A Country Girl

‘Oh, there you are,’ his mother said, suddenly appearing from the brewhouse outside. ‘Fetch some coal up from the cellar for me, our Algernon. There’s scarcely any left in the scuttle.’

‘Can’t our Kate do it?’ he complained. ‘I’ll get all mucked up and I’m going out in less than ten minutes.’

‘Our Kate’s busy changing beds ready for washing day tomorrow,’ Kate herself chimed in, opening the stairs door as she descended with a bundle of sheets and pillowcases in her arms. ‘You wouldn’t be very pleased if your bed was black as the devil from the coal in the cellar, would you? Anyroad, where are you off to of a Sunday afternoon?’

‘Mind your own business.’

‘I’ll mind me business if you’ll fetch the coal up.’

‘Oh, all right,’ Algie muttered reluctantly, knowing it to be futile attempting refusal to these two women, ranged against him with a singular will. He opened the door to the coal cellar and disappeared with the scuttle.

His task completed, he went to the brewhouse and washed his hands. Behind him, his mother complained that he had left damp coal dust on the scullery floor, which he’d brought up from the cellar on the soles of his boots.

‘Our Kate should have gone down,’ he called back. ‘She’s got smaller feet than me. She wouldn’t have made so much mess.’ Then, before he could be asked to perform any more disagreeable chores, he dashed outside and returned to the Bingham’s butty, waiting for Marigold to appear.

From where the Stokes’s cottage stood, the canal descended by a series of locks and basins towards Wordsley. You could see, beyond the massive cone of the Red House Glassworks, green valleys swooping between wooded hills and leafy glades. Towered and spired churches clad in the ivy of centuries dotted the landscape, as well as cosy homesteads, farmhouses and stately old manor houses. Nibbled pastures, where sheep and cattle grazed, receded into the hazy green distance. It was a sight that cheered Algie’s heart.

Over the hill in the opposite direction lay, incongruously, a black industrial wilderness of slag heaps, mines, glassworks, and forges. Foundries and ironworks belched forth acrid brown smoke from great chimney stacks, and red flames from open hearth furnaces, even on this warm spring Sunday. Humble little red-brick houses shared this desolate eastward outlook, sparsely dotted with clumps of coarse grass, railways, viaducts and bridges as well as the interlinking canals with their locks, basins and wharfs. This was the astonishing landscape of the Black Country, that broad tract of man-made bleakness that lay roughly between the opposing boundaries of Wolverhampton to the west and Birmingham to the east. Yet it held as much diversity as you could reasonably assimilate in a month of Sundays if you cared to look. Prosperity lived symbiotically with hardship, as did culture with ignorance, good taste with bad, virtue with wantonness, respectability with indelicacy, and hard work with idleness. Significantly, the Black Country, for all its limited size, generated a disproportionate amount of the enormous wealth that enabled Britain to wield such undeniable power in the world.

Marigold popped her head round the cabin door.

‘Oh, you’re back then.’

‘Yes, I’m back. Are you ready yet?’

She nodded and stepped out onto the gunwale, then onto the towpath. ‘I just wanted to change me frock, wash me face and tidy me hair up a bit. Me mom don’t like me venturing away from the cut in me working frock. She says it’s common to do that.’

He smiled his response, looking her up and down. The frock was plainly cut in muslin and well-washed, the floral pattern almost faded from enthusiastic and frequent laundering, but she looked divine, and there was no shame in cleanliness. It fitted her perfectly, enhancing her slender figure. Her dark hair had been hurriedly brushed and re-pinned, and it was tidier now.

‘You look ever so nice,’ he said sincerely.

‘Thank you. So do you in your Sunday best suit. Where you taking me?’

‘There’s a path over the fields to Kingswinford. I bet you’ve never been there?’

She shook her head. ‘Not if there ain’t a cut what goes there. Is it far?’

‘A mile, a mile and a half, maybe – nothing really. But it’s a fine afternoon for a stroll.’

‘What is there at Kingswinford? Anything special?’

He shrugged. ‘Nothing special. It’s just a nice walk over fields.’

He led her back to the bridge he’d just come from and onto the lane that led first to Wordsley.

‘I’m thinking of getting meself a bike,’ he announced, in a manner calculated to impress.

‘A bike? Blimey.’ Marigold sounded duly impressed. ‘I wish I could have a bike. I could ride to the locks ahead of our narrowboats and open ’em ready. It wouldn’t half save us some time.’

‘Suggest it to your dad. Mebbe he’ll buy one.’

‘I doubt whether he could afford one. How much do they cost?’

‘About twelve pounds with pneumatic tyres. Pneumatic tyres are best. You don’t want solid tyres.’

‘Twelve pounds?’ Marigold queried with disbelief. ‘That’s a fortune. Me dad would never spend that much, even if he’d got it to spend.’

‘I’ve been saving up for ages.’

‘Where would you moor it?’

‘In our shed.’

‘What d’you do for a living, Algie, if you can afford to buy a bike?’

‘I make brass bedsteads at Sampson’s up at Queen’s Cross in Dudley. A bike will be handy for getting to work and back.’

‘Don’t you fancy being a lock-keeper, like your dad?’

‘Me? Nah. It don’t pay enough wages. You get your coal for free, granted, and a house to live in as part of the job, but I wouldn’t be a lock-keeper. Me dad gets called out all hours. I wouldn’t want that. I like peace and quiet. How about you, anyway? D’you intend to spend the rest of your life on the narrowboats?’

‘Depends,’ she said with a shrug.

‘On what?’

‘On whether I marry a boatman – a number one, f’rinstance.’

‘A number one? You mean a chap who owns his own boats?’

‘Yes.’

‘Got your eye on anybody?’ he asked, dreading her answer, but grinning all the same.

She shrugged again. ‘Dunno. Nobody on the boats at any rate.’ She gave him a sideways glance to assess his reaction.

‘Who then?’

‘I ain’t telling you.’

So there was some chap in her life. Damn and blast. It was naïve of him to think otherwise, a girl like Marigold.

‘Go on, you can tell me.’

‘There is a chap I like,’ she admitted. ‘He ain’t a boatman. He works at one of the carpet factories in Kiddy. He’s one that generally helps offload us.’

‘Oh, I see … So the crafty monkey sees to it as you don’t get offloaded on the same day as you arrive. That way, you have to stop over till next day, eh? Then you can meet him at night. Is that it?’

Marigold blushed, smiling in acknowledgement of the truth of Algie’s astute assessment.

‘So you’ll be doing a spot of courting tomorrow night, then?’

‘I suppose. It depends.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Jack.’

‘Shall you tell him about me?’

‘What is there to tell?’ She glanced at him again.

‘Well … you could tell him that you went a walk with another chap.’ He regarded her intently, and caught a look of unease in her clear blue eyes at the idea.

‘So, what about you?’ she asked, intent on diverting the focus from herself. ‘Do you have a regular sweetheart?’

‘Me? Not really.’

‘Not really? You either do or you don’t.’

‘There’s this girl I’m sort of friendly with … But it ain’t as if we’re proper sweethearts … I mean we ain’t about to get wed or anything like that.’

‘And shall you tell her you been a walk wi’ me this afternoon?’

‘Like you say, there’s nothing to tell, is there?’

‘Not really …’ She smiled at his turning the tables back on her. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Harriet.’

‘That’s a nice name.’

‘Maybe we should get Harriet and your Jack together, eh?’

She laughed at that. ‘Is she pretty, this Harriet?’

‘Nowhere near as pretty as you. Jack would fancy you more than Harriet, for certain. I do at any rate … I’ve been noticing you for a long time … seeing you come past our house from time to time. I’ve often thought how much I’d like to get you on your own and get to know you.’

‘Have you, Algie? Honest?’ She laughed self-consciously.

‘Yes, honest.’

‘That’s nice … I’m surprised, though.’

‘Don’t be surprised. Next time you come through the lock and pay your penny let me know you’re there, eh? ’Specially if it’s of a Sunday, or if you’re mooring up for the night close by. We could go for walks again then. I mean to say, the summer’s only just around the corner.’

‘And you wouldn’t mind me asking for you?’

‘Course not. I’d like you to. I’m inviting you to.’

She looked him squarely in the eye, with an open, candid smile. ‘I just might then … And your mother wouldn’t mind?’

‘Why should she mind?’

She shrugged girlishly. ‘Dunno … What if she don’t like me?’

‘Oh, she doesn’t dislike you, Marigold. She knows your family. Lord, you’ve been coming through our stretch of the cut long enough.’

‘How old is your mom, Algie?’

‘Two-and-forty.’

‘She don’t look it, does she? She looks about thirty. I mean she ain’t got stout or anything.’

‘No, she doesn’t look her age, I grant you. She looks well. We got a photo of her when she was about your age – what is your age, Marigold, by the way?’

‘Eighteen. I’ll be nineteen in July.’

‘Anyway – this photo of me mom – she was really pretty when she was about eighteen. There must’ve been one or two chaps after her, according to the things I’ve heard said …’

‘But your dad got her.’

‘Yes, me dad got her. Just think, if he hadn’t got her, I’d have been somebody else.’

‘No, Algie,’ she chuckled deliciously. ‘If he hadn’t got her, you wouldn’t have been born. It’s obvious.’

‘Course I would. But I’d have been somebody else, like I say.’

She smiled, mystified and amused by his quaint logic.

‘Your mom’s nice-looking for her age as well, ain’t she?’ Algie said easily. ‘It’s easy to see who you get your pretty face from.’

‘So how old are you, Algie?’ Marigold asked, not wishing to pursue that line.

‘Two-and-twenty. I’ll be three-and-twenty in September.’

‘So how old was your mom when she had you?’

‘Can’t you work it out?’

‘I can’t do sums like that, Algie. I ain’t had no schooling like you.’

‘Oh, I see.’ He smiled sympathetically. It was difficult to imagine what it must be like for somebody who couldn’t read, something he took for granted. ‘Well, she must’ve been about one-and-twenty,’ he said, answering her question. ‘Something like that. What about your mom?’

‘My mom was nineteen when she had me.’

‘Nearly your own age,’ he remarked.

‘I reckon so,’ Marigold admitted. ‘She must have bin carrying me at my age.’

‘So how old is your dad? He looks older.’

‘He’s nearly fifty.’

‘Quite a bit older, then?’

‘I suppose,’ she mused. ‘It’s summat as I never thought about. Anyway, I don’t see as how it matters that much.’

‘Nor do I,’ he agreed.

They left the lane and ambled on towards Kingswinford over fields of sheep-cropped turf, tunnelled by rabbits and sprinkled with glowing spring flowers. Young pheasants, silvery brown, fed near a stile, hardly bothered at all by the couple’s approach.

‘It’s lovely here,’ she commented. ‘Maybe we should stop here a bit.’

So they sat down and talked for ages, never quite reaching Kingswinford, never stumped once for conversation. When it was time to go they returned by the high road, passing the Union workhouse which provided yet another topic of conversation. Marigold decided she liked Algie. He was easy to talk to and she felt at ease with his unassuming manner. She enjoyed being with him. He was handsome, too, and his obvious admiration of her made her feel good about herself.

‘It’s a pity I can’t see you tonight,’ he said, about to leave her at the pair of moored narrowboats, ‘but I go to church of a Sunday night.’

‘With your family?’

‘No, with Harriet.’

‘Oh … with Harriet …’

‘Well, she’s always been brought up to go to church.’

‘I bet she’s been learnt to read and write proper as well, eh?’

‘What difference does that make?’ he said kindly, so that she should not feel inferior to Harriet. ‘Anyway, don’t forget to ask for me when you’re next passing, eh, Marigold?’

She shrugged. ‘I might …’

Chapter 2

The sinking sun cast a long, animated shadow of Algie Stokes as he ambled that evening along the rutted road known as Moor Lane on his way to see Harriet Meese. To his right lay a rambling Georgian mansion, an island of prosperity set in a sea of stubble fields. The grand, symmetrical house seemed entirely at odds with the tile works, the slag heaps and the worked-out mines which it overlooked. No doubt it had existed long before its sooty neighbours had been dreamed of; a rural haven, set in bowers of peace and tranquillity. But no more. Yet it never occurred to Algie what the well-to-do occupants might think of the black, encroaching gloom of industry. He never noticed any of it, taking for granted these immovable, and probably eternal, man-made elements of the unromantic landscape.

The crimson glow from the sun at his back was augmenting the ruddiness of the red-brick terraced houses he was passing. He bid a polite good evening to a passer-by, and his thoughts returned to the golden sunshine of Marigold Bingham’s natural loveliness. Yet, strangely, he was finding that he could not ponder Marigold without Harriet Meese also trespassing unwanted into his thoughts. Mental comparison was therefore becoming inevitable. Maybe it was a guilty conscience playing tricks.

Harriet was twenty years old, the second of seven daughters belonging to Mary and Eli Meese. Eli was a respectable trader who described his business as ‘a drapery, mourning and mantles shop’, situated in Brierley Hill’s High Street, where the family also lived above the shop. Four of the seven daughters were sixteen or over – of marriageable age – but Harriet was blessed with the most beguiling figure of them all, wondrously endowed with feminine curves. She was slender and long-legged, her curves and bulges were in the appropriate places, and as delightful in proportion as Algie had ever had the pleasure to behold in or around Brierley Hill. However, to his eternal frustration he had never been privileged to know Harriet’s sublime body intimately. Nor was such a privilege likely as long as they remained unmarried. Chastity had been instilled into Harriet from an early age, both at home and at church. So, despite Algie’s most earnest endeavours, he had never so much as managed to unfasten one button of her blouse, nor lifted her skirt more than eight inches above her ankle without a vehement protest and an indignant thump. It was, of course, her figure which was the sole attraction, since her face was her least alluring feature.

After a twenty minute walk, Algie strolled up the entry that lay between Eli Meese’s drapery shop and his neighbour, and tapped on the door. Priscilla, Harriet’s older sister, a school teacher who was manifestly destined for eternal spinsterdom, answered it. Facially, she was unfortunate enough to resemble Harriet but, even more regrettably, not in figure. Her crooked lips stretched into a thin smile, yet her eyes, the most attractive feature in her face, creased into a welcoming warmth as she led him into the parlour.

‘Looking forward to church tonight, Priss?’ Algie enquired familiarly.

‘I always do,’ she responded. ‘But sometimes, you know, after I’ve sat and listened to the sermon, I wish I hadn’t bothered. Sometimes, if it’s a good sermon, I get a thrill up and down my spine, and for three or four days after I’m inspired. Once, I remember, after the vicar had preached about generosity, I took it all to heart and took a bag of bon-bons to share amongst the children in my class for a few days … until after that they expected it every day. But on another Sunday he preached against vanity and the love of nice dresses … Well, I was livid. I love nice dresses, as you know, Algie.’

‘Is Harriet ready, or am I in for a long wait?’

‘I should sit down if I were you. She’s been around the house again checking whether there’s enough coal in the scuttles and on the fires, rather than leaving it to the maid. I wouldn’t mind, but she always waits till it’s time to get ready to go out. Besides, it’s pandemonium upstairs right now, with everybody vying for space to get ready. I got ready early, you know, Algie. You’ve no idea what it’s like, all seven of us sisters trying to get in front of the mirror at the same time, not to mention Mother, and when Mother gets there there’s no room for anybody else anyway. Father got tired of waiting. He’s already gone … How is your mother, Algie, by the way?’

‘In good fettle last time I noticed, thanks.’

‘Does she manage to get out these days?’

‘Only in daylight. She won’t go out at night after what happened …’

Priss nodded her sympathetic understanding. ‘I know. Such a pity … But how’s your father?’

‘Oh, he’s well.’

‘What about Kate?’

‘Oh, she’s fit enough, the sharp-tongued little harridan.’

‘Sharp-tongued?’ Priss uttered a little gurgle of amusement. ‘Are you joking? I’ve never thought of your Kate as sharp-tongued. She always seems so cheerful and pleasant, whenever I meet her.’

‘Oh, she’s always cheerful and pleasant to folk she doesn’t know very well. You should try living in the same house.’

‘But she’s such a pretty girl, your Kate. I’d give anything for her looks.’

‘But you wouldn’t want her character or demeanour, Priss.’

‘Oh, I don’t know … People seem to like you more if you’re pretty than if you’re plain. Mind you, I always think that if you go to church regularly and do your duty by your neighbour, you’ll find plenty of people ready to like you … so long as you carry yourself well and don’t stoop,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘Anyway, I’m sure Kate’s nowhere near as black as you paint her … Which reminds me, Algie – will you do me a favour?’

‘What?’

‘Would you mind asking her if she wants tickets to see the plays? It only wants a fortnight.’

‘I daresay Harriet will remind me …’

Harriet appeared at that precise moment, wearing a white skirt printed in a delicate, blue floral design, and blouse to match. The ensemble did full justice to her figure. Because of the family’s business, the Meese girls were able to indulge themselves in the latest materials and designs, and several dressmakers too were always keen to run things up for them, for the recommendations they customarily received from the family.

Harriet greeted Algie with a smile as she put on a short jacket, also white. ‘I’m ready,’ she announced. ‘Are you ready, Priss?’

‘I’ve been ready ages.’

‘But you haven’t got your hat on,’ Harriet reminded her.

‘Oh, but I’m not going to wear a hat, our Harriet.’

‘Not wear a hat?’

‘According to the journals I’ve been reading, London girls are no longer wearing hats. They regard them as old-fashioned, and I’m inclined to agree. Anyway, does my hair look such a mess that I should cover it with a hat?’

‘Your hair looks very becoming, our Priss. I teased it for you myself. But you really ought to wear a hat. Don’t you think so, Algie?’

Algie duly pondered a moment, stumped for an opinion, not really bothered one way or the other. ‘Not if she doesn’t want to, Harriet. Let her go to church without a hat if she wants. Who’s it going to hurt?’

‘But it is Sunday. All the ladies will be tutting.’

‘Let ’em tut,’ Priss said defiantly. ‘I don’t care.’

Harriet shrugged resignedly. ‘Once she’s made her mind up there’s no persuading her, is there? Shall we go, Algie?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, come on, then. See you there, eh, Priss? Unless you want to walk with us …’

‘No, I don’t want to play gooseberry. I’ll be along with the others.’

Algie led Harriet down the cobbled entry. As they walked along High Street facing the low setting sun, he thrust his hand into his jacket pocket and Harriet linked her arm through his familiarly.

‘Priss asked me to ask our Kate if she wanted a ticket to see the plays,’ he said conversationally.

‘Oh, yes, the plays. It’s only a fortnight away and we’ve sold plenty of tickets already. I need to know so’s I can get her one. I know how she likes to see our plays.’

‘I’ll ask her.’

‘What about your mother and father? D’you think they’d like to come? They’re ever so comical.’

‘My mother can be comical,’ Algie quipped. ‘I’m not so sure about my father, though.’

She landed him a playful thump. ‘I mean the plays, you goose. One’s a farce, the other’s a comedy.’

‘Sounds like our house two nights running. But you know my mother never goes out of a night.’

‘Oh, I forgot. What a shame that fear of a bolting horse can stop you going out of a night. It’d be a change for her, though, to go out with your father.’

‘I know it would, and you know it, but she won’t budge. Not at night.’

‘As a matter of fact, there’s something else I’m supposed to ask your Kate, Algie.’

‘What?’

‘Well, she’s quite a pretty girl, isn’t she?’ Harriet admitted grudgingly, ‘and Mr Osborne wants to recruit some “pretty girls” into the Little Theatre, to use his words. I must say, though, I was a trifle narked when I heard him say it, so was our Priss. I mean, how demeaning to us. Not everybody can be pretty, can they? It would be a boring old world if they were. Priss told him so as well. Well, you know our Priss … But you know what men are like. Anyway, he mentioned your sister by name and I said I would enquire after her. Mr Osborne would like her to come along one rehearsal night so he can assess her ability to act.’

‘I’ll ask her then, shall I? I reckon she’ll jump at the chance to show herself off. You know how vain she is.’

‘But, in the long run, it all depends whether she can act,’ Harriet affirmed. ‘Not how pretty she is.’

‘It might divert her from that ne’er-do-well Reggie Hodgetts she seems so fond of.’

‘Reggie Hodgetts?’

‘The son of a boatman,’ Algie explained disdainfully. ‘A proper rodney. Plies the cut regular in that filthy wreck of a narrowboat his family own.’

Harriet gasped in horror. ‘Oh, goodness, a boatman? I hope she’s not thinking of throwing her life away on a mere boatman. A rodney at that.’

‘It’s coming into contact with ’em like she does,’ Algie responded defensively. ‘Being a lock-keeper’s daughter and all that, I reckon. Mind you, some of the boat families are all right. I see a family called the Binghams occasionally. They’re decent folk. Most of them are.’

‘You must make Kate see sense, Algie.’

‘She won’t take any notice of me. You know what it’s like between brothers and sisters.’

‘Then I’ll have a word with her when I see her – discreetly, of course.’

He considered Marigold and how Kate might reveal his secret desire for the girl, a mere boatman’s daughter, if she thought Harriet was poking her nose into her liaison with Reggie Hodgetts. ‘No, don’t,’ he blurted earnestly. ‘It wouldn’t do any good. Our Kate’s too headstrong to take any notice of anybody. She’d only resent you for it. She’d think you were meddling.’

‘All right, if that’s what you think, Algie.’

They arrived at the door of the old red-brick hulk of St Michael’s Church which stood loftily at Brierley Hill’s highest point, sensing at once the cool reverential ambience as they entered. Harriet bid a pleasant good evening to the sidesman who handed her a hymn book, and made her way to the family’s regular pew on tiptoe, so that her heels did not echo off the cold hard floor. Algie followed in her wake.

When the service finished the congregation gathered outside by the light of a solitary gas lamp installed above the main door; a collection of nodding bonnets, top hats and fawning smiles, all content in their self-righteousness. Some merely drifted away into the night in a random procession while others tarried, determined to elicit recognition from or conversation with the vicar, or even the curate. By now there was a chill in the air as the Meese women and Algie lingered outside waiting for the head of the family. When Eli Meese rejoined them he announced that he was going to the Bell Hotel for his customary two pints of ale, which would give him an appetite for his supper. He would be about an hour.

‘I take it as you’ll see me girls and me wife home safe and sound, young Algie?’ Eli said patronisingly as he parted.

‘Course I will, Mr Meese.’

Actually, it had occurred to Algie to leave the company of Harriet and the rest of the Meeses as soon as the service was over, with the idea of seeking Marigold again; her father was likely to be in the Bottle and Glass for the evening getting pie-eyed, so why not take advantage? But to make an unusually early departure, on whatever flimsy excuse he could quickly invent, would only draw comment and speculation after he had gone, especially when he had given Eli his undertaking to see the family home safely. So, as they ambled down the path through the churchyard to the road, he decided to exercise discretion, to remain patient and wait till Marigold’s next passage through the lock at Buckpool.

While the others walked on ahead, Priss attached herself to Algie and Harriet.

‘I thought the sermon tonight was a bit of an unwarranted rebuke to us all,’ she commented airily. ‘The vicar’s wrong about God being just, you know. I hardly think He’s just at all, not all the time anyway. I’ve come to the conclusion that He is often unjust. Look how so many good and kind people suffer, while too many evil rogues prosper. What did you think of the sermon, Algie?’

‘Me? I didn’t listen to it.’

‘Algie was daydreaming as usual, Priss,’ Harriet said with measured scorn.

‘I was contemplating more earthly things,’ he replied.

‘Oh, but you shouldn’t of a Sunday,’ she reproached. ‘Anyway, what earthly things?’

Actually, he’d been contemplating Marigold Bingham; her smooth skin, her fine complexion, her beautiful face and her delicious figure. She’d been the cause of a troublesome disturbance in his trousers during the sermon as he’d allowed himself to imagine her lying warm and playful with him in some soft feather bed. He could hardly admit as much to Priss or Harriet, though.

‘I was thinking about the bike I’m going to buy,’ he fibbed judiciously.

‘Can you afford a bike?’ Priss queried, sincerely doubting it. ‘Surely they cost a fortune?’

‘I’ve been saving up for months. Now I’ve got enough money to buy one.’

‘But a bike? Couldn’t your money be more wisely spent?’

‘On what?’

‘Well, you’re two-and-twenty now. The same as me. And our Harriet is only two years younger. Have you not considered the future?’

‘Priss!’ Harriet hissed indignantly, digging her sister in the ribs with her elbow as they walked.

‘Don’t prod me, Harriet … I only mean to say that if you are contemplating marriage, then it would be far more sensible to save your money, rather than buy a bike.’

‘Who says we’re contemplating marriage?’ Algie remarked clumsily. ‘We’ve never discussed marriage, have we Harriet?’

‘You’ve never discussed it with me.’ There was a catch in her voice, which suggested antagonism at the lack of any such conversation.

‘I just assumed …’

‘Assume nothing, Priss,’ Harriet said with resignation. ‘Algie obviously has other priorities … and so have I, come to that.’

Eli Meese, Harriet’s father, having risen from humble beginnings as the son of a house servant, had embarked on his road to fortune buying bolts of cloth and selling them in lengths to whoever would buy. He viewed this as a means of escaping the pits and the ironworks. His first enterprise involved the purchase of two thousand yards of flannelettes at tuppence ha’penny a yard, which he sold at fourpence ha’penny a yard from market stalls in several of the local towns. Business prospered and he rented a shop in Brierley Hill as a permanent base. Soon afterwards, he met and married Mary, from whom his daughters inherited their uninspiring faces and would, in time, also manifest her stoutness. When their first child, Priscilla, was born he bought the building which was still home and workplace to him and his family. Eli was proud of being a self-made man. He had raised himself from obscurity to his present position, one of considerable standing in the community. He had made money a-plenty and, as money always commands influence, so Eli grew to be a man of some consequence in Brierley Hill, being not only churchwarden at St Michael’s but Guardian and Justice of the Peace as well. In his social elevation he sought to do his best for his daughters, and ensured that each received as decent an education as he could reasonably afford at the Dudley Proprietary School for Girls, to and from which they took the tramcar every day.

Eli was not entirely comfortable with the thought that his second daughter, easily the most appealing of those of marriageable age, could feasibly end up with the inconsequential son of a lock-keeper. He had hoped she would have set her sights higher, but was wily enough to realise that to forbid the liaison would only serve to launch it into more perilous waters, the consequences of which could be devastating and too painful to contemplate. In time, Harriet’s superior education would reveal itself to both of them, and Algernon Stokes would come to recognise his social and mental inferiority – and so would she. Meanwhile, he tolerated Algernon without actually encouraging him at all. Besides, Algernon’s father, Will, used to be Eli’s regular playmate in those far off days of mutual impoverishment. The lad’s mother, Clara, too … Indeed, when Clara was a young filly and Eli was a young buck with a weather eye for a potential mate, she had been a feast to the eye and a definite target. The trouble was, she was too preoccupied with his rivals and would have nothing to do with him. So he had to content himself eventually with Mary, who he’d put in the family way. Mary would never fetch any ducks off water. Her plainness, though, had proved an advantage in one respect, Eli pondered; she was never attractive enough to appeal to anybody else, which ensured her fidelity. On reflection, perhaps he had been too hasty in agreeing to marry her. The acquisition of wealth had made him much more appealing to other women – better-looking women – he’d noticed over the years.