A Woman’s Fortune

‘Yes, I can spare a few moments. Thank you.’ Mrs Lambert parked the pram and lifted the baby out, murmuring to her and smoothing her fine blonde hair. ‘Come along, Archie,’ she told the toddler, smiling.

‘Archie – that’s nice,’ said Evie, taking the child’s hand and leading him in, though he clutched his mother’s skirt in his other little fist.

‘Excuse the mess. We only got here last night,’ said Jeanie.

‘It’s all right,’ said the friendly woman, though she perched rather tentatively on the chair in the dismal kitchen. ‘So how did you come to be here if you don’t know Church Sandleton?’

Michael and Jeanie exchanged looks.

‘A friend of a friend had heard of a job hereabouts that might suit,’ said Michael vaguely. ‘It’s a pretty part of the country … good place to bring up children,’ he improvised, looking at young Archie and his baby sister.

‘Would that be the job at Clackett’s market garden?’ asked Mrs Lambert, accepting a cup of Ribena for Archie and tea for herself. ‘I heard Mr Clackett was looking for some help.’

‘If the job’s still going,’ said Michael. Having been working all morning at the front he couldn’t have failed to notice the sign for Clackett’s a few yards further down on the other side of the road.

Sue gave him a meaningful look. ‘So do you know Mr Bailey?’ she asked Josie Lambert. ‘We haven’t met him yet.’

‘Oh, no, I don’t know him personally. He lives in Redmond but he’s seen about the village sometimes. Drives a smart car and owns here and a couple of other properties.’

‘Well, no doubt he’ll be round before long,’ said Sue, and, having extracted what information she could about the landlord, she changed the subject to the village generally while Jeanie cooed over baby Nancy and little Archie.

As soon as Josie Lambert had waved goodbye with promises to call again when Jeanie was settled, Sue turned to Michael.

‘Right, you get over to that market garden, lad, and see what this job’s about.’

‘But I know nowt about growing vegetables,’ he protested.

‘Who said you’d be growing the veg? You won’t know if you don’t go.’ She shooed him out of the door, then turned to Jeanie. ‘Now, I’ve an idea about the front room. Come through and see what you think. You, too, Evie. It was us women that held the place together in Shenty Street and we can make a go of it here with luck and a fair wind. And as I said earlier, this could be our lucky day.’

‘It’s looking that way so far,’ Peter said, grabbing his whistle and playing a jaunty fanfare. ‘Come on, Bob. I’ll wash, you dry, and Grandma can think up ways to make our fortune.’

Billy immediately recognised Evie’s neat round handwriting on the envelope Ada Taylor had left on the kitchen table for him to find when he got in from work. He snatched it up as he called out to her that he was home, then went upstairs to read it in private.

Pendle’s

High Street

Church Sandleton

Near Redmond

Thursday

Dear Billy,

I hope you and your mother are well. I’m missing you like mad and I hope you’re missing me, too.

I can’t believe so much has happened since we waved off Fergus Sullivan on Sunday evening. Dad’s got a job – the first one he tried for! It’s at the market garden across the road and he’s helping to pick the crops. There’s a huge amount of them at the moment and Dad says it gets very hot in the glasshouses. He says it’s backbreaking work, especially the strawberries, but luckily they’re nearly finished. Another really good thing is that Mr Clackett, the owner, gives Dad some of the stuff he says won’t sell so we’re eating lots of very ripe fruit and vegetables.

The boys are on holiday from school and play outside all day. Pete is making friends with Mr Clackett’s son, Martin, and Bob usually tags along with them. There are miles of fields for them to play in around here as it’s proper countryside.

Where we’re living is an old shop, which makes a strange house with the shop window, but Grandma has hatched a plan for her, Mum and me to open a little business. I’m so excited that we’ll be working together again. We’ve looked around the village and there’s no one advertising their dressmaking services or doing alterations and repairs so we think we may have found what Grandma calls ‘an opening’. We need to get in touch with Mr Bailey, who owns the building, to see if that’s all right, but so far we haven’t met him.

It’s nice here but it doesn’t feel like home and I don’t know if it ever will. It’s so different from everything we know and love in Bolton. The people in the village are friendly but we’re all missing you and the Sullivans and Mrs Marsh – our kind of people.

Please give my best to your mother, and write soon. I shall look for your letter every day. Remember not to tell anyone the address, just in case.

With lots of love,

Evie xxx

So, Evie was missing him ‘like mad’ – which was exactly how he felt about her. How he longed to see her pretty face, with her pointy chin and big hazel eyes. It seemed far longer than five days since he’d waved her goodbye and he’d been thinking of her constantly since then.

Billy reread the letter, then changed out of his postman’s uniform and returned downstairs.

Ada had a pot of strong tea brewing and a toasted teacake waiting for him – ‘to put you on till teatime, love.’

‘Thanks, Mum. You’ll have guessed the letter was from Evie. Guess what: seems her dad has a job already.’

‘Well, bless me, who’d have thought it?’

‘It’s great news. Things will turn out better for them all from now.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on it with that Michael Carter. I reckon Jeanie Goodwin has long rued the day that she married him. She’s a bonny woman and could have had her pick. What she wanted to choose him for I don’t know. I’d have thought Sue might have talked her out of it, but no.’

‘Sounds like he’s doing all right now, anyway.’

‘That’s if he can keep this job, whatever it is,’ Ada muttered darkly. ‘He’d do well to change his ways and be a bit more reliable. What news of Sue and Jeanie?’

‘Mrs Goodwin wants to start a dressmaking business. Seems they live in an old shop so there are ready-made premises for customers – I expect that gave her the idea.’

‘Well, Sue was always a hard worker, and a talented seamstress, too. It’s a step up from taking in washing, but if anyone can make a go of it, she can.’

‘Evie is going to help her, she’s good with a needle, and a fast learner. She worries about getting things just right and she’ll apply herself to it. She has the same eye for a job well done as her grandma.’

‘They’ll be all right with Sue in charge,’ said Ada confidently. She looked carefully at her son. ‘Sounds like they’re making a whole new life for themselves down south.’

‘I think Evie’s missing everyone here,’ Billy replied. ‘It’s not the same as where she was brought up and what she knows. And I reckon we’re all missing her, too,’ he added boldly.

‘You say that now, Billy, but she’s not been gone long. Sometimes folk move on, love, and it’s not a good idea to be wanting everything to be as it was. She’s not here now and probably won’t come back. You’ve got to accept that or be disappointed.’

But Billy wasn’t at all ready to accept that Evie was gone for good. He’d never forget the promise he’d made to her that they wouldn’t be apart for ever, though he decided not to share this thought with his mother.

He’d write a reply to Evie that evening. After they’d had their tea his mother liked to doze while listening to the Light Programme on the wireless so there’d be a chance then for him to write a long letter full of news about Evie’s friends in Bolton. And to send her his love.

‘I can’t believe we’ve been here over a week and still haven’t met this Mr Bailey,’ said Jeanie as she chopped some of the twisty-shaped carrots Michael had returned with that evening. Sue, Evie and Peter were busy in the front room, cleaning it in preparation for a coat of paint.

‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it?’ said Michael as he scrubbed soil from under his fingernails at the kitchen sink. ‘At least he hasn’t come asking for any rent.’

‘We’ll have to pay him eventually,’ Jeanie replied. ‘And Mum is full of ideas for our little business and wants to get started. We’ll need to have enough money for the rent when the time comes, and there’s no one else offering a sewing service in Church Sandleton. So far, anyway. We can’t be the only ones with a sewing machine and Mum’s worried someone may pip us at the post if we don’t get started soon.’

‘Can’t she set up business without asking Bailey?’ Michael sank into a chair to watch Jeanie work.

‘I expect so, but it is his property, after all. It’s only polite to tell him what we want to do, see if it’s all right with him.’

‘Why would he object, though? It’s not like you’re opening a – I don’t know – a pub or summat you’d need legal permission for.’

‘Or an undertaker’s,’ piped up Robert, at the far end of the kitchen table. ‘That would be horrible and creepy. You’d have dead people in the front room and, Dad, you’d have to wear a tall black hat.’

‘Good grief, Bob, I don’t know where you get such ideas,’ laughed Jeanie, pulling a quizzical face at Michael. ‘Anyway, I’ve decided that if Mr Bailey’s not coming to us then I’m going to him. Mum looked out her sewing machine this morning, oiled it and everything. Evie’s written a neat little notice to pin up in the shop, offering alterations, curtain- and dressmaking, and mending. Once that’s up we’ll need to be ready for our customers.’

‘I’d leave it if I were you, love,’ said Michael. ‘Wait and see what happens. We’re living rent-free at the moment – no use courting expense and creating problems for ourselves.’

‘If you think it’s rent-free here then you’re dafter than you look,’ said Jeanie wearily. ‘Come on, Michael, we’ve lost so much, but let’s start as we mean to go on. The laundry and mending business was what kept us going many a week in Bolton. The boys will need new school uniform come September and we can’t live for ever on what Mum and I saved from the washing.’

‘I do my bit—’

‘Picking tomatoes!’

‘But we get given vegetables, too.’

‘Mr Clackett’s been very generous, and I’m grateful, but we can’t eat nowt but vegetables.’

‘By heck, Jeanie, you’re a grand cook and few others could make them veggies taste as good as you do, but what I wouldn’t give for a helping of hotpot.’

‘Evie and I are to catch the bus to Redmond in the morning and we shall find Mr Bailey, introduce ourselves and make sure our plans are all straight and above board with him. What if there’s been some mistake and he doesn’t even know we’re here?’

‘You’re right, of course …’ said Michael, getting up and stretching his stiff back. ‘I’ll just go out and take a stroll up the street while you’re making that carrot thing.’

‘Don’t be too long, love. You’re looking tired and the veg doesn’t take much cooking.’

Michael grunted as he went down the hall, past Sue, Evie and Peter still scrubbing the walls, floor and ceiling of the front room. He stepped out into the street and turned towards the Red Lion, thinking he’d already left it far too long to make the acquaintance of his new local.

Jeanie and Evie got off the bus in the market square in Redmond. It was market day and on this sunny July morning the place was thronging with shoppers carrying baskets, women pushing prams and traders shouting their wares from the brightly coloured stalls.

‘Oh, Mum, let’s have a quick look,’ begged Evie.

‘A look won’t hurt,’ agreed Jeanie, ‘but we won’t buy anything until we’ve found Mr Bailey and seen about the rent and if we can go ahead with the sewing. Look, there’s Mr Clackett behind that stall. And Martin’s helping him.’ She waved and the market gardener called out cheerily to her.

‘Let’s see if there’s a fabric stall or a haberdasher’s,’ suggested Evie. ‘We can report back to Grandma if anything looks good.’

‘Aye, your gran has high standards,’ said Jeanie, ‘though we may have to make do to start with and work our way up to best quality as we earn a bit of money.’

‘It sounds like you think Grandma’s idea really will work out.’ Evie’s smile lit up her face. ‘I’m so glad, Mum. The washing was hard, but it was nice when us three were all working together. It’ll be like that again.’

‘From oldest to youngest, we all stick together,’ Jeanie agreed.

‘It’s going to be brilliant. I can’t wait to get started.’

They soon spotted a stall heaped with bolts of cloth, but the prices were high compared to those the Carters were used to up North.

‘No mill shops here either,’ said Jeanie. ‘Well, I suppose we couldn’t expect it to be as cheap as it is straight from the factory. That lace is nice, though.’

‘We’ll remember to tell Grandma. Come on, let’s go and see if we can find Mr Bailey.’

They had already made a plan. The public library was a grand-looking building on one side of the square and they went in and found the reference library where a sign instructed ‘SILENCE’. Josie Lambert had mentioned that Frederick Bailey drove a smart car so it was highly likely he was the kind of man who also had a telephone in his house. Jeanie and Evie quickly found the local telephone directory and in less than two minutes were coming out of the library with the addresses written down of two people: ‘F. Bailey’ and ‘F. W. Bailey’.

‘We’ve no way of knowing so we’ll just have to try one, and then the other if we have to,’ said Jeanie.

‘Maybe look out for a policeman – they always know where places are – but we’ll ask Mr Clackett in the meantime.’

They went back over to the market and had to wait while Mr Clackett did a brisk trade in salad before he was free to give them his attention.

‘Woodfall Road – don’t know that, I’m afraid, Mrs Carter. Eh, Stanley,’ he called across to a man selling sausages. ‘Woodfall Road – ring any bells?’

Stanley scratched his head. ‘Off the main road out towards Church Sandleton,’ he said eventually.

‘What about Midsummer Row?’ asked Jeanie.

‘Oh, that’s just behind here,’ said Mr Clackett. ‘Next to that shoe shop there’s a side road that goes down into a little square.’

‘Thank you,’ beamed Jeanie, and she and Evie set off for the nearer place.

‘Oh, I suddenly feel quite nervous,’ said Jeanie as they walked through into the pretty square with trees in a tiny central garden and tall thin town houses overlooking it all round.

‘Perhaps he’ll be really nice,’ suggested Evie, though she, too, was anxious and her stomach was churning.

‘Do I look all right?’ asked Jeanie. ‘I don’t want to appear down at heel. I want Mr Bailey to think we’re respectable folk who can be trusted.’

Evie stopped walking and pulled her mother round to face her. She tipped her straw hat a fraction further forward and brushed a tiny speck of dust off the lapel of her floral print jacket. It was old but Sue had made it from quality cotton spun and woven in Bolton and, with its eye-catching colours and sharp tailoring, it had stood the test of time and was a fine advertisement for Sue’s dressmaking skills.

‘Mum, you look lovely,’ Evie told her mother truthfully. ‘Now let’s see which one’s Marlowe House.’

They walked round the square, reading the names on smart plaques beside the front doors, and soon came to the right one. Evie opened the iron gate and Jeanie led her through and up the steps to the front door.

She took a deep breath and had just put her hand out to ring the bell when the door was flung open and a furious-looking woman, wearing an overall and with her hair tied up with a scarf, erupted out of the house.

‘You can keep your flipping job, you old bastard!’ she yelled back through the open door. ‘Don’t you threaten me with the police. Years I’ve slaved for you, and poor thanks I’ve had for it. I’ve seen pigs keep themselves cleaner. You can stew in your own muck. I deserve better and I only took what should have been mine. I’ve had enough!’

She picked up an ornament from a side table beside the door and hurled it back down the hall. Evie and Jeanie heard the tinkle of shattering china and unconsciously they clutched each other as the harridan, oblivious, stomped past them, down the steps and through the gate, leaving it open in her wake.

Evie’s heart was pounding as she turned to see her mother was white with shock.

‘Oh, Mum, whatever can have happened? I think we ought to go. I don’t like it here at all.’

‘Me neither, Evie. Come on …’

As they began to retrace their steps a calm and educated voice called behind them, ‘Please don’t mind Mrs Summers. She can be a bit ill-tempered, though, truth be told, she was a very good cleaner. Pity she wasn’t a more honest one.’

Jeanie quickly tried to gather herself as she turned back to see who had spoken.

He was a tall, very lean and good-looking man in his fifties, his greying dark hair in need of a cut. He was wearing a moth-eaten old cricket pullover, and a kerchief – such as a pirate might wear in an adventure story, thought Evie – knotted round the frayed neck of his collarless shirt. Jeanie looked him up and down in astonishment and thought without a doubt that he was the most untidy – and the handsomest – man she’d ever seen.

‘Mr Bailey?’ she asked, suddenly feeling strangely breathless.

‘I am Frederick Bailey,’ the tall man replied with astonishing dignity considering what his ex-cleaner had just called him in front of strangers.

‘Er … I’m Ginette Carter, and this is my daughter, Evelyn.’

‘How do you do,’ said Mr Bailey. ‘How can I help you?’

Oh dear, he doesn’t seem to have heard of us. Living at Pendle’s is all an awful mistake. Or maybe this is the wrong person and we should be at the other Bailey’s house? As this thought flashed through Evie’s mind she saw her mother’s puzzled face reflecting the very same thing.

‘I … I’m wondering if you might be our new landlord,’ Jeanie persevered. ‘Pendle’s? In Church Sandleton?’

‘Yes, I suppose I must be, if that’s where you’re living,’ Mr Bailey replied vaguely. ‘Come in, please …’

He stood back to let Jeanie and Evie pass through the smart front door and into the hall where shards of pink and white porcelain lay strewn across the floor.

‘Pity about the shepherdess,’ he said. ‘I’d got a buyer lined up for her, too. Still, there we are …’

Evie caught Jeanie’s eye behind the man’s back and shrugged nervously. This man wasn’t like anyone she had ever met, and though the coarse, shouting woman had gone she still didn’t feel at all comfortable here.

Jeanie, too, felt out of place in this strange house, with this odd man, but as she looked around the elegant little hallway Mr Bailey turned to her and smiled, and it was a smile she understood.

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