Ella’s Journey: The perfect wartime romance to fall in love with this summer
‘Go out again! What can you be thinking of? With children to be fed and dinner to be prepared, and you already late? I will not have it!’
Mr Ottershaw stretched a beefy arm across the hallway to block Ella’s path. She dodged it with ease, and although he grabbed at her, he caught only air. As Ella headed for the scullery, she called back, ‘There’s a gentleman in the road. His motorcar has broken down. I promised to fetch water to help him get back on his way.’
When she returned, bearing a large china jug and a glass, Mr Ottershaw was in a more conciliatory mood. ‘A gentleman, you say. With a motorcar? Well, I shall accompany you to see whether I can be of assistance.’
Ella doubted whether there was anything Mr Ottershaw could offer that would be of use, his experience of motor vehicles being non-existent, but she said nothing to her employer. She hastened down the steps, Mr Ottershaw pausing only to seize his jacket and a hat as protection against the sun before closing the door firmly on Mrs Ottershaw’s protestations. Ella was already at the corner before he caught up with her, puffing and red-faced but determined not to be left behind. The car and the gentleman were as she had left them, although the gentleman had retreated into the small amount of shade cast by the wall of Taylor’s carriage works.
‘You came back.’ There was a hint of surprise in his statement and Ella was stung.
‘Why, yes sir, I gave you my word.’ She handed him the jug and the glass. ‘I thought that you might be thirsty, sir, standing out in this heat all the time.’
There was no ignoring Mr Ottershaw, who was bobbing impatiently at Ella’s elbow.
‘And this is my employer, sir, Mr Ottershaw.’ Ella tried to sound enthusiastic in her introduction.
‘Ottershaw at your service,’ he said, holding out his hand to the gentleman who, having no free hand to take it, had to pass the jug and glass back to Ella.
‘Mr Ward,’ the gentleman replied. ‘From York. I was returning there after conducting some business in the area but it seems my car didn’t appreciate the hills round here on a day like today. The engine appears to have overheated.’
Mr Ward took the glass of water that Ella had poured for him and gulped it down gratefully.
‘Thank you. That was most thoughtful. I hadn’t realised quite how thirsty I had become.’
Ella refilled his glass and held it while he turned his attention once more to the car.
‘Now, if you will forgive me, I will take up no more of your time. I will top up the radiator and be on my way. Would you mind holding the jug a moment?’ He spoke to Ella, as he needed both hands to loosen the radiator cap.
‘Oh, but you must come and take some refreshment with us, Mr Ward.’ Mr Ottershaw was clearly put out that Ella was getting more than her share of this gentleman’s attention.
‘I thank you kindly,’ said Mr Ward, ‘but my family will be concerned at my lateness. And I have been well provided with refreshment thanks to –’ Mr Ward hesitated. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t ask your name?’
‘Ella, sir.’
‘– thanks to Ella.’ Mr Ward took the refilled glass and drained it in one. ‘Now my car is suitably refreshed and so am I.’
Mr Ottershaw could feel the situation slipping away from him. ‘Mr Ward, my dear wife would never forgive me if I didn’t press you to join us. Just to step inside out of the heat, and rest yourself before your journey. We were just about to take tea. Pray, do join us.’
Ella watched the scene unfold with some amusement. Mr Ottershaw may have considered himself a man of some importance in Nortonstall, but he was out of his depth with the likes of Mr Ward. The thought of such a gentleman stepping into the Ottershaws’ parlour for tea was in danger of making her break into unseemly laughter and she had to turn away, setting down the empty jug and glass to hide her expression.
Meanwhile, Mr Ward had climbed back into the driver’s seat and already had the engine running. Ella stepped back in awe – the vehicle was transformed from a broken beast into a growling, noisy monster. It suddenly seemed much larger and more dangerous than it had before. Mr Ward beckoned her to come closer, so that he didn’t have to shout over the noise of the engine.
‘Ella, I am most grateful for your help. I feared that I would be stuck in this god-forsaken place for the night. It seems to me that you work for a fool…’
Ella started and glanced nervously at Mr Ottershaw to see if he had heard, but he was too busy mopping his red, perspiring face with a handkerchief to be paying any heed.
‘Should you ever wish for a change of employment, I know Mrs Ward would be delighted to have a maid with even a modicum of intelligence in our house in York. Take this, and write to her.’
Mr Ward pressed a pasteboard card into Ella’s hand. She glanced at it before secreting it swiftly in her pocket, hoping that Mr Ottershaw hadn’t witnessed the action. Ella stepped back again, Mr Ward put the car into gear, nodded to them both and with a roar and a not-inconsiderable amount of dust, the car and the driver went on their way. The road seemed suddenly very quiet and still.
‘Well,’ said Mr Ottershaw, very put out that he had been side-lined. ‘I must say, he was rather a rude man. Why did he wish a private word with you, Ella? Quite improper, I felt.’
‘Oh no, Mr Ottershaw, he just wished to thank me again.’ Ella was relieved that no mention had been made of the card. She felt very conscious of it, hidden deep in her pocket. Employment in York – could such a thing be possible? Could she go, leaving her mother and Beth behind?
Ella sighed. She didn’t have to ask herself the same question about the Ottershaws. She knew they would make her life doubly hard for the rest of the day: Mr Ottershaw resentful of the attention she had received and Mrs Ottershaw furious with both of them for leaving her alone so long with the children. It would be a hard end to a hot day. But an exciting day, nonetheless. Ella had a secret but, she reflected as she trudged back up the hot and dusty road, it was one that she could do little about. She could neither read, nor write. And she certainly wasn’t going to be able to ask the Ottershaws to help her with either of those things.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ella hugged her secret to herself. The memory of what Mr Ward had said, and the possession of his card, sustained her through several trying weeks in the Ottershaw household. When the children fell ill one after the other, so that the kitchen was awash with bedclothes hanging to dry and the house filled with the crying or moaning of infants, day and night, Ella stoically carried on. She had some sympathy for the children, even when faced with a succession of permanently running or crusted noses, their seemingly endless capacity for being sick and the often-rude manner, learnt from their parents, in which they summoned and treated her.
Mr and Mrs Ottershaw were another matter. They liked to let it be known that Ella was there on sufferance, out of the goodness of their hearts in employing someone whose sister had, in their view and, it would seem, everyone else’s view, committed a hideous crime. It seemed to Ella that their apparent Christian charity was an excuse to misuse her, to pay her even less than the pittance considered a fair wage (‘as no one else will have you’), to work her all hours (‘you will understand the risk we have borne in taking you in’), and to refuse her the right to visit her family (‘the afternoon off? How could you ask this of us after all we have done for you?’).
It was only when they refused Ella a visit home after she had had word that Sarah, too, was struggling with a house full of sick children – Ella’s siblings Thomas, Annie and Beattie having taken it in turn to succumb, with niece Beth now gravely ill – that she finally snapped. Mr Ottershaw, in his usual pompous manner, had denied the request, citing a concern that she would return bearing yet more illness into the bosom of his family, then buried his head back in the newspaper. Ella had retired quietly to the kitchen. Two pink spots of rage burnt in her cheeks. She stood in the centre of the room, fists clenched, and thought but for a moment or two. Then she undid her apron, folded it and laid it over the kitchen chair, and went into the small room off the kitchen that served as her sleeping quarters. She took her few possessions off the shelf along with the dress that hung behind the door, and wrapped them in a woollen shawl. Then she drew her good shawl around her shoulders and stepped back into the kitchen. After a moment’s indecision, she went to the china pot at the back of the dresser shelf, where she knew that Mrs Ottershaw kept coins to pay the small bills of tradesmen, and took what little lay in there. It would have to do in lieu of the money she was owed for the month just worked, for which she reasoned she was unlikely to be paid. She slipped the coins into her pocket, where Mr Ward’s card still nestled reassuringly, and set off for the front door. In the hallway, she hesitated before knocking on the parlour door, and entering. Mr Ottershaw, irritated, looked over the top of his newspaper.
‘I’ll bid you and Mrs Ottershaw a good day, sir. And I hope you will be more fortunate in the future in finding a servant that suits,’ and with a nod Ella left the room, and the house, before Mr Ottershaw could reply.
She was trembling, whether with anger, shock or terror at what she had just done, she could not say.
Sarah listened without comment to her tale when she reached home, then hugged her and sent her to fetch ink and paper. While Ella set to, mopping fevered brows, singing calming songs and bringing cooling drinks of water for the sickly family, Sarah wrote a note to Mrs Ward and took it herself to the post office. When Mr Ottershaw came to the door that evening to demand that Ella should return, having broken the terms of her employment, Sarah informed him that he was putting himself at risk of the fever in coming to their house. Furthermore, she had reason to believe that the Ottershaws themselves had broken the terms of their contract with Ella on many occasions and they should make it their business to look elsewhere for a servant. And with that she shut the door firmly in his face.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When word came back that Ella was to present herself as soon as possible at the Ward household in York, she was thrown into a panic. Once she had escaped the drudgery of the Ottershaws’ house, the planning of her further escape from Nortonstall had been all consuming. Now that it was going to happen, Ella was seized with doubt. She had never left the confines of her immediate locality before. Although in her younger years she had roamed far and wide across the fields and moors, she had barely travelled a distance greater than five miles from home. Now she was to travel nearer sixty, and the greater part of that journey was to be via the railway, from Nortonstall to Leeds and then on to York. Although the railway had run through the town for a while now, there were still those who viewed it with deep distrust and wouldn’t dream of setting foot inside a carriage, let alone allowing it to transport them anywhere. Ella had seen and heard the trains as they passed through the town, but she had never had reason, nor the money, to take one. Nor, if she was honest with herself, did she wish to. The Wards had enclosed her fare for the trip and, although Ella had favoured the idea of begging a ride with a carter leaving Nortonstall for Leeds, Sarah wouldn’t hear of it.
‘When have you ever been to Leeds?’ she demanded. ‘You won’t have the first idea of how to go about finding yourself a ride from there to York.’
‘Yes, I will.’ Ella was defiant. ‘The carter can help when I alight. He’s bound to stop at an inn and it will be easy to ask around there to find someone who’s travelling on to York.’
‘Well, I won’t have it,’ Sarah said. ‘You’ll be lucky to accomplish the journey in a day, so you’d have to find lodgings or journey through the night. All manner of things could go wrong.’
She was working herself into a state and even Ella began to be daunted by the possibilities of unforeseen disaster.
‘In any case,’ Sarah continued, determined to put a stop to the debate. ‘Mrs Ward has sent you the fare and will expect you to arrive in good time, and fresh to start work. The train it must be.’
So Ella found herself standing on the platform at Nortonstall station, watching anxiously down the tracks as the engine approached, a plume of steam trailing through the chill morning air behind it and hanging there, like mist. A great flourish of squealing brakes and belching steam heralded the train’s arrival at the platform, quickly followed by a rush of activity as doors swung open, porters were hailed, and the passengers who had been waiting quietly on the platform were now galvanised into action. Ella stood for a moment, bewildered and made nervous by the noises of the train at rest, the creaks and groans of the metal and the chug of the engine.
‘Are you taking this train? You’d best make haste, miss.’
One of the porters, wheeling a trolley of mail sacks, paused momentarily beside her. Ella shook herself free of her reverie in time to realise that the doors were closing and the only people left on the platform were passengers leaving the station.
‘Third, is it?’ the porter said. ‘There, the last carriage. Hurry now.’
Tightly clutching her bundle of belongings and pasteboard ticket, Ella all but ran along the short platform to the last carriage. A whistle blew as she put her foot on the carriage running board and hands reached out to take her arms and pull her in as the train started to move, with a squeal of protest and yet another belch of steam. The door was slammed behind her and Ella, suddenly breathless, stood embarrassed among the men pressed up by the door.
They passed her between themselves like a parcel until she found herself at the end of the rows of hard bench seats, which faced each other and were mainly occupied by women clutching baskets and small children.
‘Any room for a little ’un?’ one of her rescuers asked cheerfully, and a woman at the end of the bench obligingly scooped up a young child and made room for Ella to sit down.
‘Nearly miss it, did you?’ she asked, looking Ella up and down.
‘I… why, yes, I suppose I did,’ said Ella. She sat in silence for a minute or two, aware of her fast-beating heart and the high colour on her cheeks.
‘I’ve never travelled on a train before,’ she suddenly blurted out to her neighbour.
The woman laughed, while a couple of near neighbours smiled.
‘Well, you’ve discovered the joys of them now, love. No going back. They’re the quickest way to get around. Where are you headed?’
‘York,’ said Ella. ‘Well, Leeds first.’
‘Best watch yourself at the station,’ her neighbour advised. ‘Plenty of people there looking to take advantage of a young girl like you travelling alone. Keep to yourself and keep a tight hold on your things.’ She glanced at the bundle, bound up in a shawl, on Ella’s lap. ‘There’s plenty there whose job it is to part you from your possessions.’
Ella spent the rest of the journey taking in her surroundings and getting used to the novelty of seeing the countryside moving fast past the window as she tried to settle herself on the hard, slippery seat. After a while, fields gave way to rows of back-to-back houses and, an hour after she had climbed on board, Ella stepped down from the carriage and onto the platform. She stopped, transfixed. The other alighting passengers bumped and jostled her but she was oblivious. She’d never seen a building quite like it: great metal arches soaring skywards and everywhere noise echoing and the smell of coal fumes hanging in the air.
Light streamed in through the huge curved glass roof as well as from the end of the great building. Here, where the station opened out onto the tracks, Ella could see the comings and goings of even more trains. There weren’t just two platforms, as at Nortonstall, she quickly realised as she let herself be carried along with the remaining passengers heading for the gate, but many platforms.
‘The train for York?’ she enquired tentatively of the man at the gate, who was checking and taking their tickets.
‘Not here, love,’ he said. ‘You need New Station.’ Ella was dumbfounded. She hadn’t realised she would need to change stations, as well as trains. The ticket collector looked her up and down, taking in her bundle and lost expression, and took pity on her. ‘It’s just around the corner. Follow Wellington Street, then turn into Bishopgate Street. You can’t miss it. Follow the crowd.’
Ella did as he said, tagging along behind a group of people who were striding purposefully along as they left the station. Nonetheless, her heart was beating fast and she was worried that she might get lost. She barely had time to register how big and busy the streets were, and how tall and grimy the buildings, before she found herself turning away from a grand square straight into bustling crowds of people who were coming and going from a vast and forbidding brick-built building, much larger than anything she had ever seen before. Once inside, Ella was quickly overawed by the size of the space and the confident manner in which the other travellers seemed to be going about their business. Enquiring somewhat timidly about the next train to York, she was directed to the ticket office where she joined a queue, feeling anxious as to whether she would have enough money left over to cover the fare then thankful that she did, and that procuring it hadn’t been as difficult as she had feared.
With the new ticket safely in her possession, she decided to find the platform straight away. Mindful of the words of her companion on the earlier train, she kept her head down and her bundle clutched tightly to her.
It was only when she reached Platform Two and ascertained that she still had a half hour’s wait before the York train that she felt able to relax a little and take a proper look around. It seemed as though trains were arriving every few minutes, the doors flying open to disgorge a rush of passengers from the second- and third-class carriages, all intent on going about their business, while the first-class passengers descended at a more leisurely pace, looking about them for porters to take their luggage, or strolling away, the ladies elegant in long skirts and tailored coats with glossy fur collars, fashionable feathered hats on their heads, arm in arm with gentlemen in smartly cut suits. Ella stared in awe, saved by the distance from appearing rude. She had never seen such fashionable, well-dressed people before. In Nortonstall, people dressed for practicality and hard work, with their best clothes saved for Sundays and funerals. Such an array of colours and fabrics as was now passing before her was unimaginable. Cream wool coats trimmed with dark brown fur, rich russet jackets bound with black, hats in red or maroon velvet, decorated with great swoops of feathers.
Ella shivered in the cold wind that swept through the station concourse and pulled her shawl tighter around herself, suddenly very conscious of her dowdy appearance. She’d peered into the Ladies’ Waiting Room as she had passed it, but had been too daunted by the smartness of the occupants to consider entering it. The warmly lit interior of the station café was appealing; she would dearly have loved a cup of tea to warm herself, but was worried both about the expense and feeling out of place.
With a great deal of self-important puffing the train for York finally pulled in, sending clouds of steam billowing up to the roof. Ella hung back as the door opened and the wave of passengers swept by. Those in a hurry were already hovering on the running board with the carriage doors open as the train slowed to a halt; others descended at a more leisurely pace, the ladies pulling on gloves and straightening hats, checking on their travelling companions before heading off to – Ella couldn’t imagine what. Shopping? Visiting friends or relatives? A life of leisure activities wasn’t something she had ever thought about, nor did she have time now. Instead, it was time to take her seat in the third-class carriage, mercifully less crowded than before, and to contemplate what might await her at the other end.
CHAPTER NINE
Ella followed the other passengers out of York station then hesitated, unsure of which way to turn. She ignored the line of hansom cabs waiting for fares, looking instead to her left and right for someone who might help her with directions. Tucked away at the far corner of the station façade she spotted a vendor selling flowers and made her way towards him. His face brightened at her approach.
‘I wonder, could you help me? I need to get to Knavesmire.’
The man sighed. ‘It’s always directions. Hardly ever a sale. If I had a farthing… Ah well, never mind, I’m happy to help a pretty lass like you, with manners to match.’
He pointed out the route that Ella would need to take, advising her that it was not much over a mile, before he offered her some anemones. Waving away her protests that she couldn’t pay, he pinned a couple of flower heads to her shawl.
‘They’re out of season and I’ve barely enough to sell. It will help brighten up a grey day for you. I wish you luck.’
Ella thanked him for his kindness and set out. Before she turned away from the city, out towards Knavesmire and the countryside beyond, she took a moment to gaze at the high grey-stone walls, set atop great green-carpeted mounds of earth, which surrounded the city. Within, she could make out an imposing church tower and a jumble of roofs while up ahead of her a turreted stone arch, the like of which she had never seen before, linked two sections of the wall over a road that led into the city. Lingering, she wondered whether she had time to step through that arch and discover what lay beyond it. Instead, promising herself that she would return to explore further at the first opportunity, she turned her back on the city and set out, facing into the wind. Before long, the streets of small terraced houses that led off from each side of the road gave way to grander houses set in large plots ranging along one side of the road, facing onto a great swathe of green on the other.
As a chill mist drifted across from Knavesmire, Ella found herself standing before Grange House, a house quite unlike anything she had ever seen. Set back behind a low wall, with a sweep of gravel in front, it had an oddly top-heavy appearance. Two storeys high, with additional windows in the attic, it had a prominent gable at one end, half-timbered at the top only, with this feature repeated around some of the windows and the front door. Perhaps most startling to Ella was the redness of the brick. The houses in Northwaite and Nortonstall were all built of grey stone with grey-slate roofs. This one was set beneath a red-tiled roof, and although the windows had pale sandstone surrounds, the predominant effect, Ella felt, was of a house shouting ‘look at me!’ to anyone who passed by. Her momentary doubt that she had come to the wrong place was quelled by the sight of Mr Ward’s motorcar parked on the immaculately raked gravel in front of a separate brick-built building. Ella, sensing instinctively that she would not be expected to approach the grand front door, looked anxiously around for another way in. She spotted a discreet gate tucked into the side of the wall and, biting her lip in a sudden surge of anxiety and shivering hard in the chill mist that rolled in ever more thickly from across the road, she opened the gate and followed the path round the house.
Her first timid knock at the dark-painted solid door remained unanswered. Steeling herself, she seized the knocker and let it fall once, twice against the wood. Ella was filled with a sense of panic – why had she ever thought it a good idea to leave behind the safety of the hills and valleys where she had spent all her life, where she knew every person, every path, bird and flower, for a place as foreign as this? The thickness of the door blotted out any sounds from within and so Ella, poised to flee, was startled when it opened suddenly, revealing a girl little older than herself in a maid’s uniform. A warmly lit interior was visible behind her.