farmers do not consider worth a trip to market.

This is a meager job to provide for a widowed mother and three sisters. It is eked out by the trades of mole catcher, fisherman, warrener, fabricator of snares, traps, fishing rods and flies—anything to turn an honest penny. Young Mark is the junior partner in all these enterprises. I expect he is also Jemmie’s partner in the smuggling trade. Their being chased by Crites certainly looked like it. I had some suspicion Jemmie was involved, but was a little surprised to see Mark, not a day over fifteen, had so early entered the profession.

I opened the door and let them in, before Crites should round the bend and see where they had gone. “He’s a-coming, miss. Will you hide us?” Jemmie asked.