The Buffer Girls (3 page)

Thomas Trippet was a handsome young man in anyone’s eyes, not only in Emily’s. He was tall with black hair and warm brown eyes. His skin was lightly tanned from roaming the hills and
dales near his home –
he loved the outdoor life – and the lines around his eyes crinkled when he laughed. And he laughed often, for he was forever teasing and joking. Emily knew the
friendship between the four of them was strong, but did Trip feel as much for her as she now knew she did for him? It was a question she often asked herself, but one she could not answer. When
he’d left that weekend, he’d hugged her and
kissed her cheek but there’d been no promise to meet again, not a hint that he wanted her to be ‘his girl’.

Her thoughts were brought back to the present with a jolt. Suddenly, Josh jumped up from the table, sending his chair crashing to the floor behind him, making them all jump and agitating Walter.
His shaking was suddenly worse and he clasped Emily’s hand, his eyes wide and pleading.
‘It’s all right, Dad,’ she whispered, trying to reassure him, but she couldn’t
make her voice sound convincing.

‘I’m not going, Mam.’ Josh was shouting now. ‘You do what you like, but I’m staying here, making my candles and marrying Amy – if she’ll have
me.’

‘She’ll have you right enough,’ his mother snorted. ‘She knows a good catch when she sees it. And I expect her father’s pushing
for the two of you to get wed, just
so’s he can keep her close by and looking after him. He’ll want you moving in there with them, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Josh bit his lip. The matter had already been talked about between them when Josh had asked Amy to marry him on the day when the four of them had walked to the viaduct. Falling behind Emily and
Trip, he and Amy had paused beneath the shadow
of the arches. He’d kissed her and asked her to be his wife.

‘Oh Josh, yes.’

‘Let’s keep it our secret for a while, shall we?’ he’d whispered. ‘I’ve got to get my mother used to the idea first.’

Amy, a pretty girl with delicate china-doll looks that belied an inner strength, had giggled and shaken back her fair hair. ‘Well, there’s no need to worry about my dad. He
can’t wait to
walk me down the aisle and he’s already said we can live with him.’

‘That’s settled, then.’ Josh had hugged her again. ‘And how do you feel about a spring wedding in the village church?’

‘It’s what I’ve always dreamed of.’

‘Marrying me, I hope,’ he’d teased her, but Amy had been solemn as she’d said, ‘Of course. There’s never been anyone else for me, Josh.’

He’d kissed her again,
his kisses becoming urgent with desire now that they were promised to each other. Since that day, they’d met often, just the two of them. With Trip gone, Emily
didn’t seem to want to go with them.

‘I’m not playing gooseberry,’ she’d laughed.

Though nothing had been said, Emily could see the love between her brother and Amy blossoming and she wasn’t going to stand in their way. But now
it seemed as if all Josh’s plans lay
in ruins as he stood glaring at his mother across the table.

‘I’m not going,’ he declared again. ‘I’m not leaving Ashford – or Amy – and that’s final.’

Martha lay in her single bed, her eyes wide open and staring towards the ceiling in the darkness. She and Walter had separate beds now for his constant restlessness disturbed
her sleep. But tonight it was not Walter who was keeping her awake far into the night; it was her guilty conscience. Martha couldn’t remember ever having told lies in her life, except perhaps
a little white
one when Mrs Partridge had bought a new hat and asked Martha’s opinion. Of course, she’d said it was lovely and most appropriate for the woman with a surname like hers.
The hat had been swathed in flowers with a tiny bird nestling in the crown. But it had been like a creation a music hall star might have worn! But tonight, even the memory of that moment could not
bring a smile to Martha’s lips
as it normally did. Her lie to her family had been a whopper. She had, indeed, spoken to Mr Trippet as she had told them but his reaction had not been one of
kindness and a promise to help Josh find work in the cutlery manufacturing trade for which Sheffield was justifiably famous. His answer had been the opposite. Arthur Trippet was a large man,
overweight through years of good living and
self-indulgence. Although his sleek hair was thinning, he sported a well-trimmed moustache. His heavy jowls were speckled with tiny red veins and his
blue eyes were cold and calculating, yet he always dressed like a smart Edwardian gentleman in morning coat and striped trousers, a waistcoat and white, wing-collared shirt and bow tie. The
motorcar he drove to and from the city each day was more
up to date than his mode of dress; it was a black and yellow 1919 Silver Ghost Rolls-Royce, complete with the flying lady emblem on the
bonnet. It was the object of admiration or envy when it passed through the village.

Leaning back in the swivel chair in the room set aside in Riversdale House as his study and puffing on a huge cigar, Arthur Trippet had pursed his thick lips and shaken his
head. ‘Oh no,
Mrs Ryan. I don’t think it’s the kind of thing your son would take to. Besides, he’s doing very nicely with his own little cottage industry.’ The words – and his tone
– were condescending. ‘And what about your poor husband? Here, he has friends and neighbours to help you should you need it.’

This was true and Emily had touched upon the same thing. Walter was well known and
respected in the village. He had been born here, in the very house they still lived in, for whilst it was
rented accommodation, the tenancy had passed down the generations to him and would one day likely pass to Josh. But Martha was not willing to see Josh as the next generation of chandlers. She had
visions of his name being on one of the panels in the Cutlers’ Hall in Sheffield and of him
living in a big house like the Trippets.

Martha had no intention of taking Arthur Trippet’s advice. He’s jealous, that’s what it is, she told herself. Just because his lad has had to start at the bottom in the
business – not bright enough to be given a decent position from the off, I expect – he doesn’t want my Josh outshining his own son.

Thomas Trippet was a nice boy, a good boy, and
Martha had been pleased enough that he was a friend of both Josh and Emily. She had seen it as a way for Josh to go up in the world. For her son to
be friends with the offspring of the wealthiest man in the village had been a feather in her cap.

‘Master Thomas is coming to tea with us tonight,’ she would say loftily to Mr Osborne, who ran the corner shop just opposite the Ryans’ home. ‘A
nice piece of your best
cooked ham, if you please. Yours is so much nicer than I can cook myself,’ she would add with a smile that was almost coquettish, hoping her flattery would earn her a few coppers’
discount.

But they saw little of Trip now and it was not only Josh and Emily who lamented his absence; their mother, too, was frustrated at the severing of ties between the two families.
She took it as a
personal affront, believing that Arthur Trippet thought the Ryans were not good enough company for his son. Martha’s ambitious nature had been thwarted when she was young. She had been
brought up in a large family, one of nine children, none of whom, in her words, ‘had amounted to much’. Being the eldest girl, she had often been obliged to stay home from school to
help her
mother with the younger children. As soon as she was old enough, she’d been sent from Over Haddon where she lived to Ashford to work in a small stocking mill there and that was how
she’d met Walter Ryan, son and heir to the village candle maker. To Martha’s young mind, Walter, with his own business, would hold a respected position in the village. Pretty and
vivacious, she had set her cap at
Walter, sweeping aside any competition from the village girls and ensnaring him almost before he had realized what was happening. She had been a good wife and
mother – no one could deny that – but from the day that her son had been born, she had become a boastful mother and soon the locals grew tired of hearing about how Josh had walked and
talked earlier than any other child, how he could read
even before he started school and knew his times tables by the time he was seven. Even then, she had firmly believed that her boy was going up
in the world.

We’ll show Arthur Trippet, she told herself softly in the darkness. Josh will prove he’s ten times the man Thomas is. One day Josh will be ‘someone’ and where will young
Trip be then? Nowhere, that’s where. But how am I ever to persuade
Josh to move?

She lay there for a long time, twisting and turning as she thought over the problem. Sleep was impossible until she— and then she thought of something; something with which Josh could not
possibly argue.

Her determination strengthened as she turned over onto her side, closed her eyes and pushed away her guilty thoughts. It would all be worthwhile in the end. What was the
saying she’d
heard? ‘The end justified the means.’ Yes, that was it. Well, the end of all this would be that her Josh would rise in the world. He would rise so high that he’d leave all the
Thomas Trippets on this earth wallowing in the mud at his feet. But first, they were all moving to Sheffield and now she knew how she was going to bring it about.

Her decision made, Martha slept.

The argument raged on for days and into weeks. Emily watched as Martha launched a tirade of reasons why the whole family should move to Sheffield. She hardly dared to look at
her father, whose ravaged body seemed to shrink even more. He hadn’t spoken since the day he had come home from France, but Emily was sure he understood every word that was spoken in his
hearing.

‘Just think of the
opportunities you’d have in the city,’ Martha persisted, trying to wear Josh down. ‘You’d have a skill and a job for life.’

‘I’ve got a skill now,’ Josh muttered, his normal happy-go-lucky smile wiped from his face.

‘Pah! Makin’ candles! And how long d’you think folks are going to want them? We’re moving into a new age of inventions that folk like us have never dreamed of. Candles
will
be a thing of the past, but cutlery and the like will always be wanted.’

‘You sure, Mam? Maybe some clever feller will invent something that feeds us without us having to use knives and forks.’

‘None of your sarcastic lip, my lad,’ Martha snapped. ‘I’m only thinking of you and your future.’

‘Candle making is the family business, Mam, a business that our Great-granddad Ryan took on
and Granddad and then Dad continued. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

‘Not much, no. Not when it’s your future at stake.’

And then, Josh blurted out the news that he had been trying to keep secret, but now found impossible. ‘I’ve asked Amy to marry me and she’s said yes. We’re going to be
married in the spring.’

Emily’s head jerked up. For a moment she gaped at Josh and then her
attention focused on her mother. What would she do now? To her surprise, Martha was smiling smugly.

‘Has she now?’ Martha said slowly. ‘Josh, you’re seventeen and so is she. What do you think her father’s going to say to that?’

Josh shrugged. ‘I’m eighteen in three weeks’ time. Besides, her father’s all for it. He’s even said we can live with him.’

Martha nodded slowly. ‘Of course
he’s for it. It’ll keep her at home, won’t it? Looking after him. Oh, you’re the perfect match for her as far as he’s
concerned.’

‘I’m the perfect match for Amy, an’ all.’

‘Of course you are,’ Martha said again. ‘Nice little business already going—’

‘Exactly. Now you’ve said it yourself.’

‘And how d’you think that
little
business is going to support two families?’

Josh stared
at her for a moment and then was forced to look away. The income from candle making wasn’t vast by any means and some weeks the Ryan family only just managed to scrape by. If
he married Amy, he would obviously be expected to contribute to their household expenses too.

Emily rose from her chair beside her father where she’d been sitting holding his hand and patting it absently as she listened
to the quarrel. She’d kept silent until now. Pushing
aside her own secretly held reasons for wanting to move to the city to be nearer Trip, she said, ‘We can increase output. I could have a stall in Bakewell Market on a Monday. We used to do
that years ago. You ran it yourself, Mam, before – before the war.’

‘You keep out of this, miss. It’s none of your business.’

‘Yes, it is,’ Emily
said hotly, ‘if I’m to go to Sheffield too. And what sort of job can I get? I only know candle making, like Josh.’

Martha rounded on her. ‘You can pick up a job anywhere.’

‘Doing what?’

‘
I
don’t know,’ Martha snapped impatiently. ‘But there’ll be plenty of jobs in the city.’ She turned her attention back to Josh and Emily knew that
she was forgotten.

‘Listen to me, Josh.’ Martha’s
tone took on a gentle, almost pleading tone. ‘Don’t you think I have your best interests at heart?’

At the expense of everyone else, Emily thought, but now she said nothing.

‘I know that, Mam, but I don’t want to go “up in the world”. I just want to be happy. And I will be – with Amy.’

‘She’s not the right wife for you. She’s no drive, no ambition. You could do far better for yourself.’

‘I love Amy and she loves me.’

‘And when did all this happen, might I ask?’

There was a moment’s pause before Josh muttered, ‘We’ve been walking out together for over two months.’

‘And you never thought to say anything? You left it to your sister to tell me and that was only yesterday.’

Slowly, Josh raised his head. ‘I – we wanted to keep it to ourselves.’

‘Because –’ Martha
nodded knowingly – ‘you knew that I wouldn’t agree to it.’

‘No – that wasn’t the reason. I didn’t know you wouldn’t be happy for us. I thought you liked Amy.’

‘I do like her. She’s a nice girl, but she’s not good enough for you.’

Josh gaped at Martha and gasped. ‘That’s a horrid thing to say. Who on earth do you think
we
are to be so high and mighty?’