Evie Grace was born in Kent, and one of her earliest memories is of picking cherries with her grandfather who managed a fruit farm near Selling. Holidays spent in the Kent countryside and the stories passed down through her family inspired her to write Half a Sixpence.
Evie now lives in Devon with her partner and dog. She has a grown-up daughter and son.
She loves researching the history of the nineteenth century and is very grateful for the invention of the washing machine, having discovered how the Victorians struggled to do their laundry.
Half a Sixpence is Evie’s first novel in her Kentish trilogy. Half a Heart and Half a Chance will follow.
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Epub ISBN: 9781473538306
Version 1.0
Published by Arrow Books 2017
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Copyright © Cathy Woodman 2017
Extract from Half a Heart © Cathy Woodman 2018
Cover image by Larry Rostant
Cathy Woodman has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is not affiliated with, authorised or endorsed by Dilly Court.
First published in Great Britain by Arrow Books in 2017
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ISBN 9781784756222
In memory of my grandparents who taught me resilience.
I should like to thank Laura at MBA Literary Agents, and Viola and the team at Penguin Random House UK for their enthusiasm and support. I’m also very grateful to my mum for her help with researching Victorian Kent and sharing her memories of hop picking.
Catherine looked at the sea of golden corn in the field next to the stony road, and her heart soared. She gazed at the gently rolling countryside, a patchwork of hop gardens, orchards and meadows filled with wild flowers, then glanced at her companion.
‘There’ll be no school on Monday,’ she said.
‘Or the Monday after,’ Emily Millichip, the miller’s daughter, replied. She was heavily built with plump arms and ruddy cheeks, whereas Catherine was what other people described as delicate in appearance.
‘There’ll be no writing, reading or ’rithmetic.’
‘Or sewing, or taking a turn looking after the little ones.’ Emily was twelve years old, a year younger than Catherine, who was envious of the way Emily’s straw bonnet struggled to confine her blonde ringlets, while Catherine’s own dark hair hung long and wavy from under her bonnet, down to the small of her back.
‘Shall we go the long way through the woods?’ Catherine asked as they passed the end of the drive leading to Churt House, an imposing building with many windows and tall chimneys that stood on a rise looking down on the village of Overshill. She imagined taking off her boots and cooling her feet in the chalk stream that babbled through the vale below the village, but Emily wasn’t in the mood for dawdling.
‘I must go straight home,’ she said, looking towards the top of the hill ahead at the windmill with its four white sails and beehive cap set against tarred weatherboards. ‘Ma will give me a good hiding if I’m late.’
‘We’ll say Old Faggy kept us back to sweep the schoolroom floor.’ Mrs Fagg ran the dame school at Primrose Cottage for the village children whose parents were willing and able to pay for them to attend.
‘She’s bound to check with her when she comes to buy bread. Come on, let’s hurry.’ Emily took Catherine’s hand and they continued past the vicarage and the Church of Our Lady where they went every Sunday with their families. The church was built from grey ragstone with a red-tiled roof and stained-glass windows. It had a chapel to the side and a central tower which, according to Pa, the villagers had used as a lookout in the past. The main door was made from oak and was partly hidden from the road by the dark, forbidding yews that watched over the dead.
Catherine and Emily turned along the path where the flint wall bordering the churchyard came to an end and the ground opened up into rough scrubland with a leafy hedgerow of blackthorn and brambles to one side.
The smell of bad eggs assaulted Catherine’s nostrils as a grey-green stagnant pond overgrown with weeds and bulrushes came into view. She shivered. She’d never liked Ghost Hole Pond, even before Old Faggy had taught them about the reign of the Jutish kings when people and horses were sacrificed in its murky waters to secure a good harvest for the village. Sometimes as she grew near it, she fancied that she could hear the screams of the victims and the splashing as the horses plunged in their fight against the spirits who dragged them without mercy to their grave.
‘There’s Matty Carter,’ Emily said, pointing towards a boy of about fourteen who was striding towards them with a bag slung over his shoulder.
Catherine disapproved of his coarse manners and his raggedy clothes that reeked of hops and smoke, and she hadn’t liked the way he used to tease her at school.
‘He’s trouble. We must keep out of his way,’ she said, but it was too late. He stopped in front of them. His brown hair stood up on end like a stook of corn, the bridge of his nose was spattered with freckles and his cheek was smeared with dirt.
‘How’s Old Faggy?’ he asked with a glint of humour in his green eyes. ‘Does she miss me?’
‘She’s never said so.’ Catherine unhooked a stray bramble from her skirt.
Matty had left school the previous year, his income from work being more useful to his family than the education provided by an elderly spinster. Not that Old Faggy was a bad teacher. Pa set great store by her methods – she had taught him to read and write when he was a young man.
‘She probably didn’t notice me and Jervis were gone,’ Matty said, referring to one of his older brothers. There were seemingly endless Carter children, some still at home and others long grown up and moved away, but Matty had two older brothers who still lived in Overshill: Jervis, the eldest, who laboured on the farm when he wasn’t lurking on the Canterbury to London road, waylaying any unfortunates whose carriages had become stuck in the mud; and Stephen, the middle one, who was apprenticed to Overshill’s blacksmith. ‘She’s as deaf as an adder and blind as a bat.’
Catherine couldn’t help wondering if Old Faggy’s afflictions were more contrived than real, her way of coping with the challenge of maintaining discipline in the classroom. What the eye didn’t see, the heart didn’t grieve over. If she did notice the older boys getting up to no good, flicking pieces of chalk at the girls, she would send them outside to chop wood.
‘Get out!’ she’d shout after them. ‘I don’t want none of you besoms in here.’
‘I never thought I’d say this, but now that I’m having to earn my living, I wish I was back at school,’ Matty said.
‘We don’t feel the same, I’m afraid. It’s a lot more peaceful without you,’ Catherine said. ‘What have you got in your bag?’
‘Nothing.’ Matty’s fingers tightened around the hessian sack.
‘You must have something. Show us.’ She reached out to take it, but he hugged it tight to his chest.
‘It’s none of your business.’ His eyes flashed with annoyance tinged with fear.
If, as a small boy, he hadn’t relished scaring the life out of her with slugs and slow-worms, or laughing at her when she filled her shoes as well as her bucket with water at the pump in the farmyard, Catherine might have backed down. But remembering the sensation of the mouse’s teeth nibbling at the back of her neck and the sheer panic as it slid between her skin and the fabric of her blouse while they sat in class at Old Faggy’s, she made up her mind.
She grabbed at the sack.
‘No, miss. Please don’t.’ Matty tore it from her fingers and threw it back over his shoulder, but it was too late. She knew what he’d been up to from the scent the hessian had left on her skin.
‘Leave him alone,’ Emily sighed. ‘He isn’t worth our notice.’
‘Where did you get them onions from?’ Catherine said.
‘I haven’t got no onions. I’ve bin collecting herbs for me ma.’
‘I can smell them.’ Catherine watched his face turn dark red like boiled beetroot. ‘Where did you get them from?’ she repeated.
‘I found them by the wayside.’ Unable to meet her gaze, he traced circles in the earth with his boot, showing off the scuffed leather patches across the toe.
‘You stole them,’ she said, shocked. ‘You took them from my pa, you thieving scoundrel.’ Her blood surged with fury at his betrayal of her father’s trust. Pa had a soft spot for the Carters, although she didn’t know why when none of them looked as if they’d ever had a wash in their lives. The Carter family rented the cottage at Toad’s Bottom, not far from Wanstall Farm where Catherine lived with her parents and brother John. Matty and Jervis worked for Catherine’s pa, who had also employed their father, George Carter, for as long as she could remember.
‘If I’d have picked up things I’d found just lying around, and they did belong to your pa, he wouldn’t notice as much.’
‘Of course he would.’ Pa counted each and every onion – that’s how he had made a success of the farm, and why Squire Temple showed his gratitude by keeping the rent the same year after year. He looked after the land, ploughed the straw and muck back into the ground, walked the fields to check on the crops, and sent the labourers out to pick the caterpillars and mildewed leaves off the hops. He knew every stone, every tree, every bird’s nest, every flower. ‘I’m going to make sure he hears about this.’
Matty lashed out and grabbed Emily’s bonnet from her head, as she was the closest to him. Catherine tried to snatch it back, but it was too late.
‘No,’ Emily cried. ‘Ma will have my guts for garters.’
Matty ran off and scrambled along one of the sloping branches that leaned across the surface of the pond. He stopped and balanced on his heels, holding the bonnet over the water.
‘Promise me you won’t tell,’ he called fiercely.
‘I shan’t promise anything,’ Catherine shouted back. In spite of her fears, she scooped up her skirts, petticoat and all, and started to climb along the branch. Emily’s ma had a temper on her and she didn’t see why Matty should involve her closest friend in their disagreement.
‘Please don’t.’ Emily grabbed at her arm. ‘He wouldn’t dare.’
Catherine freed herself from Emily’s grasp and pulled herself along the branch.
‘They call your pa “skinflinty Rook” at the beerhouse because of the niggardly wages he pays,’ Matty jibed.
‘He gave your pa a flitch of bacon and a sack of flour after the haymaking,’ Catherine countered. ‘You and your family don’t have to work for him. There are other masters.’ She glanced down at her sleeve which was covered with a dusting of lichen, and at the water below where the arms of the ghosts were outstretched to catch her and pull her into the depths. The branch trembled, making her perch seem even more precarious.
‘Listen.’ Matty’s eyes were wide with desperation. ‘I swear them onions were lying scattered across the ground, all round and swelled up. I seen them and I thought of my brothers and sisters and how they haven’t eaten anything but bread since Sunday night, and before I knew it, they were in the bag.’ A tear ran down his cheek. ‘I’m truly sorry, Miss Rook. Please don’t tell. If I’m dragged up in front of the magistrate, I’ll be locked up or hanged. My family will starve.’
Catherine didn’t like to think of the little Carters with their runny noses and dirty clothes dying from hunger, but surely Matty was exaggerating about the punishment. When his brother Jervis had been caught with apples in his pockets, he’d been whipped and sent on his way, laughing in the magistrate’s face.
‘I won’t keep secrets.’ She had been brought up to be open and honest. ‘Now, give me that bonnet, or else.’
‘Or else, what?’ Matty growled. ‘You’re going to tell on me whatever I say. I’m doomed.’
She watched his fingers slacken and the bonnet fall and spread across the surface of the water with the ribbons drifting behind it.
Emily screamed. Catherine snapped off a hazel twig and caught the bonnet, lifting it out of the water before she clambered carefully back to safety, leaving Matty sitting astride the branch with his head in his hands.
‘Ta.’ Emily took the bonnet by her fingertips as though it was stained with blood. ‘Oh no, it’s ruined.’ She started to cry.
‘Wring it out carefully and lay it across the bushes around the corner so it will dry in the sun,’ Catherine ordered. ‘You can have my bonnet and I’ll come back for yours later. That way your ma will never know.’ She didn’t look back. She placed her own bonnet on Emily’s head and fastened the ribbons, and, having done her best to dry her friend’s tears, they continued on their way along the path, turning left onto Overshill’s main street.
They passed a pair of black-and-white timber-framed houses before reaching the forge and its attached cottage where a pair of carthorses stood in the shade of the spreading chestnut tree, waiting to be shod.
Stephen Carter, dressed in a shirt, trousers and brown leather apron, was untying one of the horses from the iron ring that was buried in the tree trunk.
‘Hello, Miss Rook and Miss Millichip,’ he said shyly, touching his forelock of wavy brown hair. At seventeen, he was taller than Matty and his arms were all sinew and muscle. He rubbed at his side whiskers as if he had some kind of rash. ‘How are you today?’
‘We’d be much better if your brother hadn’t made off with Emily’s bonnet, thank you for asking,’ Catherine said.
‘I’m sorry. I’ll box his ears for you.’ He clenched his fist around the horse’s rope. ‘That’ll learn Jervis not to terrorise innocent young ladies on their way home from school.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t Jervis,’ Catherine said. ‘It was Matty. And please don’t trouble yourself on our account. We can stand up for ourselves, can’t we, Emily?’
Emily nodded, but Catherine wasn’t convinced. Emily’s ma had taught her to act helpless, not fight back when she was wronged.
‘Stop your cotchering and get that nag over here now, lad,’ yelled a voice from within the dark depths of the forge where the coals were burning brightly. ‘Have you finished sharpening those scythes? George will be here for them on his way back through. There’ll be hell to pay if they aren’t ready.’
‘I’d better go, or the master will be after me,’ Stephen said cheerfully. ‘I don’t know why he scolds me for gossiping when it’s he who can talk the hind leg off a donkey. Good afternoon.’
‘Len’s always shouting,’ Catherine said as she and Emily watched Stephen lead the horse away. Len was married to Catherine’s sister Ivy. He could be a bit grumpy, and she didn’t want to hang around. ‘Let’s go.’ She saw him emerging from the forge. ‘Hurry!’
‘Don’t you want to say hello to Ivy?’ Emily said. ‘You haven’t seen her for ages.’
Catherine shook her head. Ivy was much older than her and they didn’t have much in common. She never felt entirely welcome at Forge Cottage. When she did visit, Ivy would offer her a drink and something to eat, before returning to her needlework. She was a good seamstress and her services were much in demand in Overshill.
Catherine and Emily walked on past a terrace of brick cottages where the gardens were filled with pale pink and deep blue geraniums, bright sunflowers and the mauve spikes of buddleias clothed with butterflies and buzzing with bees. On the opposite side of the road was the butcher’s shop, then the greengrocer’s and the Woodsman’s Arms where a pair of elderly men in their smocks were sitting outside on a bench. They raised their tankards in greeting. Catherine nodded in return.
‘Stephen is very polite, don’t you think?’ Emily observed.
‘He isn’t at all like his brother. They’re like chalk and cheese.’
‘I thought you should have been at least a mite grateful to him, considering that he made so bold as to offer to box Matty’s ears. Do you remember how he hardly spoke to us when he was at school?’
‘I didn’t take much notice of him,’ Catherine said.
‘I wouldn’t say no to Stephen Carter if he should ask me to marry him one day,’ Emily went on. ‘He’s very handsome.’
‘Ma would absolutely forbid me to walk out with any of the Carter brothers. She’s devoting her spare time to making sure that I marry up.’ Catherine pursed her lips and twirled an imaginary parasol as if she was a lady. Laughing, Emily joined in and they danced the rest of the way up the hill past the oast house, an old barn with a round kiln tacked on to the end for drying the hops in September. The wheelwright was perched on a ladder that was leaning between the barn roof and the kell so that he could repair the white-painted cowl on the top.
Catherine parted from Emily at the mill where one of Emily’s brothers was leaving the bakehouse next door with a basket of bread on his shoulders. He waved at Catherine and held the door open for his sister, like a gentleman, she thought, not like certain other ruffians who lived in the vicinity.
Instead of continuing north towards the turnpike road that ran between Canterbury and Faversham, Catherine followed the left fork at the crossroads, passing Toad’s Bottom Cottage where the Carters lived. The porch was propped up with a chestnut pole that appeared to have been appropriated from the Rooks’ hop garden, and patches of damp had crept up the walls. Ten people shared the one-up, one-down tumbledown hovel. She’d often wondered how they fitted in, if they topped and tailed in the bedroom under the eaves of rotten thatch, or took it in turns to sleep.
She began to run, not stopping until she reached her wonderful home: Wanstall Farm. She passed the front gate to the red-brick and tile farmhouse, where a shingle path ran across the lawn to a green door with a wrought-iron handle. The path continued on, disappearing behind a tall hedge into the garden behind it where the Rooks grew fruit, herbs and vegetables for the kitchen.
Catherine turned into the farmyard, entering through a wooden gate in the wall that made up one side of the yard. To her left was a henhouse, pigsty and woodpile, along with a long timber barn where Pa stored feed and tools. In front of her, twenty brown chickens were cawing and scratching through the chaff outside the granary and stables. Between them was another gate that led out into the orchard and fields beyond while the rear of the house completed the fourth side of the yard.
Looking up, Catherine noticed that the sash windows were still open from earlier that morning when Ma had sent their live-out maid round to air the rooms.
She walked past the pump and stepped inside the back door where the cooler air made her skin like gooseflesh.
‘Catherine, is that you?’ her mother called.
‘Yes, Ma.’ Catherine found her in the kitchen along the corridor from the pantry.
‘Where have you been, young lady?’ Margaret Rook looked up from the oak table where she was pitting plums for a pie. She was a handsome woman with clear blue eyes and round cheeks. Silver and blonde strands of hair had escaped from her braids, and it seemed that her figure would burst from her dress if it wasn’t for the ties on her apron.
‘I walked straight back home from school with Emily.’ Catherine glanced towards the fireplace where the housemaid was stirring fruit and skimming the stones from the surface of a pan that was suspended above the flames. Drusilla was a country girl who’d been in the Rooks’ employ since she was fourteen years old. Now seventeen, she was a young woman whose hands and knees were calloused from scrubbing floors. Her greasy hair was tied back from a face scarred by pockmarks from an illness she’d had as a child. There were many who wouldn’t have taken her on because of it, but Ma hadn’t been able to afford to be fussy.
‘There’s bin no gallivantin’?’ Ma went on.
‘No, Ma.’
Her mother stared and Drusilla gave her a sly glance, but Catherine didn’t waver.
‘How many times have I told you not to linger when I’m working my fingers to the bone? Where’s your bonnet?’
‘I must have left it behind,’ Catherine said defensively. She couldn’t help feeling that Ma blamed her for coming along so many years after her three siblings. There was Young Thomas Rook who was thirty-two and married with five children. He farmed land to the south of Selling, a moderate acreage that Pa had received in lieu of a debt when he’d rented out horses, waggons and labourers, and provided stock to the previous landowner. Then there was Ivy, who’d married Len the blacksmith. Catherine’s other brother John was twelve years older than her at twenty-five, and destined to be the future tenant of Wanstall Farm, so it was imperative that he find a suitable wife. He’d been courting Mary, a farmer’s daughter, for ages, but she seemed keener on him than he was on her.
‘How can you have forgotten it? Don’t you have any idea how much it costs to feed and clothe you? I despair. The sooner you’re wed and off my hands, the better.’
She was far too young for marriage, Catherine knew, but Ma’s words still stung. At least they were just words, though, not the sting that Emily would have received from her mother’s hand if she’d been the one to arrive home without a bonnet.
‘Go and feed the pigs and chickens, and make sure you collect the eggs before you come back in here and take over from Drusilla.’ Ma mopped her brow with a muslin cloth. ‘I’ve been on my feet since the crack of dawn, and I’ve yet to call on Mrs Browning.’
Catherine went outside with a bowl of scraps and meal. She tossed out handfuls of chicken feed and the hens came running. She watched them scrabble for the tastiest morsels, the bossiest hen harrying at the rest of the flock to keep them in their place. Poor Mrs Browning, she thought. The wife of the new vicar was being subjected to a barrage of visits by the other wives of the parish as, like the hens, they established their positions in the pecking order.
Catherine hunted out the eggs, finding them in the henhouse that her brother John had made, and in the straw in the barn, and even one on top of the threshing machine that Pa had had repaired by the wheelwright and stored safely away in the granary ready for the harvest. She filled the bowl with eggs and returned it to the kitchen where she fetched a bucket of slops to feed to the pigs. Her favourite sow was in pig and it wouldn’t be long before she gave birth to her piglets. As she leaned over into the sty to scratch the sow’s back, she smiled at the thought of their tiny pink snouts and curly tails.
‘It won’t be long now, Margaret,’ she said aloud.
‘Margaret?’ Pa’s voice cut across the sow’s noisy slurping.
‘Pa?’ Catherine jumped and turned to find her father moving up beside her to look into the sty. She noticed how his grizzled hair was thinning on the top of his head.
‘I didn’t know you’d given her a name,’ he said, smiling affably.
‘I-I-I …’ Catherine stammered, her face hot. She hoped that Pa wouldn’t be cross that she had called the pig her mother’s name.
‘She’s rather keen on her rations,’ Pa went on, his brown eyes twinkling with humour. ‘She’s getting a good bellyful there.’
Catherine had often wondered how Pa had turned Ma’s head. Married for thirty-four years, they were ill-matched in appearance and disposition. Pa was quick-witted, short and wiry-bodied with a tanned complexion. Ma was well spoken but sometimes slow of thought. They were in their early fifties, which Catherine considered to be very old, much older than Emily’s parents anyway.
‘Your ma is a good woman, you know,’ Pa said, more seriously. ‘She was born and bred to be a farmer’s wife in spite of all her airs and graces. I always tell her that she churns the best butter in the parish.’ At the sound of the horse and cart rolling into the yard, he turned and raised his hand. ‘Afternoon, George.’
George pulled the horse up and clambered down to the ground. He looked older than Pa, Catherine thought, even though they were apparently the same age. He could have passed for five years short of a hundred with his stoop and magnificent grey beard. He wore a smock and a hat with a single brown feather.
‘The scythes are all ready for the cutters, Tom.’ George started to unload the tools that he’d taken to Len for sharpening. ‘The Irish are at Boughton, itching to start work on the harvest tomorrow.’
Pa cast an eye towards the sky. He was always on edge in August, looking out for rain that might spoil the grain and worrying that there wouldn’t be enough people to bring in the crop. He would be relieved to hear that the travellers had arrived for the harvest, Catherine thought. She’d watched him out in the fields, breaking open an ear of corn to check it was ripe before leaning on his stick to listen for the snapping sound of the barley as it dried in the summer sun.
‘We’re all set for Monday,’ Pa said, confirming her expectation that there would be no more school for a while. All hands would be needed to bring in the harvest, then when all the barley was gathered and carted away to the granary, Pa would provide supper and flagons of beer for the labourers, and they would dance the night away with George and the Carter boys playing the accordion and fiddle. Everyone, even Ma, would be happy.
George unhitched the horse while Pa closed the gate across the entrance to the yard. Catherine waited to speak privately with her father.
‘Thank you, George,’ Pa said.
George smiled and walked away.
Pa turned to Catherine.
‘He’s a good man. He doesn’t ask for much.’
‘That’s because his family steal whatever they want from you,’ Catherine said matter-of-factly.
Pa’s expression darkened. ‘What did you say, my girl?’
She sensed the weight of her father’s disappointment, whether it was in the Carters or in her for telling him something he didn’t wish to hear, she wasn’t sure.
‘Is this hearsay, or do you have evidence?’
‘I seen it with my own eyes and heard it through my own ears. Matty confessed to filching onions.’
Pa rubbed the ridge of his hooked nose with his forefinger.
‘You shouldn’t go around telling tales.’
‘It’s the truth. I thought you should know, Pa. The onions are your property and there are some who would make an example of him.’
‘Every family has their struggles, some more than others. The Carters have more children than they can look after, and the pure strain of having all them children has taken a toll on Ma Carter. The eldest is only a few years younger than our Young Thomas, and the littlest littl’un is barely out of swaddling clothes. Ma Carter might be younger than your ma, but all that child bearing has made her an unwell, weakened woman. She can’t do much, except for a little basket-making. The poor family can’t afford for Matty to be charged with larceny for the sake of a few onions.’
Catherine shrank a little under Pa’s disapproving frown. She wished she’d held her tongue.
‘A long time ago,’ Pa began, reminding her of when she was a little girl and he used to sit her on his knee to tell her a story, ‘when George and I were littl’uns, we were larking about at the pond. There were a couple of branches leaning across the water and I reckoned I could balance on the top with my arms outstretched and walk the furthest. I got to the end and turned to come back, waving victorious, when there was a loud crack.’ He clapped his hands together to demonstrate. ‘The branch fell away and I went with it. I felt this sharp blow to my head and the chill of the water, and when I tried to swim up to the surface, the ghosts kept dragging me back.’
Catherine shuddered as he continued, ‘I thought my lungs were going to burst. Then I heard George’s voice telling me to calm down and lie still. He fought off the spirits and saved my life. If it wasn’t for him, I would have drowned there and then in Ghost Hole Pond. I’ve never forgot. I swore I’d treat him as a brother from then on. Always.’
It made sense now. Pa had persuaded the parish to pay the apprenticeship fee for Stephen to be bound by indenture to the blacksmith. He had employed Jervis, in spite of his reputation for unlawful behaviour, and ensured that Matty had attended school for long enough to have learned the basics of reading and writing. No doubt he would support the younger Carter children in similar ways.
‘I’ve had a bit of luck – the squire has always favoured me for the way I can coax more bushels of barley than anyone else from an acre of ground. I’ve risen in the world while others have stayed the same or been lowered, but I will never forget my roots. In my opinion, everyone, even those like Matty from the most humble background, should have the opportoonity to better themselves and make a good living for their families. The Carters have very little, Catherine. The littl’uns often go to bed with empty bellies. How would you feel if you were in their situation?’
Catherine felt ashamed. She’d only wanted to protect Pa’s interests, but she wouldn’t have said anything if she’d known all the facts beforehand.
‘True friends are few and far between – make the most of the ones you have. And keep your own counsel in future. It’s a principle that’s served me well. No harm’s been done so that’s all I have to say on the matter. You’d better run along. Ma has a great deal to do’ – Pa grinned, revealing his crooked teeth – ‘as she takes much pleasure in telling me.’
Catherine returned indoors. While Ma went to call on Mrs Browning, she boiled some eggs and helped Drusilla prepare a cold supper for the evening, along with potatoes and carrots for the Sunday roast which they would eat after church the following day. The shelves in the pantry were groaning with food for the workers’ lunches on Monday, which only added to Catherine’s guilt. Everyone knew that the Carters were poor, but she hadn’t understood how bad things were for them. It occurred to her that she could apologise to Matty in a practical way. No one would notice if some pie and cheese and a jar of preserves went missing, and who would condemn her when it was for a good cause?
While Drusilla was distracted, standing on the slatted wood mat in front of the sink in the scullery, washing the dishes, Catherine slipped out with a wicker basket of provisions on her arm.
Swapping it from one arm to the other, she made her way back up the hill to Toad’s Bottom. She couldn’t open the cottage gate which was firmly stuck on its hinges, so she climbed through a gap in the wall where the flints had fallen away, and walked up the path to the door. She stepped over several pairs of boots that were filled with grass, and raised her hand to knock. The door opened and Matty appeared in front of her.
‘Od rabbit it!’ he exclaimed roughly. ‘What are you doing here?’
A small boy of about four, naked from the waist down, clung to his leg, staring at her. His cheeks were hollow and his eyes glittered with hunger.
‘I’ve brought some food for you,’ she said, sensing she had made some kind of mistake. She held out the basket.
Matty pushed it aside as a woman’s voice called weakly from somewhere inside the dark depths of the cottage.
‘Who is it?’
‘Nobody, Ma,’ Matty called back. He glared at Catherine. ‘We don’t need the Rooks’ charity.’ The timbre of his voice was more like a man’s than a boy’s.
‘I wanted to say sorry for accusing you of stealing. Well you did take the onions without asking, but I understand it wasn’t thieving. Why won’t you accept these things? You’re more than happy to receive money and food from my father.’
‘That’s in return for a favour done in the past. This is charity,’ Matty said emphatically. ‘You know it doesn’t suit you, going around with your nose stuck in the air like you’re better than everyone else.’
‘I don’t,’ she stammered. ‘That isn’t fair.’
‘You think you’re so special. Even your parents treat you different—’
‘How?’ she cut in.
‘Your ma wishes you’d never bin born while your pa puts you on a pedestal.’
It was close to the truth, but she didn’t like to hear it. She often thought that Ma didn’t like her, and Pa did spoil her a little, but she assumed that was because she was the youngest and the last child in the line.
‘There are some around here who say you’re a changeling with your pale skin and long black hair,’ Matty went on, taunting her, ‘but you’re flesh and blood, the same as the rest of us.’
‘All I’m doing is trying to help. I can’t bear the thought of the littl’uns having empty bellies.’
The child began to wail. Matty scooped him up and held him on his hip. He kissed his forehead and stroked his face, calming him down.
‘Be on your way.’ He closed the door in Catherine’s face, leaving her standing on the step, wondering how she could have misjudged the situation so badly. She was upset that Matty had rejected her offering, but what really hurt was the way he had expressed his opinion of her.
She left the basket on the wall, hoping that he might give in and take it before she returned from fetching Emily’s bonnet, which she found torn by the brambles where they had left it to dry. On her way back to the farm, she collected the basket, disappointed to find that its contents had been left untouched.
‘Catherine, wait for me,’ she heard Ma call. She turned. She was in the mire now, she thought with a jolt of panic. Her mother was almost upon her, giving her no time to hide the basket in the hedge, but Ma was too distracted to notice, her head filled with the lingering excitement of her visit to the vicarage.
‘Oh, you have no idea what a lovely time I’ve had,’ she sighed as they walked back towards the farm. ‘Mrs Browning is truly a lady of quality and merit. Her son, Hector, is a handsome fellow – he returns to school in Faversham in September. Her daughter Jane is a beauty to behold, a little pale maybe, but that’s because they’ve been living in London for the past several years. Mrs Browning allowed me to recommend the salt marsh lamb to her cook. That will soon put some colour back into her daughter’s cheeks.’
‘What about the vicar?’ Catherine said, keen to encourage her mother along this train of thought to divert her from the basket and its contents. ‘What is he like?’
‘He was out preparing for a meeting of the vestry, so I can’t say. We’ll find out soon enough. Mrs Browning says that he is determined to encourage the congregation to return wholeheartedly to the fold.’
Catherine smiled to herself. The previous incumbent had been an unassuming man whose dreary sermons had sent his flock scattering across the countryside on a Sunday as he grew fat on his annual stipend paid from the tithes contributed by all the residents of the parish, rich and poor. He’d retired and the Church had given the Reverend Browning the living at Overshill. The church would no doubt be filled with people eager to view the new vicar. Ma began to stride ahead as they approached the farmhouse. Catherine hung back so she could deposit the basket’s contents back on the shelves in the pantry.
‘What was in your basket?’ Ma asked a little later when the family – apart from John, who was still working out in the fields, making the most of the fine evening – were eating supper at the kitchen table.
‘My bonnet, of course,’ Catherine said. ‘I collected it from school.’
‘How strange when you could have carried it home on your head,’ Pa observed, chewing noisily on a crust.
‘She’s always bin a peculiar child.’ Ma passed him a second slice of ham to add to the bread and butter on his plate.
Ma’s remark reminded Catherine of what Matty had said about her being a changeling and later, as she repaired the tears in Emily’s bonnet by the flicker of candlelight so that they wouldn’t show, she began to wonder what he meant by it.
She wondered too if the harvest would be a good one.
She laid down the bonnet and snuffed out the candle before retiring to bed. All was silent apart from the occasional creak of a rafter in the old house and the regular ticking of the longcase clock in the hall. It didn’t seem possible that anything would ever disturb the peace and tranquillity of Overshill.
On the Sunday morning, Catherine walked into the village with Pa, Ma and her brother, a tall, handsome man of twenty-five with hair the colour of ripened barley, bright blue eyes and good teeth. He was wearing his corduroy jacket, matching trousers and recently blacked boots.
‘John has put an unusual amount of effort into his appearance,’ she remarked.
‘He looks quite the dandy,’ Ma agreed.
‘You’re making me blush, Ma.’ John turned and grinned before walking on with a spring in his step.
Catherine doubted it. Her brother was used to compliments. He’d always had his pick of the village girls because of his light-hearted attitude to life, his charm and his prospects, but now it seemed that he’d settled for Mary Nobbs.
‘It’s a pity that you had to let us down by wearing that grubby bonnet on the Sabbath, Catherine,’ Ma went on. ‘It’s in a terrible state. It looks like the cat’s put her claws through it. I’ll have to have a word with Pa about buying you some more clothes.’
Catherine smiled to herself as they reached the mill where the aroma of meat cooking in the bread ovens, ready for some of the other villagers to collect after the service, rose into the air. She knew exactly what Pa would say about the prospect of a new bonnet. Not until after hop-picking when the money came in.
The Millichips joined them on the street. The miller was wearing a suit that seemed to bear a light dusting of flour, and his sour-faced wife wore a grey dress and cape bound with red braid. They greeted Pa and Ma Rook, the men shaking hands, and the women nodding politely. Emily linked arms with Catherine and the pair of them dropped back behind the rest of the party.
‘Did your ma say anything about your bonnet?’ Catherine said.
Emily raised her finger to her lips and shook her head.
‘Did you snitch on Matty?’ she asked quietly.
‘I spoke to Pa, but nothing will come of it. And then I tried to make up for what I’d done, and now Matty hates me. His family is so very poor. I didn’t realise what a struggle they have to make ends meet.’
‘I’m sure you meant well,’ Emily said, turning towards the carriage that had stopped outside the church. Mr Hadington, the lawyer who owned Churt House, held the door open for his wife and grown daughter, who stepped out in their finery and feathers. With his smart coat, curly whiskers and brown teeth, he reminded Catherine of a rat, sniffing out opportunities to enhance his fortune. He stared at the girls, his eyes settling on Emily. She glanced away, but he continued to stare.
‘Don’t you think that Mr Hadington is rather odd?’ Emily whispered. ‘He’s always looking at me. Last week when we came out of the church, I could feel his eyes burning into my back.’
‘Don’t take any notice. We’ll never need to have anything to do with him.’
‘Do you remember how we used to stand at the bottom of the drive and crane our necks to catch a glimpse of Churt House?’ Emily said. ‘You told me how you wished you were a rich man’s daughter.’
‘Imagine how different life would be if you had too much money rather than just enough,’ Catherine said wistfully. ‘I’d help all the poor families in the village.’
‘If they’d let you,’ Emily pointed out. ‘The people around here might be poor, but they’re also very proud.’
They walked up the steps into the churchyard and joined the throng entering the church, curious to see the new vicar and his family. Catherine glanced around at the familiar sight of the elegant stone pillars that separated the nave from the aisles on either side, and at the soaring arches that formed the roof. There were stone bosses where the ribs met: one in the form of a nun’s face, another of a rose, and her favourite of a man with a beard of leaves. She turned to look over her shoulder at the west gallery above the entrance to the church where the choir were shuffling around, taking their seats behind the carved wooden screen.
‘Catherine, stop your daydreaming and come and sit down.’ Ma’s voice broke into her consciousness.
‘Wake up, little sister. You can’t possibly miss out on this great occasion.’ John winked at her as he escorted her along the nave, then whispered, ‘It’s only fair that we all suffer in equal measure.’
Catherine suppressed a chuckle.
‘That’s her. That’s Mrs Browning,’ Ma said loudly as they settled in their pew, the Rooks alongside the Millichips and three rows back from the squire, the lawyer and other dignitaries of the parish. ‘That’s her daughter, Jane.’
Catherine gazed towards a girl of about her age who was dressed demurely in a bonnet and dark blue dress with long sleeves and lace gloves. She kept glancing behind her with a smile playing on her lips. Her upturned nose gave her an air of superiority.
‘And that is her son, Hector, who has a most handsome countenance, don’t you think?’
Several heads had turned at the sound of Ma’s voice. Catherine wished she would keep quiet.
The boy was a year or two older than her, pale and uninteresting, she thought, with his chestnut hair neatly combed and his shoulders rounded as he slumped in the pew with his head in his hands. His mother gave him a nudge as the new vicar, dressed in cassock, surplice and stole, stepped up to the lectern. His hair was brushed forwards onto his fat cheeks and he wore silver spectacles with pebble lenses. He raised a tin vamping horn to his lips – the villagers used to use it to call the cattle home in the days before the lands were enclosed, but the last time Catherine could remember hearing it was when the parish clerk called for help after a candle fell over in the vestry and set the vestments alight.
‘Pray, silence,’ the vicar lisped through the vamping horn. His voice echoed around the vaulted ceiling, sending a ripple of amusement through the crowd. ‘Ladies and gentlemen of Overshill! Silence! I cannot hear myself speak.’
A loud thud from the west gallery caught the congregation’s attention instead. George Carter, who was with the other members of the choir, had dropped the trombone. There was a chuckle, followed by deep, booming laughter.
‘You oughta be more careful, Pa.’ It was Matty’s voice from behind the wooden screen. ‘You’ve broken it.’
‘I ’aven’t.’
‘Yes, you ’ave. Look at it there. No, there.’
‘Well, maybe I ’ave just a little bit, but equally you could say that it broke itself on the way down. No matter. The churchwardens will pay for the repairs, for what use is a choir without its instruments?’
‘We will see what use this choir is by the end of the service,’ said the vicar. ‘Sit down, sirs. Open your ears and hearts to God’s Word, and pray forgiveness for your sins of drunkenness and lack of respect for the hallowed Church of Our Lady.’
The choir began to settle as the vicar preached and prayed about salvation and wickedness, and each time Catherine thought he was about to say, ‘Here endeth …’ he continued. His lisping delivery became louder as he became more fired up with wrath against a congregation that had only returned to the church for one purpose: to observe their new vicar.
Eventually, he stopped and the singing of the psalm began. The Reverend Browning was not happy with it. He raised both his hand and the vamping horn, and sprang up on the balls of his feet to call for the choir to pause.
‘I cannot hear the singing,’ he complained, and Catherine wondered if it had more to do with the state of his ears than the efforts of the choir. He handed the horn to one of the village boys who carried it up the stone staircase to the gallery and gave it to Jervis Carter.
Jervis, who was taller and rangier than his brothers with knotted brown hair and a poor impression of a beard, put it to his mouth. George beat the rhythm with his hand, the trombone being out of action. Stephen played the clarinet and Matty drew his bow across the strings of his fiddle.
Jervis’s voice sang out, high-pitched like an angel’s, while George joined in with a lusty bass. The music began very slowly, too slowly for the congregation, making the sound most mournful, but as the psalm progressed, George gradually beat a faster rhythm until it was more like a sing-song at a beerhouse.
Catherine and Emily began to sway. Mr Millichip began to tap with his foot. The vicar’s forehead became lined with discomfiture and Catherine could almost feel his relief when the singing came to a drawn-out end complete with one final toot of the clarinet.
Reverend Browning continued with his sermon while the farm servants yawned in the pews – most of them had been up at dawn, putting in three or four hours’ work before church. John was fidgeting and sighing. Ma was fiddling with a piece of lace. Pa was writing with a stub of pencil on a piece of paper inserted into his psalm book. Every so often, he would put the stub behind his ear and sit, frowning. When Catherine peered across, she could see that he was making notes and drawings on improvements for the farm: cropping; planting; a fantastical machine with pulleys and belts and smoke belching from a chimney on the top.
The light glinted through the stained-glass window of Our Lady onto a brass of some old knight in armour on the floor. Above that, set in the wall, was a white marble plaque that marked the lives of Squire Temple’s ancestors, the men all of courage, the women entirely virtuous, and their children pure and innocent.
Squire Temple himself was asleep – she could tell from the slope of his shoulders and the way his head jerked forwards now and then. Jane kept her eyes down and head bowed in supplication as though praying for her father to stop and let them out into the bright sunshine to enjoy their day of rest.
Catherine thought of the meal they would have later: roast beef and taters. And her stomach rumbled. When would it ever end?
‘I were praying for him to stop,’ Pa said on the way back to the farm after the service. ‘Doesn’t he realise the harvest is almost upon us? It’s no wonder that people don’t go to church any more when the parson don’t even offer a prayer for good weather. It’s all very well preaching the virtues of temperance to the choir, but it won’t make no difference. That was time wasted when I should have been setting up for the morning. What do you think, Ma?’
‘I think I shall reserve judgement, you being a churchwarden and that,’ she said. ‘You’ll feel better when you have some food in your belly.’
‘I’ll feel better when everything – the grain, the hops and the rest of the apples – are safely gathered in.’ A smile crossed Pa’s face. ‘And then it’ll be time for ploughing and planting, and threshing with the new machine. That will be the making of us, you’ll see. By next year, every farmer who’s seen it in action will want to hire it and I’ll have made enow money to buy another, and maybe more. Our future is golden like the barley in the meadows.’
The next day at dawn in the two-acre field behind the farmhouse, the reapers were already at work under Pa’s watchful eye when Catherine turned up with John, who was carrying his scythe on his shoulder in readiness for mowing. She was to act as one of the gatherers until it was time for her to help Ma bring the midday meal out for the workers.
‘Matty will fetch and carry too,’ Pa said, and Catherine frowned at the thought of having to face him again, knowing that she would feel awkward and embarrassed.
The shadows shrank as the sun rose in the clear sky. John took his place alongside the other men and began to cut the corn. He swung his scythe close to the ground with ease and rhythm, moving from his hips and waist. The cradle on his scythe caught the barley which fell onto the ground in a neat swathe.