Mary's Child (23 page)

Florence was doubting now, Chrissie could see.

So could Lance. He had slumped, uneasily, as they all stared at the house and the empty road and fields. Now he sat up and threw out his chest, breathing in through his nose. ‘Ahh! Good, clean, fresh air! Not like we had back in the Frigate, right down by the river wi’ the smoke. It’ll make a new man o’ me, I’m sure of it. Good, country air!’ His gaze slid sideways to rest on Florence. ‘And this place was a bargain, dirt cheap! A firm of solicitors was selling it, acting for the widow of the chap who used to have the place. I think they just wanted a quick settlement. It was an opportunity I had to grab before somebody else snapped it up.’

He pushed past Chrissie and the others to clamber out of the trap then held up a hand to Florence. ‘Come on! I’ll show you round.’

Chrissie followed with the two children as he led Florence up the weed-grown path to the front door. The sign that hung creaking above it was weatherworn, the paint of the words, ‘The Halfway House’, cracked and peeling. The sign did not seem to match the house.

Florence said, ‘It doesn’t
look
like a public house.’

It did not. Lance explained, ‘It was built as a private house for a gentleman. When he sold it, the next chap that bought it, he turned it into a pub.’

He fumbled in his pocket, found a key and slotted it into the lock of the front door. It opened, groaning on rusty hinges and they passed into the hall. A door on one side led into the public bar, a door on the other side into a sitting-room. Some of the furniture was covered with dust sheets, the rest covered in dust. Lance said, ‘There hasn’t been any trade for a bit.’

Florence shivered. ‘There hasn’t been a fire in here, either.’ Then she saw Lance’s anxious face and smiled at him. ‘Never mind, pet. I’m sure it’ll be lovely once we’ve settled in. The pantechnicon will be here in an hour or two. We’d better work out where everything is going to go.’

But it was Chrissie and Lance between them who did that, Chrissie who lit the fires to drive away the chill. It was she who filled and lit the oil lamps – there was no gas – to dispel the early gloom of a winter afternoon. And it was Chrissie who laboured for the next week at scrubbing, sweeping and dusting, as she said, ‘to make the Halfway House halfway fit for opening.’

The cellar was deep, cobwebbed and grimy, empty except for a few barrels holding stale dregs of beer, and an old chair lying on its side in the middle of the floor. Chrissie washed walls and ceiling, scrubbed the floor and whitewashed all of it. Her shadow danced huge on the walls as she worked, cast by the light from a lamp hung on a big nail in a beam overhead. She was glad when the job was done and she could climb up to the light of day.

The private rooms on the upper floor were bigger and more numerous than those in the Frigate but again were in need of cleaning and decoration. The kitchen in particular caused Chrissie to suck in a breath, and cost her hours of labour before the oven and the rest of the range met her standards.

Meanwhile Lance Morgan worked on the public bar. He flushed through the pipes that were to bring the beer from the barrels in the cellar up to the bar – or tried to. They refused to run clean. He finally cut them open and found them coated with a yellow mucus that would not be moved so he threw them out and bought and fitted new pipes. He ordered his stock from the breweries and bought a shotgun, this because the field around the house came with the property and he wanted to ‘pot a few o’ the rabbits’. He prowled the field for hours but never saw a rabbit. The gun was only fired in frustration at an old tin stuck on a back wall. The rest of the time it stood in the cupboard behind the bar.

At the end of it all Lance confessed, ‘You’ve worked miracles, Chrissie. To tell the truth, I scarcely looked at the place before I bought it. The doctor had told me I had to get more fresh air and I thought this would be just the ticket. Anyway, what do you think now?’

Chrissie wished he had let her look at the books before he bought the place. She was certain she could have advised him as to the viability of the Halfway House. However, she told him, ‘It’s a good house but an awful pub.’

He sighed and nodded agreement. ‘But we’ll make a go of it, Chrissie. If anybody can, we can.’

But besides leaving Dinsdale Arkley in town, they had not brought a single customer with them. Those in the bar of the Frigate had wished them well and assumed Lance was moving to a better house. The young men in the sitting-room had tried to persuade Chrissie to stay. All of them, that is, except Jack Ballantyne.

He had faced her a day or two after she had torn away from him. He charged her, ‘You lashed out at me the other night when all I’d done was stand in your way. You walked into me.’

Chrissie, blushing, admitted, ‘I know. I’m sorry.’ But she was not going to crawl and challenged, ‘You wouldn’t do that sort o’ thing, would you?’ Then she was gone before he could think of an answer.

But he had not complained to Lance Morgan and Chrissie counted that in his favour. There was still an awkwardness between them. Then he ceased to appear in the Frigate and she heard he had gone to Germany.

Lance opened the Halfway House on a Friday. In all that day they had only one customer, a farmer who got down from his cart and bought a glass of beer for three halfpence. He drank it standing at the bar, between mouthfuls rubbing at his backside, sore from sitting on the shaft of the cart. He peered around and said, ‘It looks a bit different.’

Chrissie smiled at him and suggested, ‘Better?’

He shook his head. ‘No, just different.’ He drank and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Won’t make no odds, though. The feller that had it afore, he bought it as a house and made a pub out of it, or tried to. He thought wi’ all these motor buses they have now that people would come out here, but they didn’t.’

Lance forced a grin and told him. ‘We’re going to try to change that.’

‘Oh, aye?’ It was the farmer’s turn to grin at both of them standing behind the bar. ‘That’s what the other feller thought. Seen the nail in the cellar?’

They stared at him, wondering at this sudden shift in the conversation. Lance asked, ‘What nail?’

‘The one in the beam in the middle of the cellar.’

‘Oh, that one. Aye, we’ve seen it. What about it?’

The farmer’s grin had gone. ‘That’s where he tied the rope. Put the noose round his neck, stood on a chair, tied the other end o’ the rope to the nail then kicked the chair away. Did it in the middle o’ the night. He was cold when his missus found him i’ the morning.’

He drank off the last of his beer and said, ‘Good day to ye,’ then he drove off on his cart.

Lance fetched the old chair out of the cellar and burned it behind the house, then clawed the nail out of the beam.

Trade did improve. At Chrissie’s suggestion Lance toured the countryside in his pony and trap, leaving his card at every village and farm:

The Halfway House

Ales, wines and spirits

Lance Morgan, licensee

Chrissie made signs to stand at the roadside a hundred yards in each direction from the house, ‘Because it doesn’t
look
like a pub, apart from the sign over the door, and anyone on the road is past before he sees that, set back the way it is.’

As a consequence they gained some passing trade, though the buses that ran along that road did not stop because no one wanted to get off there. And Lance’s cards brought one or two walkers from the villages around when the weather was fine.

But after a month he stood in the empty bar one morning and said bitterly, ‘Halfway House is a good name for the place. I’m halfway to bankruptcy. And my chest and rheumatics aren’t any better.’

Florence urged, ‘Sell up and move back into town, Lance.’ And Chrissie agreed, but silently because it was not her place to voice her opinions. She was sure the talk of bankruptcy was no more than that – talk. Lance just hated to lose money and he could sell the place at a huge loss without going broke. Chrissie did not want him to lose and she missed the town, with its day-long din from the yards and the people hurrying and joking in the streets.

Lance shook his head. ‘No chance of that. I’ve put a few feelers out in the trade and no one is interested. As soon as they hear what business I’m doing, they walk away.’

Florence put her arm around him. ‘Never mind. You did it for the best. We’ll manage something. You ought to get away for a few hours and forget all about it. That’s one good thing about business being so bad – you could leave Chrissie to manage on her own for one night.’

Between them, Chrissie and Florence persuaded him. He and his family set off in the pony and trap the next morning, the children waving ‘Goodbye!’ and Florence calling, ‘We’ll be back tomorrow!’ Chrissie watched until the trap rounded the next bend in the road and was lost to sight.

The day passed quietly, with little trade to keep her occupied. Most of the time she sat behind the bar and worked at sewing and embroidering a dress she was making for herself – and worrying over Lance Morgan’s dilemma. She was concerned for him. He had treated her well and loyalty demanded she should do whatever she could to help him now. She recalled the old days at the Frigate, the laughter and talk of the men. Her thoughts turned to Jack Ballantyne and she remembered him joking, ‘What about a houseboat  . . .’ She laughed to herself, softly. She had heard that he had returned from Germany  . . .

Dusk came early with a blackening sky and a rattle of rain on the windows. The storm that broke in the early evening ensured there would be no more custom that day. Chrissie stayed by the fire in the bar, did not close the house, but that was only a gesture. She was sure no one would come on such a night.

However, at the height of the storm she heard the ragged clatter and splashing of running feet and then the door burst open. A girl entered and stood gasping in the hall. She looked to be well dressed but her fashionable, fur-collared coat hung shapeless and her wide-brimmed hat drooped, both sodden with rain. The door swung back and forth behind her for a few seconds and then she was followed by a man. He wore a grey Homburg on his head and an overcoat with a velvet collar. Both dripped rain. He carried a suitcase and closed the door behind him with a bad-tempered, backward kick.

The girl asked him, ‘What about the horse?’

He snapped, ‘Damn the horse!’ Then he saw the girl staring at him, a hand to her mouth, startled. He went on quickly, but mild now and smiling, ‘We can’t bring him in here, dear. I’ve tied him outside. We should have left him with the carriage. He would have been quite safe.’

The girl answered, ‘But I couldn’t bear to think of him left alone in the night and the rain.’

He still smiled but it was strained. ‘As you say, dear. Here is your case.’ He set it down. ‘Though that would have been safe in the carriage, I’m sure.’ He turned from the girl now and scowled about him, lip curling under a thin moustache. Then his gaze fell on Chrissie and she recognised Victor Parnaby.

She had got up from her chair and now hurried over to them, concerned for the girl and wary of Parnaby. She asked, ‘Are you lost?’

Parnaby answered, ‘No, we’re not. We’re on our way to Newcastle but the carriage I hired has shed a wheel. Is there a blacksmith around here?’ He glowered at Chrissie without any sign of recognition.

But then she thought, why should he remember her? He had left school when she was twelve and still a child. That was five years ago and she was a woman now. She answered, ‘There’s a blacksmith up the road.’

The girl put in, ‘Must you go, Vic? Can’t you wait until this storm blows over?’

He waved a hand impatiently. ‘I must fetch this blacksmith. We have to get to Newcastle to catch that train.’

Chrissie held out her hands to the girl. ‘Let me have that coat, miss, and I’ll dry it by the fire.’

‘Thank you.’ The girl did not dispute the use of the title ‘Miss’ and when she stripped off her wet gloves to unbutton the coat there was no wedding ring on her finger. Chrissie judged her to be in her middle twenties, or later. She was plain, nervous and seemed to peer as if short sighted. Chrissie guessed that she should have worn spectacles but did not.

Chrissie took the coat and told Parnaby, ‘There’s a stable down the side of the house, sir. Put the horse in there and when you’ve done that I’ll give you directions for the blacksmith.’

Parnaby snapped, ‘The horse will be all right.’

But Chrissie insisted, ‘I’d rather it was put away, please, sir.’ She added, ‘The smith takes some finding. If you don’t know which turnings to take you could wander the roads all night.’

Parnaby muttered under his breath and shoved out through the door, slamming it behind him. He returned minutes later and reported, ‘That’s done. Now, how do I find this smith?’

Chrissie told him and he banged out into the night again. By now the girl was on a chair by the fire, leaning forward to hold out her hands to the glow. Chrissie had brought a clothes horse and hung up the dripping coat. She asked casually, ‘You were wanting to catch a train at Newcastle, miss?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You might as well have got a train from Sunderland to Newcastle, instead of hiring a carriage. It would have been quicker.’