I’d only known simple cottages with sparse makeshift furniture and Mr Buchanan’s overstuffed modern villa, so full of gimcracks and whatnots that you sent half a dozen flying if you whirled past too quickly.
‘I love your house, Janet!’ I said, running my hand admiringly over the curved back of a chair.
‘Oh, say that in front of Father and he will love you, because he’s a joiner. He made that set of chairs to give to Mother as a wedding present. Come and meet Mother. She will be baking for tomorrow.’
We went into a fine airy kitchen with a proper range. Mrs Briskett would have loved to cook there. Mrs Maple, Janet’s mother, was a dear, plain, earnest woman, very like her daughter. Her hair was plaited in a girlish braid, though it was now silver-grey. She wore a long white apron and her sleeves were rolled up as she beat eggs into a bowl of cake-mix.
‘Mother, this is Hetty – do you recall, Jem’s foster sister? She lived here until she was five, and then she had to go to the Foundling Hospital.’
‘Oh yes, the little one with the bright red hair! I remember Peg carrying you around when you were a babe. You had a twin, did you not?’
‘That would be Gideon. We’re not related, but I always thought of him as my brother. He is gone to be a soldier now.’
‘And are you here for poor John’s funeral?’
‘Yes, that’s why I’ve brought her here, Mother, because there’s no more room to bed down in Jem’s cottage. I said Hetty could stay overnight with us. Is that all right?’ asked Janet.
‘Oh yes, dear, Hetty’s more than welcome. Take her up to the guest room,’ said Mrs Maple.
‘Guest room’ sounded very grand. A room just for me, their guest! It was right upstairs at the top of the house, a strange little room with iron ribs stretching across the ceiling and rows of hooks all around the walls. I fingered them curiously and Janet laughed.
‘Whenever my sisters and I were naughty Mother always threatened to take us up here and hang us on the hooks,’ she said. ‘Oh, Hetty, your face! They’re bacon hooks – this used to be a bacon loft long ago. They hung the smoked bacon here after it was cured.’
Now that she’d told me that, I fancied I smelled a slight whiff of salty bacon about the room, though the bed was fragrant with lavender sachets and there was a bowl of dried rose petals on the linen chest. The smell reminded me of the room where my poor foster father was lying in his coffin and I shivered again, pulling Lizzie’s shawl tight around me.
I was glad when we went downstairs to the warm kitchen and sat chatting while Mrs Maple baked. She made a Victoria sponge which she spread with her own homemade strawberry jam, two dozen little custard tarts, and an elderflower madeira cake laced with her own home-brewed wine.
‘Do you think that’s enough, Hetty?’ she asked me anxiously. ‘I’ll gladly make up another batch, for I know poor Peg isn’t up to baking at the moment – but I reckoned your big sisters would be fixing the funeral feast themselves.’
‘They have been baking, but not lovely cakes like these!’ I said. I paused, looking at them hopefully.
‘Perhaps you two had better try them for me, just to be sure they’re up to standard,’ said Mrs Maple, giving us each a warm custard tart and sprinkling it with sugar and nutmeg.
I had had only a small bowl of broth for my lunch. My custard tart disappeared in seconds. ‘Oh my!’ I said, with my mouth full.
‘Mother’s custard tarts are the best,’ said Janet.
‘I don’t suppose you need to test your sponge or your madeira?’ I asked.
‘Absolutely not, you saucy girls,’ said Mrs Maple. ‘Now go into my pantry, you two, and pick a couple of jars of fruit. I dare say they will come in useful tomorrow too.’
I’d been in pantries before. I’d crept into the one at the hospital when I was in the kitchen helping Mama, and she’d slipped me a handful of raisins or a spoonful of sugar. I hadn’t dared sneak morsels of food from Mrs Briskett’s pantry. She might have chopped my fingers off if she’d found me with my hand in her sweetmeat jar. But those pantries were as nothing compared to Mrs Maple’s. It was crammed with jars of fruit, preserves and pickles, arranged in glowing tones of colour, from the palest creamy-beige honey to the deepest purple damson. I stroked the shiny jars reverently, unable to choose.
‘We’ll have two jars of the yellow plums – Jem loves them so,’ said Janet. ‘Remember, Hetty? Jem always used to give himself a stomach ache. He’d pick them straight from the tree and eat two pounds at a time.’
I didn’t remember. I couldn’t help resenting the fact that Janet knew Jem so much better than me. I had only had five years with him, but she had had her whole life. But even so, Jem was my brother, not hers. I had ‘married’ him wearing a long nightgown with a daisy chain crowning my hair when I was four. He had been happy to call me his sweetheart then.
I thought of Jem’s letters. They weren’t exactly love letters, but they were so fond, so dear, so full of affection. I would be living with Jem now, tending Mother, cooking and cleaning, washing his shirts and darning his socks. I would be acting like a little wife already. Perhaps, in the fullness of time . . .
I had my supper with the Maples – chicken and cabbage and potatoes, a simple enough meal, but beautifully cooked, with a rhubarb pie for pudding. Mr Maple ate with us, but said very little. He was a tall, broad man wearing old corduroys, as plain and strong as his furniture. He sat at one end of the table, Mrs Maple at the other, while Janet and I sat at each side. Four of the chairs stood empty. Janet was the youngest of five, but all her sisters had left home to get married.
‘But don’t you worry, my petal, it will be your turn soon,’ said Mrs Maple.
‘Mother!’ said Janet, going very pink.
‘Don’t you think it’s likely, Hetty?’ said her mother, turning to me.
‘Oh yes, very likely,’ I said politely, because Janet was a sweet kind girl, and if she’d been taught her mother’s culinary skills she’d make any man a fine wife.
Mrs Maple was a magical healer too. She saw me limping, and after we had washed the supper dishes she bade me take off my boot and stocking so she could examine my ankle. ‘Poor Hetty! It looks very angry and sore,’ she said, touching it very gently.
‘Yes, indeed it is,’ I said.
At the hospital we had learned very quickly not to complain of our ailments. We never got any sympathy, and sometimes a complaint would actively aggravate a matron, and we’d get a slap on top of our sore throat or tummy ache. I had tried to bear pain stoically – but I’d had to be very brave all that very long day, and now my whole leg ached and throbbed, and the bruising was still deep purple.
‘I will do my best to ease it,’ said Mrs Maple. ‘Janet, run to the cupboard and fetch me dried elderflower and chamomile.’
She bathed my ankle with vinegar and water, which felt very soothing, though I did not care for the smell. Then she made up a poultice, mixing the dried flowers with crumbled bread, and bandaged it into place. I don’t know whether it was the vinegar bath, the herbal poultice, or Mrs Maple’s kindness, but the throbbing calmed and my ankle felt almost as good as new.
‘But you must rest it, Hetty. I don’t know how you’ll cope walking in the funeral procession tomorrow. Perhaps you’d better stay resting here . . .’ she said.
‘I shall go even if I have to hop all the way,’ I said. ‘And I will do my best to get Mother there too.’
The thought of her poor twisted face and her gargled speech made the tears spring to my eyes. I did not love her the way I loved my own dear mama, but she had cared for me like a true mother for five whole years and she meant a great deal to me.
I lay awake for hours that night in the bacon loft. The bed was very comfortable, with three feather mattresses as soft as thistledown, but I tossed and turned all the same. I thought of Mother lying immobile on her bed and Father even more stiff and straight in his coffin.
Then I thought of Mama in her coffin under the earth in f
araway Bignor, and I turned on my front, put my head under the pillow, and sobbed hard, because I loved her so and missed her very much.
I am here in your heart, my Hetty.
I was a little comforted and slept at last.
Mrs Maple made us a fine platter of eggs and bacon and black pudding for our breakfast in the morning. I swallowed mine hastily, eager to get back to the cottage to see how they were faring.
‘I will come with you, Hetty,’ said Janet. ‘I want to see if I can be of use too – and you need an arm to help you along the lane.’
‘You’re so kind to me, Janet,’ I said, squeezing her hand. I felt my heart lifting. I had found a true friend here in my own home village.
I had made very few friends in my life so far. There was Polly, who had been my dear companion at the hospital, but she had been lucky enough to be adopted. There was Bertie the butcher’s boy. We had walked out together and had great larks. I rather wished I had stayed in touch with him. Then there was Freda, my gentle giant friend at Bignor. I felt a pang remembering her. I had promised faithfully to write and tell her how I was faring, and yet I hadn’t penned a word. For a girl who fancied herself a writer I seemed to be a very poor correspondent. But at least I had written to Jem. I patted my chest reflectively. His letters were now in my suitcase, tied up with ribbon, but it still felt as if I were carrying them close to my heart.
Jem was standing in the garden outside the cottage, smoking a clay pipe, looking very smart and grave in his black funeral jacket.
‘Oh, Jem!’ I called, and I ran to him, forgetting all about my twisted ankle.
He swung me up in his arms again. ‘Oh, Hetty, it’s so good to have you here!’ He looked over my shoulder at Janet. ‘It’s so kind of you to have her sleep at your house, Janet. I’m very grateful.’
‘Think nothing of it, Jem. It’s a real pleasure for us,’ she said.
‘You look very fine in your black jacket, Jem,’ I said.
He wriggled uncomfortably. ‘It feels very tight and strange. I’d much sooner be in my work clothes. But you two look very neat and trim too.’
We each had a black band wound about the sleeves of our print dresses, and I’d tied black velvet bows in our hair.
‘There’s such a to-do indoors, all the womenfolk tidying and cooking and cleaning and all the children forbidden to play out in case they get themselves grimy,’ said Jem.
‘What about Mother?’ I asked.
Jem’s face clouded. ‘I sat with her before breakfast. She seems so agitated. She’s trying to talk but she can’t manage to make the right sounds. I feel so badly for her,’ he said, his voice breaking. ‘It seems so sad that she can’t go to her own husband’s funeral when they’ve been married so many years and rarely a cross word between the two of them.’
‘She shall go, Jem! We can take her with us in a little cart, and then we can carry her into the church. She needs to go. I could not have borne it if I had been kept from Mama’s funeral,’ I said passionately. ‘I will look after her in the church, Jem, and make sure she’s tended and comfortable.’
‘And I will too,’ said Janet.
‘You are such dear girls,’ said Jem. ‘Very well. I will ask old Molly if we can borrow her donkey and cart.’
Bess and Rosie and Eliza were appalled when we told them of our plan.
‘Mother isn’t fit!’
‘The whole village will be gawping at her!’
‘She can’t go to a funeral in an old donkey cart, it’s not seemly!’
They fussed and clucked like a lot of broody hens, but we would not be deterred.
‘Mother shall go to the funeral in her newly trimmed bonnet – and I shall make the donkey and cart look extremely seemly,’ I declared.
Old Molly’s cart was clean, if a little rickety, and her even older donkey was a good, patient little creature with big brown eyes and long eyelashes.
‘You’ll pull Mother carefully, won’t you, donkey?’ I said, feeding him a carrot. He nodded his soft grey head and batted those beautiful eyelashes as if he understood every word.
‘You’ll be making a guy of Mother, taking her to church in a donkey cart,’ said Eliza.
I had attended chapel weekly for nine long years. ‘Didn’t Jesus Christ himself enter Jerusalem riding on a donkey?’ I said.
I took my drooping bunch of Michaelmas daisies and decorated the donkey, winding flowers around his bridle and fashioning them into a crown about his pointy ears. There was a little black material left over from the mourning bands. I draped the seat with this, and made black velvet streamers to hang at either side.
‘For Lord’s sake, Hetty, we’ll look like a travelling circus,’ said Eliza.
‘Hush, Eliza. I think Hetty has dressed the donkey and cart wonderfully,’ said Jem. ‘Now Mother can go to the funeral in style.’
I went upstairs to tell Mother. Her eyes gleamed in the darkened room. I was pretty sure she was thankful. She tried to clutch me with one poor hand and said, ‘Gi-gi-gi . . .’
‘Yes, Mother,’ I said, to humour her. She nodded her head fervently, tears welling in her eyes.
‘Now, Hetty, don’t upset her so – I’ve just got her calmed down,’ Bess snapped, dabbing at Mother’s face with a handkerchief.
‘Of course Mother’s sad. It’s her husband’s funeral! I think she should weep all she wants. Now, help me lift her a little, so we can put on her dress and her new black bonnet.’
The girls had already bathed Mother and changed her into a clean white nightgown. It seemed an impossible task to squeeze her into her Sunday corsets and her petticoats and her stiff Sunday costume and her tight button boots.
‘Surely she can stay in her nightgown. We’ll simply put her jacket over the top. I will arrange my shawl over her lap like a blanket to keep her warm,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t need her boots because she won’t be walking anywhere.’
We had to get Father out of the bedroom first, to ride to church in his superior funeral carriage. The sexton came, wearing full black mourning from top to toe, with Mr Maple the joiner to nail the coffin shut. I was in the bedroom adjusting Mother’s bonnet when Eliza suddenly darted forward and unlaced the shoes from Father’s feet.
‘Eliza!’ I gasped as she removed first one shiny shoe, then the other.
‘They are my husband’s new shoes. He hasn’t even worn them yet. We just lent them to Father so he looked grand in his coffin,’ she hissed. ‘There’s no point wasting them.’
Father’s feet looked very bare and vulnerable without shoes. One of his waxy toes was sticking straight through his sock, but it was too late for me to attempt to darn it. Mr Maple nailed the coffin lid in place, and then they summoned two strong farm lads and Jem, and together they slowly, carefully and laboriously carried the coffin downstairs. It was a tricky business, because the coffin was long and unbending and had to be handled very reverently, and yet it had somehow to be poked down the narrow stairwell and twisted and turned in the right direction. There was nothing to grab onto but a thin rope rail, and at one point halfway down the youngest farm hand lost his grip and buckled at the knees. It looked as if Father’s coffin would toboggan down the rest of the stairs unaided.
There was a united gasp from all the women and children down below in the living room, but Jem stood stout and firm, bearing the weight until the young lad recovered.
The coffin was safely stowed in the shiny black funeral carriage. The funeral horse was equally shiny and black, with a black plume on his head. He looked very grand and impressive, but I thought the donkey tethered behind decked in daisies looked equally decorative.
We brought Mother down next. Bess and Rosie tried supporting her, one on each arm, but her feet would not work at all, though it was clear from her face that she was making a huge effort. Jem came to the rescue again. He tried cradling Mother in his arms, but she was a large woman and he couldn’t quite manage it. He had to hoist her over his shoulder and carry her down in that fash
ion, though it looked a little undignified.
Eliza twitched beside me, but when Mother was settled on the black silken seat in the donkey carriage, my shawl spread around her white nightgown, there was a murmur of tender approval. Her bonnet looked particularly fine, though Eliza had set it at an odd angle to try to hide Mother’s newly twisted mouth.
Now that Father and Mother were in their rightful places the funeral procession could commence. Bess lined the family up in order of importance, which meant that she was first, walking alongside Jem. There was a whole tangle of husbands and children before I could get a look in, at the tail end. I found this upsetting but I struggled not to show my feelings, knowing it was not the occasion to have a squabble.
Jem saw my face and came forward, looking incredibly tall and gentlemanly in his black stovepipe hat. ‘Hetty, I think you should ride in the cart with Mother in case she slips sideways,’ he said.
‘No, I shall sit with Mother, Jem,’ said Eliza.
‘I think you had better take Claude and Frederick by the hands and walk with them,’ he said. ‘Hetty needs to ride anyway, because she is lame.’ Before she could object further, he lifted me up onto the donkey cart. I sat down triumphantly and put my arm round Mother.
‘There now, Mother, it’s all right. I’m here to look after you,’ I said.
Her eyes swivelled past me, and she started her ‘Gi-gi-gi’-ing.
‘Ssh now, Mother,’ I said, patting her and tucking the shawl more securely round her, but she kept up her agitated murmuring for the remainder of the journey.
It was a struggle getting her into the church. It would have been simple if we could have driven the donkey cart right inside, but even I could see this wasn’t quite appropriate, and it would prove disastrous if the donkey answered a call of nature. So we had to lift Mother down from the cart – Jem and a cluster of clucking sisters – and then haul her inside. People stared, and Eliza became particularly agitated, but it was only for a few moments. Then Mother was propped up in the front pew between Jem and me, and everyone else could file through in an orderly manner.