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***chapter 14***
The neat handwriting was exactly how Thomas remembered it when Kate straightened the paper and set it down on the table next to her to work by gas-light, for his sister was never idle and kept piles of material and balls of wool in a large cardboard box she would delve into most evenings. He never asked what she was making; Kate worked so rapidly he would know soon enough.
But one day he picked up the page obviously torn from Jackson's grocery register, with the indents of a previous page totting up the price of potatoes, onions, butter and tea. It had not been used for groceries in this instance, however, it had been used to write some helpful sewing instructions which Kate was referring to. Just below the shopping list there was, too, an indent bearing the cryptic message potatoes Fri Mrs Sm. Unable to make out the rest, he idly speculated as to who the customer could be who called to collect potatoes one Friday. After all, there were several candidates in the neighbourhood - Mrs Smedley, the Mrs Smith with the crippled husband and the mangy cat, the Mrs Smith who took in washing and had eight kids, Mrs Small, Mrs Smethurst, Mrs Smullen...Kate giggled and shook her head at his every suggestion.
It was none of them, she admitted at last. Her friend Phyllis had also been writing out a recipe for a new dish that included potatoes and fried mushrooms! Thomas snatched up the page in disbelief, but, sure enough, when he squinted at the paper once more he could just about make out the two words. He had studied that writing so hard small wonder he remembered it so well. But what did Phyllis Baxter want with him after all these years?
Dear Mr Barrow, How strange it is to address you thus when I have always known you as Thomas, and even Tom or Tommy! But you are no longer a boy and I can no longer take such a liberty.
First, I must tell you I intend to write from the heart. You are the only friend I can turn to now and I wish you to know everything, which I fear will make this epistle rather lengthy. Thus I will begin.
You will be very surprised to hear from me after all this time and for me to be so very late in offering my sincere condolences for your losses. I cannot begin to imagine how distressing a time it must have been for you and how sorry I am I was not there to at least give some small comfort in my friendship. I learned of the sad and untimely deaths of Kate, Ben and Paul some months afterwards, but though I tried and tried to find you over the years my search proved futile until a few years previously. I could not bring myself to write then, however. I hope you may better understand my reasons when you come to learn my history.
I fled Manchester in shame. The man I loved and was to marry had duped me. I discovered that he was already married, and the father of four children, the eldest barely eight years old, the youngest just a babe in arms. I was so shocked I hardly knew where I was and what I was about. Too embarrassed to face anyone, even Kate, I made up my mind I would go as far away as possible where none would know me. No sooner had I thought of the plan than I executed it. I paid my rent until the end of the week and purchased a train ticket – my wits scattered, I simply asked for the very next train out of the station and, upon arrival, boarded yet another train in the same manner. Finally, as it was growing dark and I tired, I asked a coachman if he would be kind enough to take me to the nearest lodgings. The fellow suggested a couple of hotels and upon hearing I had insufficient funds named instead some respectable ladies boarding houses and their prices. I was dismayed to realise had not the money for even those. After learning how much I could afford, he proposed then, albeit reluctantly, a boarding house at the edge of the town.
"It is not somewhere I would normally take a genteel lady such as yourself," he cautioned. "But I daresay if you ensure your door is kept locked one night may be bearable until your relatives are able to send funds." (He had got it into his head that I had been the victim of theft and I am ashamed to say I allowed this delusion rather than admit I had no relatives to rescue me from my predicament.) I realise you must find my penury strange when you knew me to be careful and saving hard and how I could sometimes earn a handsome sum if I secured more intricate sewing work, the reason I was so keen for Kate to learn this skill too. Well, my money was gone, Mr Barrow. All of it.
I loved and trusted Ralph so much that even now it hurts and shames me to write of it. I had been giving what I earned from my dressmaking and Jackson's grocers to my intended, believing it was being regularly paid it into the bank toward our future together. There was no bank account. The cash I gave him was long spent. I will not dwell on how and where, my heart still aches when I think how much I was taken in.
I fell into an exhausted sleep in the small, damp room I was allocated, listening to a drunken argument, door slamming and random thuds of the other residents, only to be rudely awoken some time before dawn by a furious rattling of the door knob. There was no point in shouting for help; my voice would have been drowned by the noise that punctuated the night. Thankfully, I had taken care to firmly bolt my door and in time the unwelcome caller let me be.
I lay wide awake then, and with time to think the precariousness of my situation struck me like a hammer blow. Whatever was I to do to survive? I had few belongings and very little money in my purse. Even a room in this dubious place was better than sleeping on the streets or on a washing line (yes, they really do exist, remember how once we pondered upon it? But during my journey I passed a building where through a window I glimpsed momentarily a dozen or more men in uneasy sleep leaning over taut ropes stretched from wall to wall to keep them from falling down, a few of the luckier, presumably those who were able to pay more than the required amount, with benches to rest on). I muttered a prayer to the Almighty Father to guide me and I know you scoff at such matters, Mr Barrow, but it would seem He really was watching over me, for only the very next morning I had an amazing stroke of luck.
I thought perhaps I might be able to work in lieu of rent, perhaps cleaning or cooking – I had noticed the previous evening that some tenants were able to procure a meagre evening meal of potatoes, cabbage and mutton and the smell of cabbage still lingered from what I assumed were the kitchens below, as though the very walls were painted with it. My stomach grumbled, reminding me not a morsel had passed my lips since I ate some bread and cheese at the railway station. I know you will find it amusing when I say I could have eaten a feast of cabbage at that moment, recalling my dislike of cabbage and how you used to tease me about it, but hunger makes one less choosy.
With a mind to negotiating terms, I went to see the caretaker of the lodgings – I use the term loosely, for Mrs Quinn's only task seemed to be to allocate rooms and write due amount in a large ledger, the rents being collected by a fierce-looking man and an equally ferocious,burlier companion, who rough-handled any debtors, throwing them on the street without ceremony. The building was left to fend for itself.
No sooner had I knocked on the half open door than Mrs Quinn bade me enter. Being of the opinion I wished to secure a second night, she was already turning a new page in the ledger and dipping a pen in the inkwell while launching into a dozen different topics, from the weekend's thunderstorm, to how her late mother suffered greatly from arthritis in wet weather, to how convenient it was to have a store nearby that sold mothballs, and how she had been in said store Tuesday last and saw an acquaintance pass by with a man who was definitely not her husband!
She reminded me not a little of Dr Swales' charwoman, not so much in looks - although she did have wiry grey hair pulled back in a severe bun! - but in the way she loved to gossip. I have no doubt you will clearly recollect Miss Lily Walker, and how you and Paul called her Miss Silly Talker to her face! Though Kate sternly admonished you, we often secretly laughed about it afterwards, it was so wicked and yet so apt. But I digress.
Mrs Quinn chanced to glance at the curtains of her own room and sighed that they were greatly in need of mending before they fell down altogether. Of course I offered my services as a needlewoman at once and thus began a friendship of sorts. Knowing her love of gossip, I dared not confide in her the real reason for my solitary journey. "A failed relationship" was the only information she could elicit and try as Beryl might – we became on first name terms in time – I allowed her no more.
I was correct in my assumption about the kitchens. There was indeed a kitchen area below stairs where one could purchase a plain hot meal by evening, but I was shocked at the lack of cleanliness and wondered no one had yet suffered food poisoning – or, I thought, perhaps they had but nobody dared complain for fear of losing their cheap lodgings. My first visit into its depths, Mrs Meadows, was snoring drunkenly beside a half-finished bottle of gin, while Annie, a pleasant, simple-minded young girl, familiar with her sometimes violent outbursts (it was by no means unusual for Cook when inebriated to throw plates and pans) and not bold enough to act without instructions patiently sat and waited for her to wake.
I volunteered my help and Annie and I gave the kitchen a thorough clean, scrubbing every inch, laying mouse-traps, opening windows, wiping every dish until it shone. Mrs Meadows slept through it all. You will be amused to hear that I soon gave two particularly large spiders free reign, swallowing my apprehension in my desperation to rid the kitchen of flies; we also procured a stray cat that Annie, dear girl, became very much attached to and who was quickly at home with his regular feast of mice and scraps of food so the arrangement was beneficial to all parties. Even Mrs Meadows, when she was sober, had a place in her heart for Hector. Cleaning, cooking and mending did not pay much, for nobody in that large house with its dozen rooms and smells of damp and mould, cabbage and beer, had money to spare – not surprisingly, the few who found work moved on somewhere better as soon as they did - but it kept a roof over my head and food in my belly, and I began to recover a little from my betrayal.
I had written three times to Kate but my letters were returned to the post office unopened. I imagined she was angry and I understood her anger, I had hurt her deeply. But when I wrote next to your father and that, too, was returned with the same lines obliterating the address and advising the letter's return, I first entertained the idea, far-fetched though it seemed, for its signage proclaimed it to have stood on its corner with its large brown clock ticking like a heartbeat for over a hundred years, that the clockmakers' shop may have relocated. Coward that I am, I still could not bring myself to visit and face my humiliation. And then I remembered Helen Latham. I knew how close you and her son had been and how fond your father was of her. At long last my endeavours proved fruitful and a letter arrived in next afternoon's post. But its contents shocked and saddened me.
Mrs Latham wrote of the terrible outbreak of diphtheria and of the deaths of Kate, Ben and Paul. Mr Barrow, no words I say can ever take away the pain you must have suffered and my sympathy so many years too late is scant consolation. My heart aches when I think of how alone you, little more than a child, would have been in your grief, for your father never understood nor was kind to you. I wished so much I could turn back time and been brave enough to stand fast in the face of my humiliation. and I wept so often and prayed so hard that wherever you were you might know happiness.
In answer to my question, Mrs Latham said curtly, the clockmakers had indeed moved elsewhere, to another city, she believed, she had no idea where and no interest in trying to find out. She told me, too, that you called on her to say you were leaving and asked for a keepsake of her son's. She made it clear she wanted nothing whatsoever to do with you or to hear from me again and "if I should ever have the misfortune to find you" to inform you "she burnt the letters".
I knew at once what that must mean and remembering your love for Paul my aching heart finally broke in two. Distraught to hear of the deaths and of how cruelly you were treated, I felt a walk might calm mes, and reasoning Cook would not be preparing the evening meal for another hour or so, l donned coat and hat and set off at a brisk pace. If only I had stopped to think I would never have done so, for it was a decision I will always regret.
I was gone the full hour and returned in a slightly calmer frame of mind, but before I even reached the street where my lodging house stood, a putrid smell of burning pervaded my nostrils and a thick pall of black smoke hung ominously in the air. Curious to know what had happened, I followed others to the source.
To my horror, it was my own lodging house that was alight!
The shrill sound of the hourly bell from the servants' hall combined with the harsh ringing of his alarm clock protesting at the passage of time alerted the under-butler to the fact he was due on duty. The latter reminder was unnecessary. It was a habit from his youth when he and Kate were tasked with rising early to attend their chores, a cheap mass produced clock bearing its manufacturer's stamp, and which he'd discovered in a neighbour's midden. He had repaired it himself although only Kate and Paul ever knew or even knew of its existence. William Barrow had no interest in teaching his eldest son the trade and he and Ben were inevitably at daggers drawn over something or other.
The clock was one of several items he packed the day after Kate's funeral when on an impulse he left the clockmakers forever, but it was the only impractical one. He never quite knew why he took it. Perhaps pride at his work, perhaps the soothing ticking of the shop's many timepieces he recollected from early childhood before his mother died and everything changed, perhaps, and this puzzled him, it was for companionship.
Thomas tucked the letter away in a drawer, to read the rest of its contents later, and as always, checked his appearance in the mirror before leaving. He smirked at his reflection. Phyllis Baxter, whom he had sworn never to forgive for deserting Kate when Kate most needed her, was opening her heart to her friend's brother, believing in him, trusting him. What other secrets might she tell? The March wind screamed through the Downton Abbey trees like a banshee and rain lashed the windows as if to share his fury. Someone would pay for his loneliness and who better than the person he blamed most for Kate's death?
