Lakeland Lily (6 page)

As dusk gathered and a breeze filtered down from the high fells, cooling the deep wooded valley and gently ruffling the slate surface of the lake, Lily poured out the pain of her longings and secret fears about the things her own mother had never fully explained. As Lily talked, she plainly revealed her naivety, and the gaps in her patchy knowledge.

‘So when did you last see the curse?’ Rose asked, bewildered, as well she might be, by Lily’s tale.

‘What curse? Curse of what?’

When this was explained, which took a good long time, tied up as it was with more intimate facts of life with which Rose was easily familiar but which held more surprises than Lily was prepared for, she learned the full extent of her ignorance. It turned out she was in no danger at all of having anyone’s baby. Not only because she and Dick had never actually done anything likely to bring one about, but because so far as Mother Nature was concerned, Lily’s malnourished body was still that of a child. Somehow this upset her even more than an unwanted pregnancy, for all her mother would have scalped her alive had it been true.

Now Lily forgot her vehemence about not wanting to be shackled by children. She forgot how they had dreamed of escape and making a fortune together. For now she would never have Dick’s child ever, any more than next summer she would be his bride? The Clermont-Reads had denied her all of that.

Her darling Dick was dead and gone, and she’d never see him again.

It was in that moment that Lily made her pledge. One day, no matter what the sacrifice, she would take her revenge. She took Edward’s card from her pocket and ground it into the mud under her heel.

1911

Over the next two years Lily and Rose became almost inseparable. Lily never enquired into the true nature of Rose’s relationship with Dick, nor did Rose ever fully explain it. They were content to enjoy their burgeoning friendship and bring what comfort they could to each other.

Rose had recently come to live on Fossburn Street, quite close to the churchyard where the two girls had met. And if, on the occasions when Lily visited, there were more comings and goings than seemed quite normal for a modest cottage, she made no comment upon the matter. None of the many men who tramped up the narrow wooden stairs in their heavy boots made any trouble or stayed very long.

Rose’s mother Nan, rake-thin and little more than a girl herself, had a pretty face beneath a thatch of none-too-clean red hair, soulful eyes and a big laugh.

After her latest visitor had gone she would come downstairs in a silk dressing-gown, as if she were a music hall artiste, and sit and roll her own cigarettes, a habit which Lily considered dreadfully daring and modern. Then she’d prop her slippered feet on the brass fender and blow smoke rings while she passed on the juiciest bits of gossip she had picked up, and describe her men friends with such hilarious accuracy it made the two girls weep with laughter.

Nan was more than generous. Lily did not fail to notice that unlike her own family, who survived mainly on thin soup and bread when the fish weren’t running, Rose and her mother ate well.

Lily was sick of fish. Even on those rare occasions when the catch was a good one, the best part of it - the char - was sold to Agnes Lang, who potted it in fancy little pots and packed them off to London to be enjoyed by the well-to-do. The Thorpe family lived mainly on eels, small perch and brown trout.

‘Here, lovey, go and buy three pennyworth of meat and potato pie from Mrs Edgar’s Cook Shop,’ Nan would say. And off the girls would run to the corner shop where a fat old lady with a toothless grin stood sentry over a huge pot from which she doled out platefuls of the best steaming hot meat and potato pie Lily had ever tasted: the pastry golden and crisp, the meat succulent and tender. It made Lily’s mouth water just to stand there and breathe in the appetising aroma. Or they would buy Cumberland sausages, fat and spicy and dripping with hot fat.

‘We’ll take a drop of stout to wash it all down,’ Nan would say, sending Rose running next to the Cobbles Inn with a jug.

Nor did she worry about tidying up the mess when the delicious meal was over.

‘We’ll see to it tomorrow,’ was her favourite phrase. Oh, so unlike my mam, Lily thought, only too aware that Hannah could never sit still for a minute if there was a cup to be washed or a hearth swept.

Arnie was fond of telling his wife: ‘If the good Lord himself were to come calling you’d tell him to wipe his feet first.’

‘He wouldn’t need to be told,’ Hannah would say, at least able to laugh at herself. ‘He’d have more sense than to come in with dirty boots on, unlike some chaps I could mention.’

But for all her mother’s cheerful disposition and Arnie’s good heart, Lily told her parents little of her new friend’s home life. Hannah would not have approved of the goings on in Fossburn Street. Rose was polite and quiet on her frequent visits to the house in Carter Street, for all she was an odd little creature, and her innately cheerful nature seemed to be good for Lily, so she was accepted at face value, with no enquiries made into her background - never a wise thing to do in this district, in any case.

Hannah made over a warm coat for Rose when winter came. She’d meant it for Lily, but the other girl didn’t seem to possess such a garment. Arnie helped her to find a job working on the greengrocery stall at The Cobbles market every Wednesday and Friday. Rose could hardly believe her good fortune.

‘By heck, a proper job with money in me pocket every week, and a good coat to keep the cold out. I’m right glad I met you, Lily. And your lovely family.’

‘I’m glad too,’ she said.

‘I don’t want to end up like my mam, you know.’

‘Neither do I.’ And the two girls smiled at each other in perfect understanding.

‘It’s changed my life it has, to have a friend like you.’

It seemed to Lily that the day Dick drowned her whole world too had changed, but unlike Rose’s, not for the better. Their friendship was the only thing which had kept her sane. Not only had she lost her dearest love, but she felt the chains of The Cobbles weigh heavy upon her.

The subject of her apprenticeship to a Bowness dressmaker had only once been broached.

‘You’ll have to ask your father,’ Hannah had said, looking sad and troubled when Lily had ventured to make her request. It had seemed so much harder to ask without Dick beside her for support.

Arnie’s response had been entirely predictable. ‘Your mother needs you on the fish stall. How would she manage without you?’

‘Our Liza could help more.’

‘She’s too young, nobbut ten, and can’t add up for toffee. Anyroad, what good would dressmaking do you? Mixing with your betters. No point in getting above theeself, young lady. I hope I’m a man who knows his place.’ Arnie sat on his stool in the back yard and applied his full attention to mending his nets, the subject closed so far as he was concerned.

‘Don’t you want me to better meself?’ Lily demanded.

‘How would you do that, pray? Thee’s good enough as you are. There’s naught to be ashamed of in being poor. We do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay and don’t hanker after aught we can’t have.’

‘Yes, but...’

‘Lily!’ He flung down the half-mended net in exasperation. ‘Don’t you think I’ve troubles enough, without listening to yours? The Board of Conservators are hell-bent on putting an end to commercial fishing in this lake. They say it’s been over-fished for years and stocks are running out, and it’s true it don’t support us like it used to. I have to work at boat building, odd jobs, aught I can lay me hand to.’

‘All the more reason for me to get out of anything to do with fish,’ Lily stubbornly persisted. She could hear Mrs Adams next door, shouting at her two sons. She’d be out in a minute to complain to Arnie about how wicked and lazy they were. The yard door creaked open and Bessie Johnson staggered in with a sack of wood she’d collected.

‘Evening, Arnie.’

‘Evening, Bessie. Winter here already, is it? And here’s me thinking it were nobbut summer.’

‘Found a tree down, out in the woods. Waste not, want not, eh? I like a li’le fire of an evening.’ The old woman shot Lily a piercing glance. ‘You all right, lass?’

‘Yes, thanks. I’m fine.’

Oh, but she wasn’t fine. She wasn’t fine at all. How Lily ached for a bit of privacy. A place where a person could have a conversation without being under the scrutiny of every prying busybody. Where ceilings didn’t drip with damp and you didn’t spend half your time scrubbing the stench of urine from the yard flags.

‘Well then, if you’re fine, you can help me with this lot,’ Bessie told her.

By the time Lily had helped the old woman stow her load of rotting wood in the stinking little cubby hole under her stairs, the Adams boys were rolling around the yard engaged in a bout of fisticuffs which it took their father’s and Arnie’s combined strength to bring to an end before they killed each other. Lily’s hatred for The Cobbles was magnified to enormous proportions. She must get out, she really must. She was in danger of losing all her dreams simply because she’d lost Dick.

Arnie calmly returned to work on his nets, and Lily to her argument.

‘I’d bring good money into the house if I had a trade at me fingertips.’ But somehow the fight had gone out of her. She felt so utterly powerless, so overwhelmed by her situation, that she knew it to be useless.

‘Aye, in about seven years happen, if we survived that long.’

‘Why won’t you help me to escape?’

Arnie’s mouth trembled as he looked at his wilful daughter, and his pale blue eyes held such an aching sadness that it pierced Lily to the heart. ‘Don’t you think that if I had the money to buy an apprenticeship, or whatever else you’d set your heart on, I’d do it? But I haven’t the money, Lily, and never will have. It’s a struggle to get by each day and put enough food in our mouths. So what’s the point in wishing for what thee can’t have? Be happy with what tha’s got. That way you don’t go mad.’

Lily acknowledged defeat. There was nothing to be done. No escape. Only she couldn’t be happy with what she’d got, that was the trouble. She wanted so much more.

Arnie took his troubles to the pub. Whilst he respected his wife’s abstemious nature, he didn’t share it. Being Church of England himself, he’d never signed the Pledge, and didn’t intend to start now. He and Hannah had come to an agreement early on in their married life, to live and let live. He never went home rolling drunk, not like some he could mention, so didn’t feel guilty. Not that he had the money to get drunk even if he had the inclination. He’d certainly little enough tonight, but he liked coming to The Cobbles Inn. There was a warm, friendly fug about the place, for all the filthy straw beneath his feet and dubious cleanliness of the tankards. He fastidiously brought his own because of it, though he was ready enough to join in any bit of fun that went on here: cock fight or bare-knuckle contest, a bit of crack with his mates. And he wasn’t averse to betting a bob or two each way, if he had any to spare. A little matter he failed to mention to his wife.

‘Aught on tonight, Jim?’ he asked the landlord, who jerked his head in the direction of the back room by way of reply.

‘I’ll happen look in later.’ Arnie ordered his usual half of bitter and, leaning against the bar, sank into unaccustomed gloom.

He’d give anything to make Lily happy. She
deserved
to be. Such a bonny lass, and so young to suffer grief. He felt so fiercely protective of her, the pain was almost impossible to bear at times. Why didn’t she see that? He’d buy her the world if he could afford it. Didn’t she realise that if he could see any way to get her out of The Cobbles, he would? Drat the place!

‘Should have been razed to the ground years ago,’ he growled out loud.

A deep chuckle came in response to this fervent declaration. ‘I don’t know, the beer’s not that bad.’

The man at his elbow, for all he seemed little more than a boy, had the sort of physique Arnie would not have cared to tackle alone on a dark night. He had thick eyebrows that almost met in the middle, dark hair, and a swarthy complexion which hadn’t recently seen a razor. Dressed in a navy pullover, he had the air and bearing of a fisherman, but Arnie knew them all, there being so few left, and this man wasn’t one of them. But he seemed friendly enough, and the hand grasping the handle of his jug looked as if it had seen a fair day’s work.

‘I wasn’t talking about the beer. It was the whole place I meant - The Cobbles,’ Arnie explained.

‘Ah, I see your point.’

‘No drains, gutters broken, only water from a pump in a shared yard, and walls that thin you can hear ‘em stir their tea next door. Been here hundreds of years it has, and should be burned to the ground.’

‘Won’t do it though, the landlords, will they? Wealth is power, and mustn’t be weakened by consideration for those who labour. But times are changing. The bosses won’t always have it their own way. Some of us are fighting back.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Take me, for instance. I’ve got meself a good job working on the Public Steamer. It’s only taking tickets but then I’m young yet, just twenty-one. I’ve plenty of time, and you have to start somewhere, eh? I mean to go places.’

Arnie laughed. ‘Working for the steamer company, the only place thee’ll go is round the lake!’