Til Death Do Us Part (2 page)

‘India! How I would love to sail to India and see all the wonderful sights there.' She sighed wistfully, and then hastily folded the newspaper as an elderly, bent-bodied man shuffled into the room leaning heavily on his walking cane and complaining petulantly.

‘Damn it all, girl, why didn't you tell me that the lad had fetched my
Herald
? Why do you always keep me waiting for it? It's damnably bad of you, it really is.'

‘I'm sorry, Father; Jack only came a couple of minutes past and I was about to bring it to you.'

She rose and went to him, took his arm and led him to the tall-backed armchair beside the brightly burning fire.

‘Don't drag me so roughly, you brutal wretch! I'm not a dog on a leash, damn you!' he scolded angrily.

‘I'm very sorry, Father, I don't mean to drag you at all, it's just that I'm anxious to see you comfortably settled in your chair,' she apologized.

‘Not half as anxious as you are to see me settled in my grave!' He glared accusingly. ‘I know very well that you only see me as a burden that you wish with all your heart to be rid of!'

‘That's nonsense, Father, and you know well it is.' She sighed dispiritedly.

‘I know well that you blame me because you're an ugly old maid that no man wants to marry. But that's no fault of mine.' He scowled. ‘I'd gladly have given you to any man who asked me for your hand. It's you who is the burden that I've been cursed to carry all through your useless life!'

He held out his hand. ‘Now give me my paper and get out from my sight. I can't bear to look at your miserable ugly face a moment longer.'

She silently obeyed and went from the room closing the door quietly behind her. She stood for a moment drawing long deep breaths, then crossed the central corridor which bisected the large house and went into the dining room where the family cook/housekeeper was clearing the breakfast dishes from the table.

The woman's broad features were flushed with anger and she exclaimed, ‘I don't know how much longer I can put up with his bloody nastiness, Phoebe, I surely don't. Does you know what he said to me this very morning? I've a mind to give me bloody notice, I have!'

Phoebe could only shrug helplessly. ‘I'm sorry if he's upset you again, Pammy, but he's somewhat out of sorts this morning. I'm sure he really didn't mean whatever it was he said to you.'

Widow Pamela Mallot indignantly shook her mob-capped head. ‘He said that I ought to be a pig keeper because me cooking was only fit for pig swill and that me kitchen stunk like a bloody pigsty. I tell you truly, if I'd had me ladle in me hand I'd have cracked it over his bloody head, so I 'ud. I'm going to give in me notice, so I am. This very day!'

‘Oh no, Pammy!' Desperation flooded through Phoebe and she pleaded, ‘Please don't do that! I don't know what I'd do if you were to leave me! I couldn't bear to see you go! I beg you not to leave me!'

Seeing the distraught expression on the younger woman's thin sallow face, the cook's strident voice softened. ‘There now, my dearie, don't upset yourself so.'

Tears stung Phoebe's eyes and her voice became choked. ‘Don't go, Pammy. I beg of you, don't go. You're the only friend I have in this world, and having you here is my only comfort. Please don't leave me here by myself with him, I couldn't bear it!'

For some moments Pammy Mallot regarded Phoebe's distress with troubled eyes, shaking her head and clucking her tongue. Then finally she nodded.

‘Alright, my dearie. Because I've known you ever since you was a little mite, and been as fond as if you was me own flesh and blood, then I'll stay for your sake. But I tell you truly that from now on whenever that old devil speaks to me harsh, he'll get the rough side of me tongue, and he can like it or lump it because I don't give a bugger for him.'

Absolute relief shuddered through Phoebe, and despite her tears she smiled and blurted, ‘Oh thank you, Pammy. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.'

The other woman smiled back at her. ‘Let me give you a piece of advice, my dearie. You start looking about and find yourself a decent, kindly man to wed, and leave your Dad to stew in his own nasty juices.'

Phoebe shook her head regretfully. ‘I'm too worn and ugly to find a man who'd want to wed me. I'm destined to remain an old maid.'

‘That's only what that old devil keeps on telling you, aren't it? Well pay him no mind, because you'm still the right side o' thirty, and though you might not be a beauty, you'm presentable enough in your face and figure to get yourself a husband.' She pointed to her own gapped decayed teeth, ran her hands down her fat body and chortled. ‘Look at the state o' me and I've managed to marry and bury three husbands, and Joey Stokes the carter tells me every time he sees me that I've only to give the word and he'll be me number four.'

Her infectious good spirits lifted Phoebe's own and she laughed. ‘I'll bear what you say in mind.'

Even as she voiced the words the recollection of that advertisement in the newspaper flooded into Phoebe's mind, and she suddenly thought, ‘Dare I do it? Dare I reply to that soldier? What an adventure it would be!'

‘Phoebe? Phoebe? Goddamn and blast you, get in here! Get in here this instant!' George Creswell's irascible shouts caused Phoebe to twitch nervously and she started to go to him.

‘Where are you, you useless ugly bitch? Get in here now, damn you!'

In the corridor Phoebe suddenly became filled with an all-consuming, flaring defiance. Then quite deliberately she walked on past the closed door, ignoring the man's commands.

‘Goddamn you! Come here, you ugly bitch! I wish to God I'd drowned you at birth! Come here!'

Up in her bedroom she sat down at her writing desk, arranged note paper, checked the inkwell was full, sharpened a fresh quill pen and, face still hotly flushed with defiance, came to a momentous decision.

‘I really am going to write and send this letter, and I'm going to do so this very day!'

Sir,

I am writing in answer to your notice in the
Worcester Herald
newspaper . . .

The letter was quickly finished, and as she shook the fine drying powder across the wet ink she looked at the clock in her bedroom. ‘The Bellman should be doing his rounds right now.'

She put on her bonnet, wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and with the letter hidden in her bodice hurried from the house.

As befitted the representative of His Majesty's Royal Mail, Harry Pratt was resplendently uniformed in a red frock-coat with grey collar and cuffs, blue knee-breeches, white stockings, black shoes and a grey top hat emblazoned with a gilt Royal Cypher. Slung from his shoulders was a large leather letter-bag, securely padlocked with a slit on its top through which the letters were posted.

Now he came marching down the hill into the village with the ramrod-straight bearing of a veteran soldier, ringing his large brass bell, and bellowing, ‘Bring me your letters! Bring me your letters!'

The upper casement of a house opened and a man's voice shouted, ‘Just you hold right where you am, Bellman. I'll be damned if I'm going to chase all over the village to catch you up.'

Harry Pratt scowled as he halted and waited impatiently until the man eventually came out from the house.

‘I've got two for Birmingham and one for Cheltenham.' The man proffered the folded and wax-sealed sheets of notepaper.

Harry Pratt took the letters, checked the addresses, and how many sheets of paper each letter comprised.

‘That'll be a shilling and thruppence for the Cheltenham, and a shilling each for the Brummagems. Plus sixpence each for the Brummagems' sheets and nine pence for the Cheltenham's.' Harry Pratt grinned wolfishly. ‘So I make that to be five shillings in total you got to pay.'

‘Five shillings?' The man protested angrily. ‘That's bloody daylight robbery, that is! I aren't going to pay that!'

Harry Pratt's grin widened. ‘Then I aren't going to take 'um. I don't set the prices, does I? That's the work o' the Parliament, that is. It's a shilling each for the distance to Brummagem, and a shilling and thruppence for the distance to Cheltenham, plus thruppence a sheet for each letter, and you got two sheets each in the Brummagems, and three sheets in the Cheltenham. So if you don't want to pay, then you can deliver the buggers yourself.'

He offered the letters back, but the other man shook his head in scowling surrender, and counted out coins which he handed to Pratt. The Bellman grinned triumphantly, pushed the letters through the bag-slot and marched smartly onwards ringing his bell and shouting, ‘Bring me your letters! Bring me your letters!'

Phoebe Creswell was waiting outside the village tavern and when she heard the shouts and bell she hurried to meet the Bellman.

‘Good morning, Master Pratt.'

‘Good morning, Miss Creswell.' He smiled pleasantly at this woman who always greeted him with the utmost courtesy.

‘I want to send this letter to Redditch, Master Pratt.'

He took the letter. ‘That'll be sixpence for the distance and thruppence for the single sheet o' paper, Miss Creswell.'

She drew a sharp breath of distress. ‘Oh, I've only a sixpence with me, Master Pratt. Could you be so very kind as to wait by the inn while I go home and get the rest of the money?'

He looked at the address on the letter and his eyes glinted with curiosity, then he winked at her. ‘I'll tell you what, Miss Creswell, seeing as it's you, you can just pay me the tanner and I'll make sure that Master Bromley gets this letter this very day.' He raised his forefinger to his lips and winked again. ‘Don't breathe a word to nobody of this though, or else I'll have every Tom, Dick and Harry in the village demanding the same favour.'

Phoebe gratefully thanked him as he took the coin and slipped the letter into his coat pocket.

It was late afternoon and darkness had fallen when Harry Pratt came into the lamplit premises of ‘Bromley's Stationery Emporium for All Articles of Stationery, Rare and Antique Books and New Literature', which was located in the High Street of Redditch Town.

The middle-aged, pot-bellied proprietor's magnified eyes blinked in surprise behind his bulbous-lensed spectacles. ‘Hello, Harry, why aren't you in the Horse and Jockey at this hour? Have you given up the drink?'

‘There's no danger o' me ever doing that, Charlie.' Pratt laughed and produced Phoebe Creswell's letter. ‘I'm doing a favour for somebody and making a special delivery o' this.'

Bromley took the letter and held it up to the hanging lamp to read the address. ‘I've fetched a half-dozen or more of these from the Post Office this last week. Not that I'm complaining, mind you, I get paid well for fetching them.'

‘That's a bloody queer name, “XYZ”. Who the fuck is that when they're about?' Pratt questioned.

‘I can't tell you that, Harry, I'm sworn to secrecy,' Bromley demurred.

‘And so is my arse.' His friend scoffed. ‘Come on, spit it out.'

‘I can't be telling you the man's name, Harry, and that's the God's truth. All I will say is that he's a rich and honourable gentleman. He came to see me a few weeks past and told me that he wanted to have some private, post-paid letters addressed to my shop. But it has to be a strictly confidential arrangement, that's why he pays so well. So don't you go blabbing about what I've just told you.' He paused and raised his eyebrows interrogatively. ‘Who gave you this one?'

Pratt grinned mockingly. ‘It's more than my job's worth to tell you that, Charlie. You know very well that as one of His Majesty's Bellmen, I'm sworn to secrecy on all matters concerning the Royal Mail. Now I'm off to the Horse and Jockey to quench me thirst and enjoy meself. Like you'll be doing a bit later wi' your fancy woman, no doubt.'

As the door closed behind his friend, Charles Bromley dolefully shook his head and muttered, ‘I don't think so, Harry.'

A
s the service ended in the ancient church of St John the Baptist, Walter Courtney immediately left his seat and went out into the churchyard. The air was cold and still and a spattering of snowflakes were drifting gently earthwards. The numerous worshippers coming out of the church were not lingering to make conversation with the clergyman who was bidding them farewell outside the church door – a fact which suited Courtney's purpose as he moved slowly among the ancient gravestones nearest to the door, halting at length at each stone, feigning to study it closely.

The last parishioners departed through the churchyard gates, and from the corner of his eye, Courtney saw the clergyman coming towards him, made an instant valuation of the man's threadbare clothing and turned to greet him heartily.

‘Good morning, Reverend Mackay. It lifted my heart to hear Isaiah Fifty-five this morning. It's one of my favourites and your reading of it was superbly done.' He began to intone sonorously, ‘Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy and eat.'

Horace Mackay visibly preened, and he immediately joined in. ‘Yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? And your labour for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.'

They beamed at each other and shook hands in mutual congratulation.

‘Allow me to introduce myself, Sir.' Courtney bowed. ‘Geraint Winward, who is, like yourself, a humble, thrice blessed servant of our Lord and Master.'

He proffered an ornate calling card, and the other man was visibly impressed by its expensive quality.