Chapter Twenty Seven

Near Shrewsbury, 1907

I have told her you will come today.’ Mrs Cooper hangs Hester’s summer travelling coat and her straw boater on the coat stand next to Ellen’s, who has seen to herself. ‘I believe she understood, for she murmured Ellen’s name.’ The housekeeper glances at Ellen with an indulgent smile.

‘I’ve brought these.’ Hester pulls two folded brown paper packets from her bag and hands them to Mrs Cooper. ‘Willow bark to ease her pain, and valerian root, which will also help her sleep.’

‘Ah, Mrs Hester.’ Mrs Cooper eyes the packets with a tentativeness normally accorded rat poison. ‘I’m sure these might have helped, only … the mistress can barely swallow, and the doctor has given morphine.’

Hester stows the packets in her bag. No use leaving them here to be hidden in a dark cupboard, or, worse, thrown out with the rubbish.

‘I see,’ she says. ‘I hadn’t realised she is so far on the path.’

‘She is truly dying?’ Ellen waits beside the carpetbag on the tiled floor. Her hands are clasped, eyes glistening.

‘Oh yes.’ Mrs Cooper pats the girl’s arm. ‘You must go up and see her immediately. Briefly, mind, she cannot cope with more. I’ll make tea and take it to the parlour.’

With a last pat, and tilt of her head for Hester, the housekeeper walks towards the kitchen. Hester and Ellen are left with their carpetbag and instructions.

Mrs Appleby’s bedroom is warm, the windows closed to possible draughts given the relative coolness of the day. The maroon velvet drapes are pulled to discourage light, transforming the solid furniture into looming shadows. Phials of liquids, yellow bottles of pills, a glass half filled with water, and a blue china bowl with a white linen cloth folded over the side crowd the bedside table. The close air smells of death and sickness, overlaid with the cloying sweetness of laudanum – the precursor, Hester guesses, to the morphine.

Her mother-in-law lies in the large bed, eyes closed, the grey wrinkles of her face and neck a shadow against the white pillows. Her hands, resting above the counterpane, are yellow, age-spotted, the thin fingers curved like claws. Her breathing is shallow, with gaps between each breath where Hester finds herself waiting to see if there will be another.

Hester points to the straight-backed chair by the side of the bed. ‘You are the one she wishes to see,’ she says softly, and Ellen sits.

‘Grandmother,’ she murmurs. ‘It’s Ellen. We’ve come, Mama and I, to see you.’

Mrs Appleby’s eyelids flutter. The fingers of one hand tremble in a struggle to lift them in greeting. Ellen reaches out, enfolding the skin and bones in her own strong, young grasp.

‘I’m sorry to see you poorly,’ Ellen says.

The old lady stirs. She opens her eyes to slits, heavy lids drooping with the effort. ‘Good girl,’ she whispers. Her eyes close and she slips into sleep.

With the room barely lit by a shaded gas lamp, Hester and Mrs Cooper take turns during the night to sit beside the bed. The doctor has not been back to administer more morphine, and Mrs Appleby shifts beneath the counterpane, scratching at the material with her fleshless fingers. Low groans intersperse her tortured breaths. Hester prepares an infusion of valerian.

‘Here,’ she whispers, ‘this might help.’ She spoons the liquid between her mother-in-law’s dry lips, wiping the spills from her bony chin.

Mrs Appleby’s eyelids open, the same slits as before. She tries to raise her head to stare over Hester’s shoulder into the darkened room. ‘Aaron?’ she mumbles. ‘My boy?’

‘I am sorry,’ Hester says quietly. ‘Aaron is not here. He wishes he could be –’

‘Yes, yes.’ It’s a sough. ‘Eccleshall. Their home. He went to Eccles … there … find them, tell them.’ Mrs Appleby’s eyes shift to Hester’s face and for one moment there is clarity. ‘He never told us, never said …’ She closes her eyes, draws a rattling breath.

‘Never said?’ Hester leans closer.

‘The vicar’s daughter.’ The dying woman’s breath catches, a weakened snort. ‘She’s dead, you know, dead.’

‘Yes.’

‘Blames himself …’ Mrs Appleby’s dulled eyes flutter. ‘Never could tell that girl ... My poor son.’ Her eyelids give up their struggle. Whether it’s the valerian or exhaustion from the effort, her body relaxes into the pillows, her palms flat on the counterpane.

When Hester is woken by Mrs Cooper, dawn light fingers the edges of the curtains.

‘She has passed,’ Mrs Cooper says. ‘God rest her soul.’

***

Weeks later, after the funeral, after the reading of the will which leaves Ellen a well-off young woman when she reaches adulthood, gives Rose a not insubstantial fund – for which Hester shows more gratitude than does Rose – and provides a generous pension for Mrs Cooper – after the house has been cleared and made ready for sale, after all this, Hester is at last able to follow Ellen and return to Barnley. She is glad to sit at her kitchen table drinking peppermint tea with Catherine and marvelling at how much the kitten has grown.

The hot summer has passed into a misty early autumn, with today’s chilly rain a harbinger of the season to come. Hester relishes the warmth from the range and is grateful for the well-stocked wood pile Cornelius organised for her.

The hessian sack she filled in the meadow in July lies in a corner, crumpled and empty. Not gone to waste. Ellen and Rose have kept themselves busy dealing with the wildflower harvest. Hester has more reason to be thankful, this time for Mrs Bryce. Catherine’s housekeeper enabled Rose and Ellen to stay at home by sending them one of her numerous grand-nieces, a buxom young woman who cheerfully cooked and swept and laundered while Ellen saw to those needs of the villagers she felt able to help – and others whom she wrote to her mother seeking advice – and Rose cared for the garden and hens.

‘I’m no longer needed,’ Hester teased the first evening home, with her bed made and the appetising aroma of lamb and barley soup simmering on the range. ‘I see I’ll be able to spend my days on the sofa with a book, drinking tea, like a lady.’

‘No, no,’ Rose remonstrated. ‘I’m exhausted, and thank goodness you’re here, Mama.’ She leapt from her chair to rush to Hester’s side, throw her arms around her neck and declare, ‘I missed you very, very much.’

‘Welcome home, Mama.’ Ellen blew Hester a kiss, grinning. ‘First thing tomorrow, we must visit Mrs Beard who wants to explain her mysterious stomach pains to you and be happy with whatever infusion you provide.’ She threw out her hands, mischief in her eyes. ‘I, apparently, am too virginal to be told exactly where these pains are.’

Now, also at the kitchen table, Hester re-tells Catherine details she has already passed on in her frequent letters. She is reliving the night of Mrs Appleby’s passing when she sets her cup on its saucer with a clatter which makes Catherine startle.

‘Eccleshall,’ Hester says.

‘Pardon?’

‘Eccleshall.’ Hester frowns at her friend. ‘Mr and Mrs Appleby told me, when I first met them, how they had sent Aaron to Coppenhall to find the Wards.’

Catherine lifts her teacup. ‘The old lady was dying, not in her right mind. Hardly surprising if she confused names.’

‘Hmm.’ A shred of possibility bursts into life behind Hester’s ribcage. ‘What if … what if … she confused the names when Aaron asked? What if neither she nor Mr Appleby could truly remember, and, well, Coppenhall, Eccleshall …’ She clasps her hands, beseeches her friend, demanding Catherine grant the feasibility of this cobweb strand of hope.

Catherine pulls in her lips. ‘She remembered on her deathbed, and not in all the years before?’ Doubt furrows her pale brow.

Hester carries the teapot to the workbench. The shred of possibility has faltered. Its green shoots wave in the air at the mercy of whatever wind Hester chooses to send their way. She shakes the kettle, determines there is sufficient water to refill the pot, and sets it on the range, letting her mind sifts hopes and blatant optimism against the likelihood of further disappointment.

She holds out her palms to Catherine. ‘I have to go, don’t I? I can’t leave this stone unturned, despite the years and the chance it will reveal no more than barren earth.’

Catherine doesn’t hesitate. ‘In which case,’ she says, ‘I will have Cornelius send a man to inquire.’ If this is what Hester wishes to do, ever faithful Catherine will ensure it happens.

She holds up a finger as Hester opens her mouth to protest. ‘A man whose business it is to find these things out,’ Catherine insists, ‘will be more effective than you stumbling about not knowing where to start. Don’t you agree?’

Hester bristles, before she exhales. ‘You’re right, of course, my dear friend.’ She raises her own finger. ‘I will not agree however, unless I’m allowed to pay the expense.’

‘Of course.’

Catherine’s eyes do not lie so much as tell Hester the bill she will be presented with will cover a fraction of the cost. Hester will argue later.

***

Over the next two weeks, Hester settles into the routines of life. She deals with Mrs Beard’s stomach pains and the villagers’ other minor ailments with her usual efficiency, she and the girls bottle blackberry jam, and pear and apple chutneys, and search out the last sloes and hawthorns along the hedgerows.

The chicken flock is augmented by two white-feathered hens, gifts from grateful villagers, and the kitten – grown into a sleek cat – is bloodied with a sharp peck when she introduces herself. Hester overhears Ellen chiding Pumpkin for getting too close, and the cat sulkily responding that the other hens are not as prickly. She searches for Rose, and is pleased the girl is out of hearing of what to her would be a one-sided and irritating exchange. She reminds Ellen to be considerate. Pumpkin blinks at Hester with lazy eyes.

She does not tell Ellen and Rose of her new mission to search Eccleshall for their father. She will only do this when, if, there is a result.

This autumn day is blustery, with cold showers which drive the hens to shelter and entice Pumpkin to sleep by the range. Hester and her daughters peel and slice fat Bramleys from the garden to preserve in jars of jelly and apple butter to add to the store in the pantry. The warm kitchen smells of caramelising sugar and apples.

The postman – his knock unheard in the heavy rain – slips the letter under the front door, where it lies until Ellen goes into the parlour in the late afternoon to set and light the fire for the evening.

‘We shall have a civilised night,’ Hester had said at dinner. ‘We’ll have a fire in the parlour and read to each other rather than mend and darn at the kitchen table.’

She has been restless since waking, unable to settle to any task for long, blaming the weather until she recognises Cornelius’s neat hand on the thick envelope Ellen hands her. There is news. Her hands tremble as she takes the missive.

‘Why does Uncle Cornelius write to you, Mama?’ Rose asks.

‘Business,’ Hester says shortly. ‘Rose, will you lock the chickens up, it’s nearly dusk, and Ellen, fetch more water, please.’

Rose and Ellen both glance at the envelope, exchange arched brows at the brusqueness of Hester’s tone, and slip away to their tasks.

Hester pulls a chair out from the kitchen table and plumps into it. She holds the envelope pinched between her thumbs and forefingers at its top corners, and gazes above it to the window where the leaves of the plum tree are being swept from their tentative holds by the bullying wind.

She is reluctant to discover what Cornelius’ man has to say. Despite her insistence to Catherine, Hester recognises – has always recognised – how knowledge can be the death of hope as much as it is the death of ignorance.

The girls will be back any moment. Hester uses a paring knife to slice open the envelope. She pulls out the sheets of paper and unfolds them. Two are newly crisp with typed lettering. One is a handwritten note from Cornelius urging Hester to tell him and Catherine what she wishes to do next, they are at her disposal.

The fourth sheet, enclosed inside the typed pages, is also handwritten. While the ink has faded with time to pale mauve, the handwriting and the brief message it conveys send Hester’s fingers flying to her mouth. When she hurriedly scans the typed pages her stomach rises in her throat.

Ellen, pushing the door open with her foot while balancing two pails of sloshing water, finds her mother at the table with her head on her arms, her shoulders heaving.