A Man of his Time

ONE

A tin alarm clock shattering the first glimpse of daylight broke into Ernest Burton’s dreamless sleep. At half-past five on May 2nd 1887 he strode to the mantelshelf in his nightshirt and turned the noise off so as not to wake his brother Edward in the same bed. The ironed striped shirt pulled over his head was followed by his second-best suit. Travelling in working clothes wasn’t for him. Finished at the end of the day with the world of fire and iron in the forge, you threw off the leather apron and washed sweat away with strong carbolic to spruce up for the alehouse. Or you walked into the garden to get a whiff of fresh air and bent your back to do some weeding. But on a journey you must look your best.

He arranged the watch and chain into his waistcoat, synchronized to the minute by the church clock. Time meant little to a blacksmith. You started work at six and if trade was good didn’t notice the hours till it got dark, but every minute away from the forge was for you to enjoy, not caring what the next hour would bring.

A sluice of the head from a bucket filled at the garden pump sharpened him further after last night in the White Hart supping a pint while talking to his mates and saying goodbye to the barmaid Mary Ann. He trawled fingers through short wet hair and, drying off, opened the curtains to let in light. At twenty-one, with his lines as a journeyman blacksmith, he was off to work for his brother George in South Wales, to get experience and earn his bread — as their father had said.

He’d been to Derby and Matlock, but now he was going to an unfamiliar place, and George who was eighteen years older had drilled him on how not to reach the wrong town by mistake. You had to go where the work was, blacksmiths being as common around here as houseflies in summer, but if the pay wasn’t good where he was going he’d come back even if he had to walk, though if all went well, which he expected, it would be better than putting up with the snipe-nosed lot in this area whose horses he shoed, like that preachifying lickspittle Bayley who spent all his spare hours on church business. Once when I fixed his nag he threw sixpence at me for a tip, so I looked him straight in the eye and left it for the striker. I don’t take tips, and only touch my cap to a personable woman.

In Wales I’ll be working for George, and he doesn’t stand for any cap-touching either. People who want their horses shod spout all the penny-pinching notions to save a farthing or two but make no bigger mistake because it isn’t economy in the end. They’d come back a lot sooner if I didn’t tackle the job my way. A badly shod horse is like a house with rotten foundations.

He took sticks from the warm oven to lay over last night’s embers and, when flames stopped chasing each other up the chimney, put the kettle on. Stropping his razor till the water turned hot, he filled a mug for as careful a shave as could be without leaving nicks of blood. You never knew what handsome woman might be met with on your travels.

A slice of pork fat over the piece of bread turned crisp at the heat. Normally it was a crust and a drop of water, before a proper breakfast in the forge at eight, but he was setting out on a journey, and didn’t want to get famished.

He checked his bag of tools by the door: hammer, buffer, rasp, drawing-knife, long pliers — everything in place. George told him he didn’t need to bring any. They were there already, he said, and they were a weight to carry. Well, George could think what he liked. You worked best with your own tools. You knew their balance. You kept them sharpened to your taste. They were always clean. And as for carrying them, what did you have arms for?

Ernest, at six-feet-five the tallest in the family, overlooked his father’s balding head when he came down dressed for work. ‘You must have been through those tools a dozen times already. They won’t run away.’

Ernest tied the string. ‘They wouldn’t get far if they did.’

‘Tell George when you see him he ought to send Sarah a bit more money.’

Ernest ignored him. You couldn’t tell George anything.

‘Did you hear me?’

He went through the other cloth bag to make sure of his best suit, spare shirts, razor, boots for walking out, a couple of ironed handkerchiefs, socks, a piece of towel, and some soap in an old tobacco tin. ‘I did.’

‘Tell him, then,’ but knowing he would get no more words from such a stiffnecked son.

His mother came in, a shawl over her nightgown, long grey hair not yet pinned. ‘You’re off, Ernest?’

‘I might as well be.’

He was her tenth child, and the youngest. ‘I’ve put bread and cheese in your bag, and some eggs.’

‘So I noticed.’

‘You’ll spoil him,’ his father said.

‘No, I won’t. He’ll not go hungry. It’s a long way.’

‘A couple of hundred miles, bar an inch or two, so George said.’ Ernest smiled. ‘I’ll be all right, Mother. I expect I’ll be back in six months.’

He might meet a girl and marry, stay away for good. Or there’d be an accident and he’d get killed. Or he’d catch a disease and die. Things happened to a young man of twenty-one. You could tell what she was thinking. ‘If you meet a nice girl who can write, ask her to send a letter and let me know how you are.’

A cold idea: if he found a girl it wouldn’t matter whether or not she could read and write. That wasn’t what he’d want her for.

‘Do you have enough handkerchiefs and shirts?’

‘All I’m likely to.’

She poured tea for his father, then for herself. ‘We should have sent you to the Board School. I always knew you’d have to go away.’

‘I don’t care about such things.’ He could tell time, and reckon the numbers for cash. When he was ten George saw him playing by the forge, and decided that nobody was too young to learn the trade. He would have started him earlier if his arms had been long enough and strong enough, and if their father had agreed. ‘Don’t worry about me, Mother. I can look after myself. And I’m not going to the other side of the world.’

His father, on a second cup of tea, looked up at Ernest. ‘It’s time you were off. You’ll need every bit of daylight to get there. The earlier the better.’

He took his jacket from the back of the door, put on his cap, folded the light raincoat over his arm, picked up both bags with one hand, and said nothing as he walked out.

Air fresh and pleasing, the birds whistled their hot little hearts out after a wormy breakfast. He lifted his cap to the windows of the White Hart hoping Mary Ann would wave back, but she’d be laying fires in the kitchen so couldn’t.

Long strides took him towards the hooting train and grey-black smoke over Lenton station. He could have saved a penny or two by walking to Beeston, more in the Derby direction, but the tool bag wasn’t light so he would put wheels under him as soon as possible. A young brewer, Harry Hughes, set out on foot last year to a promised job in Sunderland. Men did that, but no Burton was such a pauper he couldn’t afford twenty-one shillings for the workman’s fare. He’d put a bob or two by for a few months, denying himself the odd pint at times, to avoid the indignity of walking. He could have borrowed the money from his father, but wouldn’t owe anything to anybody.

Some come by good fortune easily. A bloke in the pub the other night said that a gang of labourers knocking a house down in the middle of town found what looked like pieces of tin or bottletops. They pelted each other till realizing they were ancient coins, when they ran to get a good price at the silversmith’s.

The five-minute ride into Nottingham took him by the castle, squat and bleak on its high rock, thunderclouds piling above he hoped wouldn’t follow him to Wales. Fifty or so years ago it was set on fire, an old codger told him who’d seen it as a youth, one of thousands cheering the rioters, the sky all flame when not blotted out by smoke. ‘I watched the fire till it started to rain, then walked home. Some of those who stayed were caught, and hanged.’ The Duke of Newcastle got twenty-one thousand pounds to have it built up again, so the poor paid for the bonfire out of their own pockets. All the same, it must have been a treat to see it go up.

Smoke in his throat at Derby station, he asked a porter which platform to stand on for Worcester. ‘You’ve got half an hour yet, sir, time for a cup of tea in the refreshment room.’

No reply to that. Time to go outside to the Midland Hotel as well, but he wasn’t thirsty, boots clattering on the ironwork of the footbridge, light in the head at belonging to nobody for a day, everything he owned on his back or in his hands, and not caring who was left behind — not even Mary Ann, if it came to that — or what he would find on getting where he had never been.

Tea urns steamed in the refreshment room but he stood outside watching engines and wagons shunting through, footplate men shovelling coal to keep the pistons moving, all the doing of that clever chap Stephenson who’d invented the things, though they’d taken some of the blacksmith’s trade.

Two young women went by — he’d bet a guinea they were sisters — the handsome one a year or two older but with the same small nose, pale high forehead, and cherry-rich lips a man would give a fortune to kiss, or stake his life to do even more. The older one wore a tall hat with embroidered flowers along the brim, but the other had a swathe of fair hair roped into a coil and pinned under a sort of yachting cap. Near the edge of the platform, halfway facing him, he fixed them with his eyes so that one or the other would sooner or later turn, and once they became aware of him they might want to make sure of what they had seen, and look again.

A goods train went to the shunting yards, another belched from the engine sheds. When the women moved from getting splashed at sudden rain the younger caught the fire of his grey-blue eyes, took in his tallness, and stare — firm but without being offensive — the trim moustache, and thin features. Premature speech was the mark of someone unsure of himself, though he didn’t want to lose an opportunity by such an attitude. If they got on a train before his at least he’d had the pleasure of being noticed. He could afford a look yet keep his dignity as a blacksmith.

Her smile was the best present he could wish for. If they were going in the Birmingham direction he would find himself by chance in the same carriage. ‘Are you travelling far?’

She must have liked the way he touched his cap, not to know he only ever did so for a woman. ‘We’re waiting to meet someone.’

It should have been obvious they weren’t going anywhere, without hatboxes and portmanteaux. ‘You live in Derby, I suppose?’

The glare from her sister deserved a smack in the mouth, but he touched his cap to her as well. She buttoned her mauve gloves, as if he might try to shake her hand. ‘Maud!’

‘We live at Spondon,’ Maud told him, ignoring her sister.

‘Do you ever go into Nottingham?’

‘Sometimes, to the shops.’

With such a smile the other would have trouble keeping her on the rein. ‘We might cross each other’s path, then.’

Most unlikely, her look said, nor had he thought so, but you never got anywhere unless you tried it on. He recalled delivering a piece of iron grating to a house in Nottingham, a bit of fancy work his father had done. The woman was a parson’s wife, but after a bit of joshing he’d had her on a couch in the summer-house.

The elder girl tilted her head. ‘Here’s the train, Maud. And they’ll be coming first-class.’

Pleased at the encounter, he hoped for better luck in Wales. A crowd along the platform, he pushed through before the train stopped, to find a seat.

Blossom from the trees came down like confetti at a wedding, as if earth and sky thought a meeting might do some good. The Trent flashed steely water now and again, meandered its merry way through the meadows. If the girls at Derby had got on the train he would have helped them into the carriage, a bit of a climb for such dainties, and if they hadn’t wanted to talk to him — though he couldn’t see why not — he’d have kept an eye on Maud for a mile or two. With the glint in her eyes she looked as if she’d spend marvellously, though he didn’t doubt that the one with the sour face would bring the house down as well when she came.

Forgetting them for a moment, he pictured Mary Ann at the White Hart, a well-built girl the same age as himself, worth twenty of them. The blue and white striped high-necked shirt with a lapis lazuli brooch at the throat told him she was no common sort of barmaid, as she assiduously filled the pint pots, or dispensed stronger stuff from a high façade of bottles behind the bar, responding with a flick of her auburn hair if anyone made the kind of remark she didn’t care to hear. He wasn’t daft enough to talk like that to any young woman.

On first seeing her and asking where she came from her soft though decisive voice had a different twang to the neighbourhood accent. She stood back to answer. ‘I was born at St Neots.’

‘Where might that be?’

‘In Huntingdonshire. I was a milliner’s apprentice’ — which showed in the neat dress fitting the slim waist so nicely, noticed as she walked into another room at the call of her mistress.

‘How did you come to find this situation?’ he asked another time.

‘My father saw an advertisement in the newspaper, and thought I’d be better off in service than looking for work as a milliner.’

She could read and write, so belonged to a decent family. ‘Are there many girls at home like you?’

‘I’m the fourteenth child out of fifteen,’ she told him, ‘but seven died when they were babies.’

‘That was a shame. I’m the youngest of ten, and we’re all still alive. Will you come out with me on Sunday afternoon? We can walk to the Trent. It’s pretty in the meadows.’

‘I only have one day off a month.’

He already knew, but the more words from her the better. ‘Come on that day.’

‘I can’t. I go to church. Mrs Lewin sees me there, and fetches me after the service. Then I have other things to do.’

He disliked being denied. ‘Such as what?’

‘I must write to let my parents know how I am. And then I have to see to my clothes.’

‘If that’s the way it is.’ Men at his elbow were calling for ale. ‘Pump me another before you go back to your work.’

He ignored her for a few weeks, though noticed her look in his direction when he asked Ada the other barmaid to fill his tankard. He could have had her for tuppence. Her mouth always open, he called her the Flycatcher, not that he had ever seen a fly go in, and she wasn’t bad-looking, but would have been prettier if she closed her mouth. Mrs Lewin the landlady told her about it once, but it didn’t get through. Even when she smiled her lips barely met but, gormless or not, she’d have done all right under a bush, though to try and get her there would have spoiled his chances with Mary Ann.

Hard to keep his glance from whatever part of the bar she was in, and enjoy the modest way she served, wondering how she could favour anybody more than him as she went quietly about her work. When not at the bar it was because Mrs Lewin had her attending to household matters in the back, or busy on a millinery job. She’d be a useful wife, though he wouldn’t tackle wedlock yet, there being so many willing girls in Nottingham.

He had gone home a few weeks ago with a woman called Leah who worked in a lace factory, her husband doing shifts as a railway shunter, and had the sort of time that showed no need to marry for what he wanted. A lovely robust woman ten years older, he seasoned her till she was greedy for all he could give, asking him to call any time he liked, as long as nobody else was in the house.

The only way of getting Mary Ann into bed, and he wouldn’t think anything of her otherwise, was with a marriage certificate pinned on the wall behind. So maybe he should ask her hand before anybody else did, though if she turned him down there were plenty of others to keep him busy.

He smiled when his name was called, on realizing it was that of the place they were stopping at, a smell of beer and hops wafting in from the breweries. The train went puffing its way by foundries and forges, workshops and coalpits, wholesome beer fumes replaced by a sulphurous stink. Laden drays trundled up to their axles in mud along lanes and tracks, but even if he got off here he would find work as a trained blacksmith, though he couldn’t because George was expecting him in Wales, and George didn’t wait for any man, brother or not.

It was George who had tutored him in the basics of the trade from the day he could swing bellows, shoulder pieces of iron, hump bags of coke to the fire, or hold a hammer with a firm hand, and any mishap on the uptake, or slowness in obedience, he got a blow across the shoulder with a bar of iron. George had a temper when it came to doing your work properly.

Filling the unfamiliar idleness Ernest recalled George’s fury after setting him to polish a pile of horse brasses. At eleven Ernest hadn’t brought out a sufficient shine so George held him against the wall and banged his head until stars prettier than any from the anvil followed him into blackness.

A few moments later Ernest ran into the street, George shouting him back, but Ernest was ashamed at having failed in his work, though knew he hadn’t deserved such a knocking-about either.

Thinking it better to do himself in rather than go back, he walked and ran through the streets and across fields, bitterness and anger holding the pain down, no one wondering why he moved with such speed and purpose. Beyond Old Engine Cottages and into the scrubland of the Cherry Orchard, he slowed down but kept on.

In Robin’s Wood he pushed through the undergrowth and stopped on seeing an older boy on his belly drinking from the brook. Ernest drew some into his stomach as well, splashed his head to cool the pain.

‘What’s up, surry?’ He was a farm youth, smart in his smock and leggings.

‘Nothing.’

‘Somebody been knocking you about, have they? Lost your tongue, eh? Well, next time somebody hits you, hit the devil back.’

The wood was peaceful, but he couldn’t stay, walked on, along a bridlepath to the canal, not much caring where he was going, ran across the lock gates for fear he would fall if he went too slowly. Maybe someone on the puffballs of cloud looked down at him running in his working clothes, exhausted, scruffy, his heart breaking.

Darkness chased him home, everyone gathering for supper. George was washed, and smoking his pipe, silent on their mother asking Ernest how he had got his bruises. He said nothing, so was told to wash himself and sit at the table to eat. It wouldn’t happen again. But it did, often enough, till he was fourteen when, as tall as George, he picked up a hammer and told him to do no more.

Now he could more than hold his own with George, who had turned him into as hard a man as himself, which was something to thank him for. George could still be surly and distant, but believed you had to help one another in the same family, it was human nature, if you didn’t you went under, like many who trod the smooth cobbles to the workhouse with their wives and children, too downhearted to look back.

Passengers getting on and off looked as if they had clinker sandwiches for their dinners every day. Dirty cottages, as dreary as he’d ever seen, squatted between heaps of slag and refuse, and if this was what people called the Black Country, he thought, they could shove it up their backsides; he was glad when the last of Birmingham went, and green fields turned up again.

A middle-aged grey-bearded titchbum of a chap came on board with two workmen in their aprons. Titchbum, who wore a pepper- and-salt suit, waistcoat, cravat, and watch chain with two sovereigns dangling, stabbed the air with opinionated snuff-stained fingers, pontificating thick and fast to the others about some poor bloke called Disraeli, for reasons Ernest couldn’t fathom. Then he went on about the price he could get for a bag of nails at his workshop, the other two men nodding like a couple of donkeys at the Goose Fair.

Titchbum ran out of topics, and turned to Ernest. ‘Where are you going, then?’

Ernest waited till asked again, Titchbum adding ‘sir’ as politeness called for, hardly a gold-plated sir, but Ernest told him: ‘Wales,’ and resumed his looking out of the window.

‘I expect you heard the first time.’ Titchbum’s finger came towards him. ‘Some people don’t know their place,’ he said to his companions. ‘Not like when I was young. And why might you be going to Wales?’

A word not spoken was a word saved, which might later be used with more effect on somebody else, if you were in the mood to let it. One of the few luxuries in life was the right to be silent, and you couldn’t let anybody take it away.

Titchbum’s friends looked at Ernest as if, since they had to truckle to their gaffer, so ought he. ‘I suppose he’s lost his tongue.’ Titchbum had a dry annoying I’m-the-cock-of-the-walk laugh. ‘Like a lot of young men who don’t have one to lose.’

Titchbum’s finger came too close. Words could be stopped from invading the mind, but the finger in his direction was different. Titchbum, as a ‘self-made man’ too much like Ernest’s father to tolerate for long, made him wonder why the fool had taken against him.

‘He must be a country bumpkin.’ Titchbum couldn’t leave well alone, as if he’d got worms, or a canker was eating his stomach. Maybe he’d drunk too much whisky with his breakfast, in which case Ernest would have understood, and ignored him.

‘I’d be quiet, if I was you.’ One of his men had caught Ernest’s stare. ‘He doesn’t work at our place.’

‘Neither will you, for much longer, if you don’t keep your opinion to yourself. Somebody like him doesn’t know when one of his betters is talking to him. I only asked a civil question.’

Ernest got up, fingers spread against the ceiling to steady himself. Titchbum couldn’t have realized his height, and remained sitting as a graven fist came close to his face. ‘Leave me alone, or I’ll throw you off the train.’

He sat to look at a pair of fine cavalry mounts running across a field — a tall trooper standing with a saddle over his arm.

‘It’s Droitwich in a minute,’ Titchbum said. ‘We get off there.’

At least one of them deserved a pasting, though none was worth hanging for. He laid a red-spotted handkerchief across his knees, opened a clasp knife, took cheese, bread, and two hard-boiled eggs from a paper bag, thanking his mother for a hungry man’s banquet, while the train rattled, and puffed its constant whistle. He could talk to other men in the pub for hours and not feel hungry, but on his own he ate as if reluctant to waste time, however much there was to spare in a train. A man who came in at Droitwich tipped his cap and wished him good morning. He received a nod in response; and then silence to Shrub Hill station in Worcester.

TWO

George had drilled in the procedure to get to the Great Western depot on Foregate Street. ‘You should be able to keep everything in your noddle and find the way, but be careful not to get drunk on Lea and Perrins Sauce! If you do, and you’re lost, don’t be too proud to ask. I know what you’re like. You’re a stuck-up young bogger. People enjoy it if you ask directions. Gives ’em a chance to do a good turn. So if you aren’t sure, open your haybox.’

Every landmark stood out as clear as the items of steel his father sent him to get from the wholesale merchants as a boy, and woe betide him if he came back with measurements that didn’t tally. He scoffed at George doubting his ability to keep all instructions in mind. George said that Ernest, being so tall, found it hard to see the ground when walking, yet always avoided treading in horse and dog muck. ‘I can’t think how you do it.’ Ernest did, had trained himself to notice what was everywhere with little or no swivel of the eyes.

After the church his usual striding walk carried him up Shrub Hill, across the canal, and forking left into a road called Lowesmoor. No station was hard to find, coal in the nose and smoke above the sheds, always a flow of traffic towards it, shunting noises to pull you the right way, a jumble of carriages and carts on getting there. The smile wasn’t entirely hidden by his moustache: George didn’t know everything, was a bit of an old man at times, too set at forty in the path of their father, something to pity him for.

His throat was as dry as the day, so he ordered a fourpenny pint in the crowded taproom of the Star Hotel, an elbow at ninety degrees so as not to be put off his drink by a nudge from the dinnertime riff-raff who, he supposed, were common labourers from some building job. Near enough to the wall clock, he took out his watch and reminded himself not to be late for the half-past two to Pontypool. The taste of his ale was swill compared to the Nottingham stuff, but he pushed his tankard forward for refilling, which would last him until Wales, where George had promised a very fine bitter — though we’ll see how right he is.

He settled himself into a window seat looking left, as know-all George had advised. When a woman who was sixty if she was a day pushed into the crowded carriage carrying a large basket with a lid, he stood to put it on the rack for her. ‘Are you going far?’

The train was crossing the Severn. ‘Only to Ledbury.’

The poor drab looked worn out, a bonnet lopsided on her grey hair. Must have been in Worcester selling her wares, for the basket was almost empty. ‘How far’s that?’

‘About forty minutes.’ A toothless smile told him she must live on gristle and baby food. ‘I’ve done it twice a week for the last twenty years, my son.’

‘Take my seat, then.’ Nobody else looked like getting up, as if she was beneath them because of whisky on her breath. ‘I’ve got legs to stand on,’ bending his head only to see more fields.

The train stopped at what looked like the side of a mountain, heavy cloud almost hiding big houses on the lower slopes. Trees and bushes shrouded a summit half-hidden by rainy mist, scenery reminding him of Derbyshire. The air was close, though he only ever sweated in the forge, where it ran off you like drink.

Most of the people got out, and a tunnel later the sky was blue. He seemed to have been travelling days instead of hours, Lenton far behind, glad to be away from working under the grudging eye of a father never satisfied with anything he did, though what Master Blacksmith would be?

Nothing to think about, he fancied another drink sooner than expected. Travelling put salt in your windpipe, and then he was diverted by a youngish woman in all-mourning black getting on at Hereford. He couldn’t show breeding by giving up his seat, because the carriage was empty, but the leather portmanteau he lifted onto the rack for her strained his arms as if filled with lead. Observing it, she told him it contained her devotional books.

Bibles and hymnals, it serves me right, but I couldn’t let her break such pretty little hands — rewarded in any case by the lift and fall of her bosom as she settled herself.

She didn’t thank him, not strictly needed, a good sign because if he talked to her later she might recall her lapse of courtesy and make it easier for him than otherwise. He took in everything without seeming to stare.

She wore a mantle and muffs, pale lips sighing as she took off her bonnet and laid it on her knees. The lifted veil showed a face so porcelain-fine he knew he wouldn’t deny himself a word or two later. Auburn hair, roping down her back to contrast with deep mourning, recalled Mary Ann’s at home, though he saw good reason to put her out of mind for a while.

Boots buttoned to the hem of her skirt shone black like his own, but a maid hadn’t buffed them up or she wouldn’t have been on the same class of train. She absorbed the landscape as if to draw out colour that might lighten her blackest of garbs. One hand lapped over the other didn’t hide her wedding ring, yet he thought it time to divert her from whatever tragedy soaked her through and through, and who better than himself to give such a service?

With the flicker of a smile he said: ‘I started out from Nottingham this morning’ — a remark which could bring no response, as he well knew, but you had to begin somewhere, though she didn’t even turn her head from a family of sheep on the hillside. Words he hadn’t used that day welled up for spending, could now let her know that someone in the world had worse troubles than her own. ‘A couple of miles before we got to Derby a chap threw himself out of the train.’

She was as much disturbed at being spoken to as by his shocking revelation. ‘Oh dear!’

‘It nearly made me late for the change to Worcester.’ Time to keep quiet, even if she said no more, and look at birds on telegraph wires, blocked by a cutting. He wondered what the label on her portmanteau said, but the wheels of her curiosity turned sooner: ‘Why did he commit such a terrible act?’

George had given an imitation of the Welsh lilt one night after a few pints in the White Hart. ‘Now you have me. I can’t think why. He was sitting next to me one minute, then the handle rattled and out he went. He was too quick for anybody to save.’

Her mouth showed small white teeth. ‘What a terrible sin,’ she repeated.

He wanted to hear more from her, so went on: ‘He wore a good suit, so it wasn’t poverty or debt that drove him to it, though you can’t always tell. Perhaps he’d got himself up specially this morning knowing what he was going to do. Some people only do a thing like that when they’re smartly dressed, as if they like to look formal as they float into hell. Or maybe he thought to do himself in only at that moment.’

‘But why?’ Not much colour came into her cheek, but it was a start. ‘My goodness, why?’

He wondered whether he hadn’t overdone it, though her question called for an answer. ‘Perhaps something in the newspaper upset him. Just before he jumped he’d been reading one, and when he went out it was still in his hand, as if he might want to finish what was in it when he got to where he thought he was going. You can never tell much about a chap like that.’

Her lips parted again, as if a smile was somewhere in her after all, though it was far too early. ‘Was the poor man dead?’

‘He could have been. He wasn’t moving when he was on the ground among the nettles.’ He liked the nettles part, amazed at what his lips came out with when he got going. ‘But just as the train was starting two constables lifted him on a cart and took him away to the infirmary. Unless the morgue was the place they had in mind.’

It was wrong to tell lies, but a plain tale to console was something else, and he waited for more words from her, though if they didn’t come it would be no loss to him. George always said there was a time to speak and a time to keep quiet, and you should always know when. If you let others speak it saved you bothering, and you might get to know something. Only talk when you knew what you wanted to say before opening your mouth. Then close it when you’d finished. On the other hand words could be like tadpoles. You might have them by the tail but they often slipped out.

Land rose mountainously to either side, the train spindling a river whose name he didn’t know, fields and rivers much the same everywhere. The lovely woman was so shy he forgot, his intention not to speak till she did. In any case he wondered about the wedding ring. ‘Are you travelling far, miss?’

She stared numbly. ‘I’m a married woman.’ A young and handsome man was only trying to be kind. ‘Not very far. I shall be alighting at Newbridge.’

George had mentioned it as two stops before his, so she would need his help at Pontypool on changing to the Swansea line. ‘My name’s Ernest Burton,’ he said, now that the waters of her speech had been broken. ‘But call me plain Burton. Everybody does. I’m going a bit beyond Newbridge, where my brother has a smithy. He tells me it’s a dirty little hole, though good for business.’

‘You could say the same about most settlements in the coalfields.’ She flushed, as if not sure her judgement was reasonable.

‘You’re in black, I see.’ Hardly possible not to, but what could you say? Her ability to speak seemed an accomplishment, so he had to come out with something. ‘You have my condolences,’ hoping that whatever happened had been long enough ago.

‘Thank you.’ Tears shone like pearls on her pale cheeks, and the ironed handkerchief from his pocket was there before she could pull hers from the muff, which she accepted as one was entitled to do in the land of mourning, so that if nothing else happened he’d kiss the memory of her cheeks on soft cotton as long as the imprint lasted.

‘My husband died three weeks ago.’ She looked towards the luggage rack, as if his image might appear by Ernest’s shoulder or as if, he thought, his body might be in the portmanteau.

Killed by a horse? Sunk with delirium tremens? Bludgeoned to death by a footpad? Got consumption and coughed himself to death? Suffered a growth? Had a seizure? He tried to guess. ‘That’s a terrible thing to have happened.’

The young man was as if sent by Our Lord to comfort her. ‘He was an engineer at a coalmine in Staffordshire.’

‘Such places are dangerous. I’ve never been down one.’

Another dab at her left eye. ‘I wish my husband hadn’t. It took all day to find his body under the coal, but the undertaker did a beautiful job.’

And so he should. Every man must know his trade. One of them would already be working on the chap who had jumped from the train near Derby — if it had happened — which he was about to mention but was glad he didn’t, because she said: ‘I’m going to live with my sister. My other possessions will go on by carrier.’

Church books in the portmanteau were too precious to be trusted to the road. Her grief was tempered by an air of tenderness in a compartment growing smaller by the minute, a loosening in her, as if she didn’t know where she was, or what she was doing or, what was better, wasn’t able to know — like the effect of a tot of whisky.

He felt as if alone with a woman in a meadow on a warm spring day, knowing there was only one thing to do before dusk came on. The unexpected sense of levity and opportunity was more than welcome, though he wondered whether it was only in him, at the same time sure a good measure came from her, pious as a dormouse or not.

He held her cold hands to give comfort, as a man should, his as ever hot, large compared to hers, a sheltering stove she couldn’t refuse. ‘What about your children?’

‘There aren’t any, which I suppose has turned out for the best, though I’m sorry the Good Lord didn’t bless me with some.’

Her husband’s spunk had been no good. ‘Was he a great age?’

‘He was twenty years older, a good and upright man.’

He would be, at that age. ‘I’m sure he was.’ Breath and body heat thickened the air between them. If this goes on we’ll need to be prised apart with a chisel. Time to get going, though not sure how she would take it. Moving to her side was a better place to console, seeing as how she needed him, but the goodness of his heart brought on more weeping, which wasn’t the ticket at all.

A passenger looked in for a seat but, unwilling to intrude on mutual and private grief, stepped down. A chink in the blind showed the train steaming along a valley, its whistle permitting them to do what they would, his only hope that no one else would try to get into the carriage.

He secured the blinds, and put his lips to her warm forehead. Hers were moist with a kiss no man could resist, or care what was behind it. A hand around her neck, the other at her well-covered bosom, he took in the rich clean odour of hair, yet held back from going like a bull at a gate, the urge to be fast a sure sign that you must go slowly.

She turned away, but a kiss at the nape of the neck always got them on the melt, Bible books in the portmanteau no defence for a woman’s flesh whose gander was up. A sudden leaning forward told him she knew it was too late to hold back, though any sign and he would have stepped up and asked her pardon. Men were rightly prosecuted for bothering women in trains, and the treadmill wasn’t for him.

A sudden jerk and she crushed herself to him, saying softly: ‘Oh, do take me, then.’

Not to accept her would be unmanly. He lifted her, a free hand drawing his raincoat from the rack to lay on the seat, using all his strength to let her down as if onto a bed of feathers. Clothed arms rustled around his neck, till the seat vibrated under her, carmine features contrasting with the black of mourning as she held out her arms.

No more waiting, he bundled up the complication of skirts, and she drew him through smells of lavender and sweat to the greed of that vital place. All control was given up as if only now able to allow it after her husband’s death. He held back to match her eagerness but she was determined not to let him (which couldn’t be held against her) and spent more quickly even than Leah.

An hour ago they hadn’t known each other, but she must have been half in death for it, the stars fixed that he would be the one to be drawn by her so completely. Glad that she had reason to be pleased with taking him as much as he had taken her, he was also amazed at a coupling of so few words, when with others he’d used many in his persuasions, Nottingham girls brazenly expecting them so as to save, he supposed, what they thought of as their modesty.

Her smile could only be for the ironic twist to his lips while she went back to her status of bereaved woman. The handkerchief that had dried her tears was used to wipe between her legs, as he stood away to fix his buttons. She held out her hand when he moved to put the soiled handkerchief into his bag of tools, demanding it for her reticule, then arranged her dress and sat down. He fetched out a clean one, blessing his mother who had ironed it so well. He looked into her eyes to let her know she deserved more than had been given. Flicking up the blind he was surprised that the world was still the same, yet thinking that if this was travelling by train he wouldn’t mind doing a bit more.

She shaded her eyes as if daylight was too much for them. ‘We’re close to Pontypool.’

Needing to smoke, he took out a packet of Robins, lit one, and dropped the spent match on the floor. He moved to touch her, at the flush knew she wanted him to, but there was only time for a press of hands. ‘I’ll see you walking the street at Newbridge, if I can get out a bit from my work.’

‘My sister’s husband is a Methodist minister, which is why I came third-class. The Good Lord doesn’t like waste.’

‘They’ll keep you locked up, I shouldn’t wonder.’

She arranged her mantle. ‘I’m a widow, so I can walk out on my own.’

‘I shall look for you.’ I could marry her, if I wanted the bother of courting, take an armful of blooms to meet her in-laws, and make them think I’m somebody I’m not. ‘What’s your name?’

She tied the strings of her bonnet. ‘I’m Mrs Dyslin.’

That wasn’t good enough. ‘And who’s she when she’s at table?’

‘Minnie.’

A pretty name. He had given his already, but didn’t want her to forget. ‘I’m Ernest Burton, blacksmith. My brother has a forge near Tredegar Junction.’

‘That’s close to my sister’s.’

‘So I might see you.’

She sat as if never wanting to leave. ‘I feel better than I did an hour ago.’

‘I’m glad. And I’m sorry for your loss, but you’ve got to go on living, whatever happens, that’s all I know.’ He was surprised at offering so many words of consolation. Well, he could talk when he wanted to.

‘You’re a young man.’

‘I’m twenty-one, and that’s not young. Not in my line it isn’t.’ She must be a few years older, but it wasn’t right to ask a woman’s age. Not that it mattered, as long as you gave her what she wanted.

‘I’m going to be the housekeeper at my sister’s, because she’s ailing much of the time. That’s all I can do with my life from now on, though there is a small annuity in my name. My sister has been married ten years, and has four children. Two are young, so I can teach them their letters, make myself useful in whatever way I can. Frank, he’s the minister, will be grateful if I arrange everything to do with the household, I know, which will help me forget my troubles.’

Maybe she’d have a child after what they had done, people thinking that the last act of a dutiful husband had been to lie with her, the timing more or less right. His smile brought one back, a rose opening under the warmth of summer, happiness that would need concealing once she got to where she was going.

The train squeaked alongside the platform at Pontypool Road station, and he reached for her bag, noting how much livelier and more attractive she was after what they had done, back in the world of the much desired where he hoped she would stay, because a woman can look beautiful at any age as long as loving spunk is pumped into her which goes straight to the eyes and makes them glitter with the come-on of a peahen everybody likes to see. There’s only one way to please a woman, and if another woman guesses what it is, I’ll please her as well. Minnie’s brother-in-law expects her to look sad in her black, so I hope he doesn’t wonder what she’s been up to.

He set their bags on the platform, held a hand for her to step down. George would twit him half to death if he could see him acting the cavalier.

‘The platform’s over there,’ she said on seeing him hesitate. ‘The notice says so.’

‘Ah, so it does.’ He kept a footstep behind, something against his habit, since a woman’s place was to walk after the man. When the train set off she was blawting again. Her husband had died three weeks ago, and she was crying because things would seem strange at her sister’s, till she got used to it. Women often cried for less, so he spared another handkerchief to mop the salty waters, feeling in some way responsible for her.

Two long pools flashed by, furnaces and collieries scattered over the valley. A train puffed and billied up a hillside among scarves of smoke. ‘At least you’ve got a sister to go to, and you’ll be all right once you get there. A family is all a person needs.’

She stopped crying. ‘It’s not that.’

He leaned forward to touch her warm cheek. ‘If her husband gets on to you, and makes your life miserable, I’ll have a word with him.’ He showed his fist, hard and worn with work. ‘I’ll look after you.’

She was shocked. Didn’t all women want protection from bullies? ‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘It’s that I would like to see you again sometime.’

‘And so you shall.’ He was gratified, though not sure it would be possible because George would have him slaving all the hours God sent. ‘Write your address so that I shall know where to find you.’

She took a silver pencil and small pad of paper from her reticule.

‘And if you want to find me, send a note to the post office at Pontllanfraith,’ where George called for his letters. ‘That’ll find me.’

He slipped the note into his lapel pocket, looked at woods to either side of the track. ‘It’ll be the second stop after this,’ she said. ‘My brother-in-law told me in his letter that he would meet me with his pony and trap.’

The departure kiss was as if they were married, or at any rate as if he ought to marry her, though he scoffed at the notion. Her embrace was so passionate because of the loss of her husband, and maybe even of him. It could not be prolonged, though the look of tenderness pleased him. ‘I’ll put your bag on the platform.’

His tall figure leaned from the carriage window watching the brother-in-law greet her with uplifted hat, a slender middle-aged man whose smile was nowhere close to his face, a Stephen Meagrim in a Bible-black garb almost as deep as her own.

Glad to be by himself, he sat opposite a man and woman who fixed him as if knowing he couldn’t be of the area. The man was probably a farmer, and the bedraggled woman one you might see on a winter’s day trudging towards the workhouse. But they smiled, and wished him good afternoon.

Another cutting of green and shale, and the train stopped. The first thought as he stepped down was to slake the windpipe, but he must let George know he had arrived. He looked north, east, south and west and along the lane wondering where the forge could be, feeling more alone than he liked now that Minnie had gone. Seeing a ragged man covered in coal dust, as if he had just crawled out of the earth, he asked the way to the forge.

Teeth showed white when he smiled, Ernest barely understanding the singsong response, but waving hands gave the direction, and he walked towards houses on the main road.

The sky was cloudless, air sweet, a sun still high enough to warm the ripening hedges, a couple of larks arguing as if their wings were lips. It was good to be alive and on his own in a foreign country. Coal smoke tangled faintly at a change of wind as he put down his bags to light a cigarette. He would have plenty of work from now on, knowing George.

THREE

The forge was a small building of neat red brick and slate roof on its own at the end of a lane. A field behind sloped up to a line of trees that marked the track of a railway, lifting beyond to a skyline of villa-type houses.

George, leather-aproned and fire tongs in hand, stood at the door, looked more surprised than welcoming at his brother’s appearance. Willie, the bearded shortarsed striker holding a shoeing hammer, called in a squeaky voice: ‘I could tell it was you a mile off. Master Burton asked me to keep an eye open. You walk just like him, as if you owned the world!’

‘Shut up, you daft old bogger.’ No blacksmith suffered fools gladly.

‘You’ve come, then,’ George said.

Ernest didn’t suffer fools at all, so made no answer. None was needed. Everybody could see that here he was.

‘I’ll shut the place up in a bit,’ George said, ‘then we’ll wet our whistles at the Mason’s Arms. I expect you’re ready for one. I know I am.’

‘What about my tool bag?’

‘Keep it here. It’ll be safe.’

‘Let’s hope so.’

‘You don’t trust anybody, do you?’

No answer was needed to that, either. Not even his brother, if it came to that.

‘Anyway,’ George swung the big doors to, after Ernest had taken the bags inside, ‘there’s plenty of work for both of us. I’ll set you on straightaway in the morning. There’s a chain to make, and a few scythes to sharpen, for a start.’

The bar room was full, men at their pipes and pots before going home, such a gabble Ernest couldn’t pick out a word, a pint sliding down like an eggtimer with the bottom ripped out, which stayed his hunger. ‘You can sleep on the floor tonight,’ George bawled, ‘and tomorrow we’ll fix you up with Mrs Jones. She’ll lodge you for twelve-and-six a week. And her husband’s a miner, so don’t think you can get away with anything. They’re God-fearing people who go to chapel every Sunday.’

‘Can’t we share your room, and I’ll pay half? What do I need one for myself for?’

‘You can for me.’

The floor was better than a bed too short to stretch on. He suffered now and again with twinges of cramp, as did many blacksmiths because of too much sweating, and even large intakes of salt didn’t help. ‘We’ll go, after this,’ George said, on his second jar. ‘I’ve got to save the pence so’s I can send a florin or two back to Sarah. Six young ‘uns are a lot to feed. Did you see ’em before you left?’

‘They were in bed when I called. Except Sarah. She was at the washtub.’ At forty she looked an old woman. No man should leave his wife after they were married. ‘She wondered when you’d be coming home.’

‘I’ll send another money order, then she can stop wondering.’

‘It’s a hard life for her.’

George’s Adam’s apple worked down the last drop of ale. ‘It is for me, as well.’

Nothing more to be said, Ernest followed him to the door. Clouds rushed from somewhere and brought a drift of rain, but the air was fresh and sweet, a few stars showing as they tramped along the rough clinker-covered road, potholed and worn from the traffic of drays and wagons. You had to take care where you put your feet. Ernest filled one of the holes with a long piss. Pictures closed in from the day’s trip and his encounter with Minnie, her forlorn goodlooking features less clear now than those he had left her with, the memory of her warm arms such that cheeky John Thomas chafed at his trousers.

Lights showed faintly from farms and cottages on the hillsides, trains whistling from all directions. Dimly-lamped drovers’ carts trundled towards the red and coppery sky.

‘It’s always busy round here.’ George didn’t find it easy to keep up with Ernest who, descending to a crossroads, noted the post office. A left turn beyond a narrow river took them by another public house into a street of raw houses, and faint odours of iron and sulphur.

George’s room was small but neat, his best suit covered in brown paper on the back of the door, shaving materials laid out on the fireplace shelf before an oval mirror with a brown stain in the middle. Seeing the single bed, Ernest didn’t have to wonder where he would sleep, though unsure that any man could do so with the clink of bottles, shrieks, and breaks into song from next door. ‘Is somebody getting married? Or are they just back from a funeral?’

‘It’s like that often.’ George put a match to the fire laid before setting out for work that morning, and took off his jacket and belt. ‘But you can’t tell ’em to be quiet. They’re Bible-backed Taffies, and like a drink now and again. It’s live and let live around here.’ He took a loaf and two plates from a cupboard on the wall. ‘The bread’s a bit hard, but it’ll have to do. The bacon’s good, though, and there’s a bottle of ale each. A Hebrew pedlar comes from Newport, so I got a couple of penny bloaters. He’s an obliging chap. Anything else you want and he’ll bring it up on his cart.’

They sat on the bed and, with the remains of what their mother had packed, ate fish, meat, and cheese by the light of a candle in front of the mirror. An argument from next door, as if the walls were made of cardboard, caused Ernest to look up. ‘People have got to sleep after their work.’

‘It’s nothing to do with us,’ George told him. ‘Work is what I want to talk to you about. If you’re lucky you’ll earn a guinea a week, maybe more at times. We get farmers’ trade, and the odd thing or two from the pit or railway. If you aren’t lucky you might draw less than a quid, but you’ll be better off than at home. Our work’s got a good reputation, and people know where to come.’

Ernest was willing to work if he could put the odd shilling by for when he got back to Nottingham. ‘Everything’s arranged, then?’

‘As much as I can make it. I’m not God. Anyway, we’d better look to our sleep. We need to be up by five.’

Ernest took the suit from his bag and smoothed out the creases, hanging it behind George’s on the door. The inability to hear his brother’s words may have been no bad thing at times, but was not to be tolerated now.

George noted the direction of his gaze. ‘You might have the key to the door at home, but you don’t have it here, so leave them alone. They’ll be done in an hour. It don’t bother me. I can sleep through anything.’

A man’s head slamming against the party wall was followed by a cascade of cheering. ‘Doesn’t the landlady put in a word?’

‘She daren’t, I think.’

He took off his neckcloth and, before George could tell him not to be such a fool, set off across the landing. His shins caught a large iron bucket which, going by the stink, was for use should anyone feel a call in the night. Punching the door open, he bent slightly to get through.

Such a pack of scruffy dwarfs he had never seen. He with the banged head sat on a box, pressing his temples as if to hold in whatever bit of brain lay between. Another man with uptilted bottle was getting rid of the beer quite nicely, while a third who was lighting his pipe by the fireplace asked what Ernest interpreted to be: ‘What might you want?’

‘I’m from next door.’ He spoke in as reasonable a voice as could be mustered. ‘We’ve got to be up before five, and want to get some sleep.’ He stood a moment, to be sure his message was understood. ‘So I’d be obliged if you’d make less noise.’

Thinking he could safely turn, a bottle hit the lintel by his head with the force of a shotgun. Thanking God they were half-drunk, he faced them again. ‘Any more of that, and I’ll lay you all out.’ He was ready, but no one came for him. ‘All I ask is that you keep a bit quieter.’

‘You’d better sleep in your clothes,’ George said when he closed the door. ‘It gets cold around here, even in May. There’s a bit of blood on your cheek.’

‘It’ll dry.’

‘I’m glad you didn’t have it all your own way.’ George sometimes disliked the sort of person his brother had turned into, who at times seemed reckless and needed watching. He was young, and just didn’t think, though whether he would ever be capable of that he wouldn’t like to prophesy. ‘It’s all right threatening violence but you’ve got to think well beforehand, and not do it out of temper.’

Ernest lay on the floor, a blanket over him, and his folded bag for a pillow. ‘I did think about it, but I think quick.’

George didn’t want to feel responsible for what scrapes Ernest got into in Wales, but knew that brothers must never stop caring for each other.

They traipsed through a deep and ghostly mist between hedgerows. ‘I forgot to tell you,’ George said. ‘I’ve got a chap coming from the village today who’s going to take a photograph of me at the forge. I fancy getting something back to Sarah showing me earning my bread. Otherwise she might think I’m living the life of Riley.’

‘How much will it cost?’

‘Only six-and-a-tanner, because he’s glad to do it for that price. He likes taking photos of blacksmiths. Don’t ask why. He wanted to know if there was a tree outside, and when I told him there wasn’t he looked a bit put out, but then said he’d do it, just the same. He only hopes it won’t rain, in case his camera gets wet.’

A thin man of middle height, a cigarette under his clipped moustache, ash flaking into the greying Vandyke beard, Ashton gaffered them into place like a sergeant-major. Ernest was surprised at the latitude allowed to such a shortarse, till the picture began to compose around George as the star. Then Ashton had to wait till a placid carthorse was brought to be shod, and George took the hoof firmly between his legs. Sleeves rolled up, he was told to look towards the camera, as was everyone in the scene, head tilted uncomfortably to show full face.

Thick hair was combed forward to a line along his forehead, moustache sloping to either side from under the nose. He gripped the hammer a third of the way down the haft, poised to nail on the shoe held with a pair of long pliers by the striker, a small bearded dogsbody George employed by the day. He steadied the horse’s head.

Leaning against the wall was a man with a curving pipe in his mouth, not in working clothes but wearing a collar and tie because the horse belonged to him. Two little pinafored girls on their way to school were collared by Ashton to stand by his side and complete the scene. Ernest and George were the only men not wearing caps.

Ernest didn’t want to be part of it, yet chose not to upset his brother by looking on from the open door, unmistakably himself, a tall thin young man with a well-shaped head whose thatch of short hair made a line halfway down his brow much like his brother’s. He wore a highnecked collarless shirt, a working waist-coat, but no jacket, a self-aware youth who wanted after all to be somewhere in view. He looked towards the camera, speculating on the mechanism when the black cloth went over Ashton’s head.

The photograph came a week later with, printed on the back in an ornate scroll: ‘Ashton of Pontllanfraith, Monmouthshire.’ George was happy with the scene. ‘Do you want a copy?’

‘Not likely.’ Ernest didn’t care for anything to do with the picture, since he wasn’t the gaffer in it, but he would keep it in his memory as something he hadn’t had to pay for.

Rasp in hand, Ernest faced the dray horse’s quarter, the front left hoof between his lower thighs. Willie, a tool bag convenient to his feet, waited to put on the new shoe. Ernest told the horse to keep still, though there was little need with such a quiet animal.

All through youth he had talked more to horses than he did or wanted to to people, not only because horses couldn’t answer back — the worse thing, he reckoned, that either human or animal could do — but because they liked to hear your voice even if you only nattered about the weather. It also calmed those horses that baulked at being pushed between the shafts when the work was finished.

He talked in silence but as if he’d be heard and understood. I’ll do the thing so well you won’t tell whether you’re walking at all, especially as the tracks around here are fit for neither man nor beast.

To get the old shoe off was a job in itself, because you never tear the nails out by force, as I’ve known some blokes do. Raise the clenches carefully and keep them straight, so that you don’t make the holes wider, or injure the hoof, or leave in stubs that make the horse limp, or go lame after a while. A horse who’s had that done to it feels pain just like a person, so it’s harder for other smiths to shoe and the horse might injure them in its distress. You get the job done as quickly as you can or you won’t make any money, but you still have to do everything well.

He rasped down the cusp at the edges, careful not to take off too much, for if you did the hoof would become too thin. Sometimes the horn of the sole was so hard and thick it needed softening with heat, though not in this case, which saved a bit of trouble. A flat iron drawn over the sole and held close for a few moments did no harm, and made it easy for the horse after a little paring here and there.

‘Let’s have the shoe, Willie.’ Some daft ha’porths who were as mean as hell with their pennies arranged for a smith to make so many shoes a year, but they got taken in, because the smith might put heavier shoes on the horse hoping they’d last longer and save him making so many, which wasn’t good for the horse.

An almost perfect fit — nothing could be perfect, however you tried — but he went to work with the file. The cold fitting needed a good eye to get all surfaces flush. He’d made shoes for anything from a pony to a lame Clydesdale, and every hoof was different, as every shoe had to be.

George and his father had taught him that you could always tell if a horse was happy after you had shod it, and if some never were it was the fault of their owners for not treating them right, who think all you need do for a horse is feed it and pat it on the backside now and again, and then it’ll do whatever you want and not need any other looking after, but a horse is a living thing and knows more than you think. As for beasts born with pebbles in their belly, you talk them into keeping still, avoiding wounds in the fleshy parts when putting the shoe on so as not to cause presses or binds. Horn’s thicker at the toenails than elsewhere, so you begin there and work back till you’ve done the seven new nails, guiding the shoe into position by sound and feel, and calculating the angle of each cleat to give a firm hold.

That’s that. Now you won’t have gravel or dirt getting underneath and chafing you to hell and back. The farmer whose horse it was leaned by the wall. ‘You’ve done a good job, I see.’

Ernest ignored the remark. What does he expect, a bad one? He smoked a cigarette, and after the horse had been led away George said: ‘I like to keep that old chap happy. He’s a good stick and a fair customer. I shall want you back inside now though.’

Work never stopped. They were lucky. He placed a length of bar iron in the fire till it took the heat. Skill and instinct were like man and wife, George often said, no one knowing where one ended and the other began. He watched the metal in the fire, and at the right moment swung it to get rid of cinders and loose flakes. With the striker beating time on the anvil to keep him in tune, he manipulated the metal with his hard hammer into the form of a shoe, shaping the heels to a proper slope.

Turning it over, he pressed out the fullering, and began to stamp the nail holes, slightly marking them at first, then with heavier blows driving them well in and finally right through, all at the same heat and no time to lose. The rhythm controlled time itself and, as his father had always said, when you had grasped the notion of timing you were more than halfway to becoming a master of the trade.

George stood at his shoulder. ‘There’ll be a few more to do after this.’ To which there was no reply but to get on with it.

On the way home, calling at the post and money order office for tobacco, Ernest was handed a small envelope which could only come from Minnie. George had picked up the ability to read but Ernest didn’t want him nosing into his business, so had no option but to knock on next door at their lodgings after supper and ask Owen the bottle-thrower for his services, setting a jar of good Welsh bitter on the table. All three men stopped what they were doing. ‘One of you knows your letters, I hear,’ Ernest said.

The man with the battered head stared at the embers between the bars while setting a kettle on, and the pipe-smoker at the table was about to tackle a large round loaf with a carving knife, saying: ‘Read his letter, Owen, then we can drink his beer.’

‘I lost my temper last time,’ Ernest said. ‘I’d had a long day.’ He never apologized, but came close to it now, hoping he would never have to do so again, though knowing that Minnie was worth it.

The room wasn’t clean, but everyone could live as they wanted. Favour for favour, he would do one for them if he could. The man turned from the kettle. ‘I don’t want to read it if it’s bad news, man.’

‘There’s no such thing, as long as your wife and children are safe. And I’ve got neither. So come on, I hear you read the Bible often enough.’

‘Keeps it under the bed so I won’t light my pipe with the pages. They flare up a treat!’

Owen unfolded the note and held it high, as if proud of being able to recite in a singsong half-mocking tone: ‘I shall meet you on my walk in the wooded place near Newbridge, across from the tramway. I stroll there on most days, and pray you will do so as well.’

‘What name?’

‘No name. Only MD,’ Owen said. ‘But I’m sure you know who it is.’

Gratified at Minnie’s sense, Ernest thanked him, and held out a hand for the letter, but without meeting Ernest’s eyes, Owen smiled, and slowly tore the paper into pieces. Ernest had intended putting it into the forge in the morning, so the fool had saved him the trouble.

A man in collar and tie huffed and puffed uphill on his penny-farthing, alighting at the top to look at a sheet of paper to find where in the world he was. Ernest passed, and walked as far as the tramway, coal drays rattling in the opposite direction. Work never stopped, but had to for him, wanting to keep his tryst with Minnie.

He followed a hedge as far as the wood rather than going through the village where his conspicuous figure might be remarked on, not wanting to get her talked about. Sheep stared from a field, ran towards the middle chased by crying lambs. Cornflowers thrived on the windless bank, a flash of rosebay by fully-leafed trees bordering the scrag of woodland. The day was hot and dry, but he didn’t suppose the clouds would stay high for long because the wind was changing.

Last year’s twigs cracked under his boots, and he used all-round vision so as not to miss her, though in an area of such sparse trees she’d easily be seen. A rabbit panicked towards a patch of ferns, and when another followed he picked up a stone, but the thing was too fast. To get a rabbit on the hop was difficult without a shotgun, though you couldn’t use one in a wood for fear of hitting a person. If you did you’d be for Dartmoor or the rope. All the same, a rabbit would make a fine stew when caught and skinned.

She walked through a patch of sunlight on green, in the deepest of mourning still. Coal trucks had to pass before he could cross, so many glimpses of her through the gaps she looked a different woman every time. She took a hand from her muff, which he held for a moment, her fingers more those of a working woman. ‘The day’s warm, but the wind’s got a chill in it,’ he said.

‘I hurried. I was so hoping to see you.’

The same for him, though he didn’t say. ‘I’d been wondering how you were getting on.’ She stood a few feet away, but he went forward to kiss a face no longer pale. She had been eating well, at any rate. ‘They’re looking after you, I see.’

‘I’m very happy there.’

Memories of the train journey reminded him that he was only here for one thing. He gripped her hand, drew her towards denser vegetation. ‘We’ll walk over there for a bit.’

Her eyes half-closed, tears about to run. ‘Ernest, I must tell you. I’m with child.’

‘Are you, then?’ His exclamation indicated that the matter need have little to do with him. ‘You mean it’s mine?’

Her look of entreaty was mixed with some pleasure. ‘We fornicated on the train.’

Such a plain statement brought a flush of wanting that day over again. ‘Does the parson know?’

‘I told my sister, and she informed him.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He told me it was God’s final blessing on me and my husband. He was very happy. We sat around the table and read the Bible so that he could give thanks to the Lord.’

A few moments went by. ‘I suppose it could be your husband’s. It’s as well the parson thinks so.’

Pale eyes fixed him while she crushed an elderberry leaf. ‘It can only be from you.’

He hadn’t thought to send a child into the world just yet, though it was no shock to know that he could do so. It wasn’t a feat for any man, though the story was a good one to tell George, except that it would stay a secret forever. Her eyes and lips formed such a smile that he yearned to get her into bed, and have the delight of ploughing babies into her for the rest of his days. All cares swept away, she would have it in her to give both a lifetime of spending. ‘When it comes we’ll have to talk about what to call him.’

‘What if it’s a girl?’

‘It will be a boy. It’s got to be. Now come with me.’

‘I can’t delay. They’re expecting me for tea.’

‘They’ll keep it on the hob for you.’ He stepped back and took hold of her. ‘I love you. You know that, don’t you?’

She put her arms around his neck with a sweeter passion than he could recall from any woman. ‘We ought to marry, Ernest.’

‘A woman waits for a man to propose. Only I can’t. I’m promised.’ He might or might not be, though going by the glances he had got from Mary Ann he could claim to be. Lying was against his pride, but he wondered whether he would get the warmth from Mary Ann as now came from Minnie Dyslin.

‘If you’re promised, there’s nothing I can say.’

‘It can’t be that bad,’ he said at her tears. ‘What would your parson think of you marrying a blacksmith? I’m a journeyman still, and go everywhere to find work. I never know where I’ll be from one year’s end to the next.’ The space in her would have to be filled by the child.

She pulled him close. ‘See me as often as you can while you’re here. That’s all I ask.’

‘I’ll do that.’ It wouldn’t put him out. ‘You’re the finest woman I’ve known. There’s never been anyone I wanted more.’

She followed his long back into the bracken, noting where he trod. He turned: ‘Come on, Minnie. And don’t lose your muff.’

He sometimes wondered when he would go back to Nottingham, though homesickness was no part of him. Sooner or later he would go because that was what you did after a stint in a strange place. You did what mattered, not what you thought. He would be sorry to leave a girl in Tredegar Town, as well as Minnie, whose child he’d see into the world and get a look at, feeling such curiosity about the matter it was necessary to fix on his work with more than ordinary attention: hammer and tongs weren’t playmates, nor the anvil a silent partner. A blow at the glowing iron with the wrong weight behind might cause a spark and blind you. They mostly went wide, and looked pretty enough in their angles, but the odd little murderous fly, all metal and fire, could stop your sight forever before you even saw it, the one-eyed blacksmith not such a rare bird in the trade.

It didn’t do to think and work at the same time, no matter what pleasant features flashed to mind, best to save it for when the beer was going down your throat, or on your way to Pontllanfraith in the evening.

‘You’ve got something on your mind,’ George said while they were eating their bread and polony in the forge.

Ernest wouldn’t sit outside for his dinner, not wanting strangers to gawp while he ate. Anyway, it was raining. ‘That’s nothing to do with you.’

‘Your head’s full of it. Not that you’ll say much.’

Ernest grunted in the way of their father. ‘Not more than usual I wouldn’t.’ When the boy came back with their beer jug from the Mason’s Arms he fixed him with a gaze. ‘You’ve had a swallow or two out of this.’

The boy was shoeless, stunted and half-starved, barely worth the half-crown a week George paid him for fetching and carrying. He reared at the accusation, an arm over his face to hold off blows, not so rare when he irritated George, who only took him on to have a body for knocking around. ‘I didn’t,’ he cried. ‘I would never do such a thing, Mr Burton.’

He’d be daft if he didn’t. Ernest had always taken a good sup as a child when sent to get ale. He passed the boy a large part of his sandwich, saw it find a good home in his mouth, then drank his share of the pot.

Standing at the door, warm and gentle rain giving a smell he had grown to like, he wondered how much higher Minnie’s belly would be on next seeing her, nobody able to tell what was in his mind, and whoever stared trying to find out would come up against a wall no nosiness could break.

Let George tap all he liked, he’d get no answers, though you had to watch it. The less somebody knew about your business the better for them but most of all for you, the only trouble being that you had no control over what people said about you between themselves.

The weather was too bleak to go in the wood so they stayed outside, such December cold as if blankets of snow were on their way. He wore his suit and light raincoat, since it was Saturday afternoon and he had a young woman to see at Tredegar in the evening.

Close to her confinement, Minnie said that their last meeting had been spoken about in the village, and if one person knew, they all did. Luckily it was a day when she hadn’t cared to be touched in the way he wanted, being too far gone with the baby, but her brother-in-law asked who the man was. ‘So I told him about you.’

Such tongue-wagging was an attack on his inviolability which he could well have done without. Even Leah the shunter’s wife hadn’t blabbed, and maybe he’d got her in the pod as well, though she was a more knowing piece than Minnie, who seemed less familiar with the ways of the world. ‘Couldn’t you have made up another story?’

‘I’m not capable of telling a falsehood,’ she said firmly. ‘All lies are wicked. The Lord never forgives a liar.’

She’d certainly been got at. ‘You told him everything?’

His annoyance was hard to understand. ‘There was no other way.’

She might be a few years older, but age had made her no wiser. ‘I’m surprised he didn’t chuck you on the street.’

‘He’s a Christian man.’

‘One of them, is he?’ — an ironic turn of the lips.

‘He would never do such a thing.’

‘Did he torment you?’

‘He asked, so I had to tell him. He said God would forgive my transgressions, as he hoped God would forgive yours.’

‘That’s cold.’

‘We prayed together. Then he said he would forget what I had told him. And he will. He’s a man of his word.’

He stiffened to his full height. ‘What else did he say?’

‘That I wasn’t to think of marrying you.’

‘Not the right sort for you, I suppose.’

‘He would never say that.’

‘No, but he would think it.’ As far as he was concerned he was too good to be related to a preacher’s family.

‘He said I must stay the rest of my life with him and my sister, who would see that the child had a Christian upbringing, and a good education.’

His laugh was dry, at not too outlandish a notion that the child would get on in a world of hypocrites. ‘He’s got some sense. But I’ll never forget you, Minnie.’

‘Nor I you.’

He kissed her lips in haste, aware that every tree had eyes and ears, not caring to get her into more trouble. ‘What shall we call it?’

She smiled. ‘David, if it’s a boy.’

He’d wanted Ernest, but the choice had to be hers, or her brother-in-law’s. ‘It could well be a boy.’

‘But a girl I’ll call Abigail, though my sister would prefer Martha.’

‘Abigail’s prettier.’

The trees darkened and a mist was forming, bleak country compared to that on the outskirts of Nottingham. ‘I’m happy talking to you,’ she said, ‘even if only for a few minutes.’

‘It’s the same for me, my darling.’ He wondered what she was thinking, and whether there was any good in it for him, but didn’t care because he couldn’t be bothered to find out whether she was saying what she really thought. None of it mattered. You only knew what was in someone’s mind by the words that came from their mouths, and had to be satisfied with that, believing it if you cared to. ‘When the child’s grown up will you tell him how he came to be born?’

‘That will be for me to decide, if the Lord spares me to live that long. Nobody knows the future. When I found out I was going to have a baby I was in despair, but now I’m glad.’

Her stiffening tone made him indifferent to what she would do. All that mattered with women was that you didn’t catch the pox, and that they didn’t get it from you. If they became pregnant it was their lookout, though if that happened to Mary Ann he would marry her and no mistake. You couldn’t do any such thing to a girl who lived across the street, and she was too closely looked after by Mrs Lewin — who seemed to know all the tricks — and he was glad she was, because when he got home, all dressed up and gold jingling in his pockets, he would go into the White Hart and ask her to marry him, before he got into any more scrapes.

‘I shall never forget you,’ she said, which he liked to hear.

‘And I’ll remember you for the rest of my life. When I look over the wall of the parson’s house in a couple of months, perhaps you’ll give me a glance at the child before I go back to Nottingham.’

‘It’s your right,’ she said. ‘I don’t think my brother-in-law will disagree.’

‘I must be going.’ Sleet blew against his cap. ‘You’d better put your umbrella up. I don’t want you getting your death of cold.’

The picture card was of Nottingham Castle. ‘Must be from a woman,’ George said, before Ernest could snatch it away. ‘I can almost smell the perfume.’

He wondered who had sent it. His parents had no cause to write. They’d have to get someone to do it for them. Leah the shunter’s wife had no call on him, either. She might be able to write but didn’t know where he was. Hard to think who it could be, people had no right to pester him, till the thought shot to mind that it could only be from Mary Ann.

Outside the post office George read his letter from Sarah. ‘She wants me to come home.’

‘Shall you go?’

‘I’ve been thinking about packing it in down here.’

‘It’ll be soon enough for me.’ He wants to see Sarah, Ernest assumed, and give her another child, providing she was still up to it. He put the postcard into his pocket, went on with his walk and forgot about it sufficiently to stop George’s curiosity by saying: ‘I’ve got my life. You’ve got yours. They’re nothing to do with each other.’

He bought a quart of ale, and before going in for supper went to see Owen-the-Bible, whom he had grown to respect if not like. Two months ago Owen had written a ha’penny postcard to Mary Ann showing a Welsh woman in a tall hat, the briefest of missives but in the finest Board School copperplate which Ernest hoped she would think was his.

Owen sat at the table, a plate of bread and cheese and half an onion before him. ‘Now here’s the tall stranger again. You must be wanting something of me.’

Ernest set the bottle by his knife. ‘Drink some of this first.’

Talk cost breath, due to work in the mine which did nobody any good. ‘Is it poison?’

‘No. It would cost more than ale. But you need a brew like this for the dry stuff you’re eating.’

Upending the spout, Owen downed a third, and Ernest showed the postcard. ‘Read me this,’ ready to use a fist should he damage it. ‘All right, take another drop, then read it.’

Owen drank to make his breathing easier. He looked at the picture and turned it over. ‘Do you know that when I go to sleep I don’t close my eyes.’

‘How do you know, if you’re asleep?’

He finished the beer before replying. ‘The others tell me. I sleep as deep as any man, but my eyes stay wide open. All night. What do you think of that, then?’

‘Very rum,’ Ernest conceded. ‘Now read that card.’

Owen’s knife shivered into the table, and stayed upright. ‘It’s excellent Welsh bitter you’ve brought me.’

‘Make as it’s your birthday.’

‘I don’t know when that is. My mother never told me, though I did ask her often enough. But I’m feeling happy from your drink, so this is what the card says. The handwriting is small, but very clear: “Thank you for your postcard. I’m glad you are getting on all right. I am, as well. People ask about you, and now I can tell them. We wonder when you are coming back. A lot of people would like to see you. Mary Ann.” She’s even put the commas right.’

Ernest told himself how pleasing he found Owen’s singsong voice, and knew that in many ways he would regret leaving an area whose people had been so honest and straight.

Minnie passed a cloth package. ‘It’s food for your journey. My sister and I put it together.’

Taking the bundle, he leaned over the wall to see the baby; felt as if leaving home again. ‘He looks healthy,’ noting that the closed eyes gave a stern expression, the features more his than Minnie’s. ‘Pretty, too. What did you christen him?’

‘David Ernest. Does that make you satisfied?’

‘It’ll have to.’ Minute fingers uncurled from the swaddling, reached for him, eyes open to look. ‘What a blue-eyed beauty. He smiled at me.’

‘He has a human soul,’ she said, ‘and a fine name from the Bible. My brother-in-law says he will sing the psalms of King David.’

The pang of wanting to stay with him forever came and went. ‘He’s a marvel.’

‘I’m happy. My life changed after meeting you.’

He was glad for her, though couldn’t say the same for himself. To see a child of his own was miraculous enough, but happiness was for those who didn’t know themselves, and who would be one of them?

A tear came onto her cheek, and he passed a white handkerchief freshly laundered by Mrs Jones. When she had wiped it away, and other tears threatened, he told her to keep it, all he had for her to remember him by. She tucked it into the baby’s clothes. ‘I have everything I want. I’m settled and content. My sister and brother-in-law adore him.’

David’s fingers curled strongly around one of his. ‘I’m sorry to go. And I shall always love you.’

‘We mustn’t linger. People will comment. So go now.’

‘I shan’t forget you both. When I come back I’ll see you and the baby again.’

‘You won’t come back.’ Then she was gone, and he went with a heaviness he didn’t know how to understand, but was more than glad to feel.

‘More pints go into your trap,’ George said, after they had changed trains in Worcester, ‘than words come out. Something in Wales must have struck you dumber than usual. I can’t get a word out of you.’

‘Nor will you.’ George was wrong if he thought anything was worrying him. On the other hand he was right, because the vision of Minnie and David stayed in his mind. Even thinking of Mary Ann wouldn’t drive it away, though the more he thought of her the more vivid her face became, and the more he knew he would have to marry her, settle down and have a family, no woman more suitable, unless somebody had made off with her during his time in Wales.

‘You ought to have been a deaf mute instead of a blacksmith.’ George arranged his tranklements for the third time on the rack. ‘I can just see you with a coffin on your back.’

Ernest took out his clasp knife. ‘You can kiss my backside. Just shut up.’ Opening the cloth bag Minnie had given him, he found a compact meat and potatoe pie, a lump of cheese, an onion, and a loaf of bread.

‘Who made that up for you?’ George asked in wonder.

He cut the pie neatly, and passed the other half across. ‘Put it in your mouth, and don’t ask any more questions.’

FOUR

Young Burton was back — a year away, but time had altered him. Watch and chain looped across his waistcoat with a sovereign attached; a nick of white handkerchief in the lapel pocket like the wingtip of a bird attempting to hide there. Crossing the road so as not to tread in dog or horse droppings, he was aware of looking his best — a flick at the red rose snapped from a bush in the garden. The May evening was warm, but cap and waistcoat were part of his renown as a neat and formal dresser. He would have smiled to know that never again in his life would he appear in more impressive aspect — while in no way believing it.

Saturday night in the taproom was the busiest night of the week, an ant heap turned upside-down in the clamour for pots and jars, so he couldn’t get close enough to Mary Ann and put the question. Back straight and head high, he overlooked everyone in the bar, and saw what he wanted to see. The whiff of home ale dominating the odour of gaslights made it seem as if supping a different brew all last year had been a dream.

Fred the barman drew his tankard, Mary Ann busy at the far end pulling the smooth white-handled pumps with her lovely young arms. Nakedness through the shirt came with a clarity that made his peg stir, and her smile in his direction gave no need to wonder who it was for.

You couldn’t ask a woman to marry you among so much riffraff, so he enjoyed slaking a thirst for home ale built up during the time in Wales, knowing it better to put the question at dinnertime, in the middle of the day, when less people would be around to nudge your elbow and drown private business with their clatter.

A question that had to wait wouldn’t spoil any the less for that, and while he was nodding to those who knew him, or thought they did, or passing a few words with those he considered had a right to acknowledgement, he stayed by the bar to observe Mary Ann at a distance, satisfied by glances which he thought buttered by a smile. He disliked the notion of being back at his father’s forge on Monday and lucky to see sixteen shillings a week counted out of the leather bag for his labour, but it would have to do till something better was found.

In the morning Mary Ann would be chaperoned to church by Mrs Lewin, and if he went he could glimpse her and maybe flash a wink during the sermon or between hymns, but he’d prefer to fry in hell than enter such a place, though when he and Mary Ann were married it would be a forceput, because there was no other way of getting such a woman into bed for life.

She wouldn’t go to church after they were married because there’d be too much caring for him and bringing up a family, such a responsibility on his part as well that he called dilatory Eli for another pint, his last of the evening since he was watching the coins he would surely need for the time when every bun cost tuppence, and a bit more than that with a lot of little buns running about on two legs.

Tomorrow he would work in the garden to please his father, but in any case he liked attending to the rows of beans and peas and potatoes while the church bells rang, knowing he would never jump to their musical summons and join in the prayers and hear the parson spout about what could have nothing to do with him. His mother went once a month but what could you expect from a woman, though there were plenty of men there as well, hypocrites to the bone.

Outside it was almost dark, the windows a protective sheen through which nothing could be seen. If he was to be up at five he would need sleep, though garden work or not he left his bed at that hour every day, always had and always would, not like those who said they couldn’t do without a lie-in on Sunday, not realizing that you would get sleep enough in the cosy box of the grave when the time came, and that if you craved it while still alive you were already more than halfway there.

He had asked her twice, and at twenty-one she ought to know her own mind. ‘I’m happy here,’ she said. ‘It’s a good situation, and I don’t know what Mrs Lewin would do without me.’

‘It’s me I want you to marry, not Mrs Lewin.’

‘I know, and if I marry anybody it will be you.’

Such uncertainty wasn’t good enough. He only wanted a plain yes. ‘I’ve chosen you.’

‘I can tell you have. But you can’t choose me like you would a horse, or a piece of iron you work with.’

‘I know what I’m doing.’

‘You haven’t said you love me yet.’

‘I wouldn’t be talking to you like this if I didn’t.’

‘But you’ve got to say it.’

‘I’m saying it now. I’ve never loved anybody but you, so you can give me a yes as soon as you like.’

Mrs Lewin came into the bar; Ernest was attracted by the high forehead, dark hair pulled back, the interesting mould of her lips, and middling bust under a striped shirt fastened at the neck with a brooch of amber. He wouldn’t have minded sliding into her, widow or not, though she must be nearing forty. Her luscious brown eyes looked at them. ‘Mary Ann, I’d like you to go to the kitchen and make some bread — that is, if Mr Burton will allow you.’

The ‘mister’ and her smile softened his annoyance, and he wondered whether he wouldn’t do better with her, except she wouldn’t have him in a million years, and he didn’t fancy running a pub.

‘I still can’t make up my mind,’ Mary Ann told him.

‘Let me know when you can, then,’ he said off-handedly, and noted the lift of Emma Lewin’s eyebrows before walking away, telling himself she can think what she likes, as well.

‘He’s a bit of a devil,’ she said to Mary Ann as he closed the door. ‘But I suppose every woman likes a devil.’

A state of uncertainty wasn’t for him. He’d never lived like that, and didn’t see why he should. When the hammer hit the anvil it always bounced up for another blow. He wanted her, and would have her, so the only solution was to go on asking, though he let a fortnight go by in case she thought him in too much of a hurry.

She haunted his waking dreams, which could be dangerous in his sort of work. Auburn hair flowed over naked shoulders, her eyes enchanting him, a lovely young woman in season, with outstretched arms and saying come to me, there’s no other man I want. Her face would shock its way before his eyes, taunting with a prospect to last a lifetime.

He left his pie and hot tea at the forge, hungry only for what had to be done. George and his father wouldn’t mind. They would eat the lot. There were fewer people in the pub at midday, though had it been packed he wouldn’t have cared. The usual greetings were followed by a call for ale, not so much to swamp his thirst as to see the working of her arms, which would be better employed in a house they’d one day live in. He was at a disadvantage in his smithing clothes, but couldn’t help that. She must take him as she found him. Her finger traced the small print of a newspaper. ‘I’ve come to ask you again,’ he said, not waiting for her to look up.

She glanced from the advertisement sketch. ‘I still don’t know.’

Her tone sent a spark of hope, the uncertain smile telling him that a favourable decision might be close, so he ought not to be sharp with her, better to stand quietly and give her space to think, the opportunity to make up her mind, and talk, even if only to ask something. He stayed away from the bar, never one to put his elbows on the wood.

She showed him the illustration. ‘I’ve been looking at these gloves. They’d go halfway up my arm, and look very fine.’

He admired their style, having an eye for clothes that went smartly on himself, but also those which adorned a woman. ‘Why don’t you get them?’

‘I’d like to, but it’s three weeks till my day off, and I only saw them in the paper today. They’re on sale at a shop in town, for one-and-eleven-pence three-farthings.’

‘That’s not a sight.’

‘I know, so they might be sold out in three weeks.’

‘I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Shall you go and get them for me, after you’ve finished your work this evening?’

He pushed his half-finished ale aside, having sensed what was coming. ‘I’ll do it now.’

Her delight convinced him he had said the right thing. She took a florin from her pinafore as if, he thought — and he was to think so for the rest of his life — she’d had it there all the time and knew what he would offer. ‘You don’t have to go this minute.’

‘That’s true.’

She tore out the pattern so that he could show it and make no mistake, and wrote down the size she wanted. ‘It’s at that big millinery shop on Exchange Walk. You can’t miss it.’

He put her coin in a pocket that held no money of his. ‘I’ll be back when I can. If you’re not at the bar I’ll ask Mrs Lewin for you.’

He could walk the couple of miles into town and back, but the less time taken the higher he might go in her esteem, so he caught the first train, and if the shopkeeper looked down his nose at working clothes he could jump up his rear end, because he loved Mary Ann, and by God he would have her, and go through fire and flood to do this little errand. Even if she said no to him again he wouldn’t stop thinking about her, and never stop asking either. He felt a letch at seeing any pretty woman, but it was more than that with Mary Ann, and he only knew that after their marriage she would adorn him as much as he would dignify her.

It was a quick ten minutes from the station to Exchange Walk, between St Peter’s church and Old Market Square. He had to wait while a woman was being served, but it didn’t seem too long on thinking about married life with Mary Ann. The sallow assistant climbed three steps of a wooden ladder and took the white cotton gloves from behind glass. She laid them into paper, and he paid at the till with two one-shilling pieces from his own money, and put the farthing change into his pocket.

On Lister Gate he knelt to retie a bootlace, and standing up saw Leah in his way, too close for his liking. ‘Don’t you know me?’ A basket overarm, her hair was untidy, and she wore rouge. ‘Why haven’t you been to see me?’ she smiled. ‘It’s over a year, and I’ve been hoping all the time that you would.’

He knew her, such a handsome woman it was easy to see why he’d had a fling, but you never answered anyone who accosted you on the street. Yet he wondered why he had meddled with someone who did it on her husband and had the cheek to greet him with people going by.

‘What do you want?’ he had to say.

‘What do I want?’ she cried. ‘How can you ask me what I want?’

He ought to have been pleasant, even promised to see her again, but with Mary Ann’s face before him such a response was less than reasonable. ‘Is your husband still shunting then? I haven’t seen him hurrying to work lately.’

‘What a rotten thing to say,’ she hissed. ‘After what we’ve done together, this is how you treat me.’

‘Get away from me.’

‘Don’t you want to see me anymore?’

He pushed her aside. ‘God will pay you out.’ If only she hadn’t shouted. He wanted to turn back and knock her down, which was what she deserved. A slut with no pride. Tackling him on the street was the last thing she should have done. It was true enough that he’d had his way with her, but so had she with him. It was over a year ago, all fair and square, and now she pestered him, people beginning to stare, though what could you expect from a woman like that?

He wondered what the world was coming to, as the train jangled out of the station, though with Mary Ann back in mind and the vital package in his large hands he became calmer. The Castle glared less severely from its rock now that his errand was done. Then it was gone, leaving Mary Ann’s face so present in the glass that Lenton station was being called.

She looked as fresh and tempting as when he had left an hour ago. If his father ranted at his staying out so long from work he would tell the old so-and-so what to do with himself. He laid the packet on the bar, with the florin given to pay for it in the centre.

‘Are they in there?’

‘They were when I last saw the young woman pack them up. Nobody’s tampered with them since.’

‘What’s that florin for?’

‘Put it back in your pinafore.’

She looked at the Queen’s image in her palm, then held up the gloves so clean and neat and, above all, fashionable. ‘Thank you, Ernest.’

‘You’ll look a treat in them when you’re dressed up.’

‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘You haven’t got to say anything. I did it because my heart wanted to.’ After a moment’s silence: ‘I’m putting the same old question.’

A blush covered her face as the folded gloves went back into their paper, aware of the words he wanted to hear. ‘What sort of question?’

‘Shall you marry me?’ To ask before requesting a pint of ale showed how strong his mind was on the matter. The world spun before her, as if she would faint, though she reached across with a smile and touched his hand.

‘I will.’

His forename on the certificate was spelled as ‘Earnest’, in the script of an elderly absent-minded man who had stood to write it. Ernest signified his agreement to the event by the mark of a cross, as did his father Thomas, both down as ‘blacksmiths’, on 25 January 1889, while Mary Ann’s father, Charles Tokins, was described as ‘engineer’.

The bride’s signature was fair and steady, as was Emma Lewin’s as witness, who on that occasion consented to go into the Holy Trinity Church of the Parish of Lenton and see her friend and servant through the formality of marriage. She gave twenty pounds towards a trousseau, and allowed the saloon of her public house to be used for the reception, generosity Mary Ann remembered for the rest of her life.

The saloon was filled with the relations of both families, and with friends of Ernest’s father who, thinking of trade, felt justified in inviting some of his customers after paying so much towards the celebrations.

Ernest stood beside his bride, a single whisky to last the evening, not caring to drink more, because tonight would be the most important of his life, not the day that had seen the knot tied in church, but what was to come in their cottage across the road, where a room had been prepared for them before setting off for Matlock in the morning.

Fully turned-up gas mantles gave a whitened aspect to the room — or as much as tobacco allowed — every face and figure clear, which Ernest liked because the only god he halfway respected was that of fire and illumination. He allowed Mary Ann to hold his hand surreptitiously, while observing the mob gathered at their splicing. She said she had been in love with him from the moment he first walked into the pub, that she had never loved any other man, nor ever would.

Her father Charles Tokins had come from St Neots on the train. Tall and soundly built, and looking young for his age, with a well-shaped black beard, he had started work in an iron foundry as a boy. The family had left County Mayo in the 1840s to escape hunger and destitution caused, Mary Ann said — and Ernest saw no reason to disbelieve her — by the wickedness of the government in London.

Ernest went through the crowd, to hear what Tokins was saying to his father. ‘I’d had enough of getting myself dirty working in the foundry, so I rented a workshop to repair penny-farthings and tricycles. I’d had a tricycle a few years, and knew others who had them. There’s plenty of flat land around where we live, but the roads aren’t in good repair, and a lot of people don’t know how to look after their machines. When one breaks down they can’t get it mended properly, so not only do I do it, but I’ve started buying and selling as well. I get new ones at a fair discount from the manufacturers at Coventry, and do enough trade to keep us quite nicely. We prosper, in other words.’ He drank his whisky, as if to get breath. ‘You can’t beat the bicycle for getting from place to place. I read in the newspaper the other day that somebody rode on a Humber from London to York in twenty-four hours.’

‘They make Humbers near here.’ Thomas at last got a word in. ‘At Beeston, a couple of miles away.’

Tokins looked at the ash on his cigar, and gave it permission to fall. ‘He even beat Dick Turpin on Black Bess. The machine didn’t die when it got there, either.’

‘I wonder if he could have done the same distance the day after,’ Ernest said. ‘His legs wouldn’t have been much good by then.’

‘I’m making money out of the trade.’ Tokins was annoyed at the interruption. ‘That’s all I know. If you want to come and live in St Neots, Ernest, I’ll set you on. Your father tells me you’re a fine blacksmith. You’d soon pick up the trade, and be an asset to us. I’d guarantee a better wage than if you stay here. Times are changing.’

There must have been talk between Tokins and his father, but Ernest would jump for no man. ‘They always were.’

Tokins saw him as too opinionated ever to get anywhere. ‘If you want to make the move, let me know. Mary Ann wouldn’t be unhappy, living close to us.’

Tokins wanted his daughter back where he could keep an eye on her, and would be interfering in their lives in no time, so it was a cold idea as far as Ernest was concerned. In any case what man would want to work for his wife’s father? It was bad enough sweating for your own. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said, not caring to make things difficult for Mary Ann.

He went back to his wife, as if to be sure nobody had run her away after it had taken him so long to win her. Her dignity and calm beauty were dreamlike when she came to him from laughing with her bridesmaids. The step she had taken would never lead back to the happier days of her youth, Mrs Lewin thought as she too looked at her.