Читать книгу Sarah’s Story: An emotional family saga that you won’t be able to put down - Lynne Francis - Страница 8

Sarah had lived in Hill Farm Cottage, along with her grandmother Ada, for as long as she could remember. Sarah’s mother, Mary, had lived there too for a while. Mary had married a weaver from Northwaite, William Gibson, who – having made himself unpopular for one reason and another at the local mill – had been forced to look further afield for work, in Manchester. He left behind his wife Mary, along with Sarah and her two younger sisters Jane and Ellen. He sent home what he said he could spare from his wages each week but, even so, without additional financial help from Ada the family wouldn’t have survived.

Ada’s role as a herbalist gave her some status in the village, and a little wealth; enough to afford the rent on the cottage. It was a little way out of Northwaite but was big enough to house them all and to provide a garden for Ada to grow the herbs she needed. The distance from the village meant that Ada paid a lower rent, but it was a disadvantage for the less able of her patients, who struggled to make the journey. So, from an early age, Sarah had been employed to deliver remedies to them as necessary.

Ada cut a stern figure despite her diminutive size, dressing all in black in honour of her long-dead husband, Harry Randall. When Sarah was small, the approaching rustle of Ada’s bombazine dress had filled her with dread for she always feared that she was about to be caught out in some behaviour considered worthy of punishment. In later years, Sarah got to wondering whether Ada’s joy had died along with Harry, for she smiled little and scolded a good deal.

It was partly this that made her eager to offer to run errands for her grandmother, so that she could leave the cottage and its frequently strained atmosphere. She learnt very quickly that if she was swift in the execution of the errand she could dawdle her way home, stopping on the bridge over the brook to look for minnows or sticklebacks darting about in the shallows or, in spring, to watch fluffy young ducklings quack anxiously after their mother as she shepherded them on an outing. And if she loitered in the doorway of Patchett’s, the baker’s, she would often be rewarded with a treat.

‘Been out delivering for your gran again? You’re a good girl. You must be hungry – here’s a morsel for you.’ Mrs Patchett, the baker’s wife, would wipe her floury arms on her apron and beam, handing over a roll that she said was misshapen, or a sweet tart where the pastry had caught and burnt a little round the edges. The one thing the treats had in common was that they were all somewhat larger than a morsel and Sarah would eat them quickly on the last stretch of her journey home, taking care to wipe her mouth on her sleeve and to lick her fingers to remove the evidence.

As Sarah grew a little older, Ada sent her on errands beyond the immediate village and she quickly came to know her way around the countryside and to delight in exploring it. By this time Mary had left her mother’s house, taking the two little girls with her to join her husband in Manchester. Sarah, aged ten, was left behind to act as her grandmother’s companion.

Sarah wasn’t entirely sorry at this turn of events. Her grandmother and mother clashed constantly and Sarah’s loyalties were torn. Although she found her grandmother formidable, she was at least consistent. You knew where you stood, and you knew to expect punishment if you did wrong. Sarah’s mother was harder to fathom. At times she was emotional, gathering her three children to her and telling them how much she loved them all. At other times she was cold and cruel, denying them food for childish misdemeanours. Or worse: Sarah had found her sister Ellen shut in the cellar one day when she chanced to go down there to find jars for the ointments her grandmother was making. Ellen, her eyes saucer-like with terror, could barely explain what she had done to deserve this and Sarah was unable to discover how long she had been down there. Ellen spent the rest of the day clinging to Sarah’s skirt while she worked.

Mary returned quite late that day, unusually flushed and looking happier than Sarah had seen her in a while. That evening, harsh words passed between Ada and her daughter and within the week Mary was gone, taking Jane and Ellen with her. Sarah discovered that the household was a calmer place without her mother, although she missed Jane and Ellen terribly. Now she had no companions to spend her days with, and her distance from the village meant that she made no close friends there. She thought she ought to miss her mother, too, but since her grandmother had been such a strong presence throughout her formative years all went on much as before, although perhaps a little more quietly. If Sarah was missing affection in her life she didn’t notice, it having been in short supply before.

Ada wrote to her daughter in Manchester once a month and received news in return. She shared this with Sarah, who, noticing her grandmother’s pauses as she read aloud, suspected that much was being kept from her. Jane and Ellen were now lodged by day with a neighbour as Mary had gone to work in the mill alongside her husband. A frown creased Ada’s brow as she read this out to Sarah, who was old enough herself to worry that her younger sisters wouldn’t be properly cared for.

‘What need do they have of yet more money?’ Ada muttered. Sarah kept quiet, aware that she was speaking more to herself than to her granddaughter. ‘Is what I send not enough? It must be the drink. The devil’s work.’

With the rest of the family gone, and without her mother’s presence to create and inflame tensions, Sarah and her grandmother quickly settled into a mutual understanding. Ada grumbled and complained but Sarah came to see that it meant little.

Sarah dutifully accompanied her grandmother, staunch in her Methodism, to the chapel in Northwaite every Sunday but, if truth be told, she was barely a believer herself. She learnt the art of appearing to worship, whilst all the time she was far away in daydreams in which she wandered the surrounding countryside, spending time with the sisters she missed so much. She feared they would be so well grown as to be unrecognisable the next time they met.

Her grandmother would try to draw her into conversation about the sermon on the way home, but Sarah was always ready to distract her or to divert her thoughts. Usually she would ask a question about some remedy that they were making but once she had thought to enquire more about Ada’s, and the family’s, faith.

‘Did my mother go to chapel with you when she was young?’ she asked. She was well aware of Ada’s high standing in the chapel community yet Mary had attended chapel rarely, simply refusing to be ready on time, and she had prevented Jane and Ellen from attending too. Sarah, as the eldest daughter, had accepted her own role as her grandmother’s companion and gone along without questioning it. Now she wondered whether the strained atmosphere in the house had been caused by arguments about religion, or whether it was something else entirely.

‘Your mother came to chapel until she was about sixteen, when she met your father,’ Ada said. ‘William Gibson didn’t hold with the Methodist beliefs, in particular where drink was concerned, and within three months he had your mother rejecting them as well.’

Ada’s dislike of Sarah’s father was clear, Sarah thought. Could this explain why he was such a shadowy presence in her own life? He had been working in Manchester as long as Sarah could remember; certainly since Jane was born and probably before that. They had been a household of women for what seemed like the whole of Sarah’s life.

Something else that her grandmother had said had lodged in her mind, too: her mother and father had met when Mary was sixteen. That was younger than Sarah was now. The thought had worried away at her – living in an out-of-the-way cottage with just her grandmother for company, how was she ever going to meet a young man, let alone marry and have a family of her own?