The Girl from the Tanner's Yard Read online

  DIANE ALLEN

  The Girl from the

  Tanner’s Yard

  Contents

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  Dedicated to the memory of Ellis Irene Allen.

  You left this world too soon but you have left behind you six sons that you would have been proud of.

  1

  Flappit Springs, Denholme, West Yorkshire, 1847

  ‘Don’t cry, Lucy, take no notice of them.’ Ten-year-old Archie Robinson scowled at the three girls who had just called the girl he had known since birth horrible names, teasing her with hurtful taunts and jeering. Archie tried hard to console Lucy by putting his arm around her shoulders to hug and comfort her.

  ‘Leave me be, Archie. You aren’t helping. You are even worse than me – look at you!’ Nine-year-old Lucy Bancroft pulled a face at her companion and glared at him. ‘I’m fed up of being called names like “Stinky” and hearing, “Hold your nose, Smelly is here” every time I try and join in with some of them.’ She looked back at the three girls who always ganged up together, leaving her out, when she attended Sunday school in Denholme. Despite her tears, Lucy turned and retaliated by sticking her tongue out at the giggling trio, then marched off sobbing, with the penniless but faithful Archie by her side.

  ‘They are not worth your tears. You are loads prettier than any of those three. They are only jealous. And besides, you don’t smell. It’s only because you live at the flay-pits that they yell that at you. Betty Robson can’t say anything to anyone – her father’s butcher’s shop, when he’s slaughtering in his yard, smells just as bad as the tannery.’ Archie put his hands in his pockets and looked across at Lucy, who had now stopped crying and had decided to sulk.

  ‘I hate the three of them. They all look alike anyway, with their fancy bows in their hair and their sickly smiles. I’d rather be on my own than pretend to be something I’m not. Anyway, one day I’ll show them. I’ll be far more important than all of them put together,’ Lucy mumbled as they crossed the wooden bridge over the stream to the place where she lived. She stopped in the middle of the bridge and looked around her, then glanced at her friend. ‘I’m sorry, Archie, I didn’t mean to upset you. You can’t help being badly dressed; after all, you’ve no father to look after you.’ Lucy regretted her hard words to the lad who was always by her side. She shouldn’t have let the three empty-headed, spiteful girls get to her.

  ‘It’s alright. We all say things we shouldn’t. Besides, you’re right: I do look like a scarecrow. I haven’t even any boots to put on my feet at the moment.’ Archie looked down at his bare feet and remembered the better times when his father was alive, before an accident at the nearby quarry where he worked had taken his life. ‘My mother’s trying to save enough money to buy me a pair. She’s just glad it’s summer now and that I’ll manage for the next few months.’

  Archie smiled and looked at Lucy. He was right when he said the other girls were jealous of her. Despite their families having more money, Lucy Bancroft was the bonniest lass in the Worth valley, and it made no difference to him that she came from the nearby flay-pits, where her father worked as the tanner. They were alike, he and Lucy: both had been handed a bad deal in life, but he had a feeling Lucy would not let that stand in her way – unlike him.

  ‘I’m sorry, you must miss him, and your life must be hard. I shouldn’t feel so sorry for myself.’ Lucy leaned over the wooden bridge and looked down into the stream; the woods around it were full of bluebells and white wild garlic, the smell of which filled the air. ‘I’ll ask my father if he can make you some boots, or at least something to cover your feet for the summer. We’ve plenty of leather about the place – it’s about the only thing we do have. Mam says we’ve no money, and she’s worrying because she’s got another baby on the way.’ Lucy sighed and threw a twig into the stream from an overhanging tree and watched it float downstream.

  ‘No, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine until autumn comes, and then I’ll be old enough to go and work for somebody, and can bring some money home for my mother. I can just about read and write, so that’s a lot more than some can do at my age.’ Archie leaned over and looked into the river, then turned and smiled at Lucy. ‘I’d better get back home – my mam will be waiting for me. We always go and see my grandmother on a Sunday, and she’s an old stickler and we will both get a good tongue-lashing if we are late for our dinner. It’s the only decent meal we get all week, so I’m fair looking forward to it. I can almost smell that boiled brisket, and happen she’ll have made Yorkshire pudding, if we are lucky.’

  Archie slurped as he nearly dribbled into the stream, thinking about his one good meal of the week. Lucy waved as she watched him take off back through the spring undergrowth to his home, high up on the windswept moor. He was a good friend to her, and she felt pity for the near-penniless soul that he was.

  ‘Well, has the church saved your soul again for another week?’ Bill Bancroft looked at his daughter as she kicked off her boots and sat down next to him in the small kitchen of Providence Row. ‘I don’t know why your mother makes you go. It’ll not help you in any way – God’s never done owt for me.’

  ‘Be quiet, Bill Bancroft, and thank Him for what you do have – which is a lot, and you know it.’ Dorothy folded her hands and looked at her daughter. ‘Have you been crying? Your eyes look red.’

  ‘I fell out with Betty Robson and her friends – they were calling me names,’ Lucy whispered.

  ‘So much for religion,’ Bill muttered.

  ‘You take no notice of them, Lucy. You give them back as much as they give you. Everybody’s the same on this earth; we all have the same habits and needs.’ Dorothy turned and went to the drawer where the cutlery was kept and started to lay the kitchen table for dinner.

  ‘Father, I walked back from Sunday school with Archie Robinson today. He’d no shoes on his feet, as they can’t afford any. Could you make him some, do you think? We’ve plenty of scraps of leather about the place.’ Lucy looked up at her father, hoping he’d say yes.

  ‘Nay, lass, I can’t make shoes; he needs a cobbler, and brass, and you should know that.’ Bill shook his head.

  ‘Then will you take him on in the yard this back-end? He’ll be old enough to work for you then – he’ll be eleven in September.’ Lucy was going to help her friend out, one way or another, of that she was determined.

  ‘We’ll see. I can’t promise, but we will see.’ Bill looked at Dorothy. The Robinson family had fallen on hard times, but they weren’t the only ones who were struggling in the bleak surroundings of the Worth valley. Bill and his family were just scraping by, but at least there was always food on the table, and his family were dressed and shod so far.

  ‘Go and get changed out of your Sunday best, Lucy, and then come down for your dinner,’ Dorothy said to her caring daughter as she checked the pan of boiling potatoes on the hearth.

  Lucy got up from sitting next to her father and gave him a quick hug, before climbing the stairs to her room. She loved her father; even though he drank he was always there for her, whereas her mother was always nagging or chastising her. Once there, she sat on her bed and looked out of her bedroom window at the flay-pits and
tannery that blighted all their lives with their smell and filth.

  She hated where she lived, and she hated being the lass from the flay-pits; when she said where she was from, people wrinkled their noses and pulled a face at her. One day she would be free of this place. She would meet a wealthy man and marry him, and then she would breathe in clear air and would have pretty dresses and ribbons in her hair, just like Betty Robson. Yes, of that she was sure: a dashing, good-looking man, with a clean home to call her own and, hopefully, money in the bank – after all, that was not a lot to ask. She didn’t know how, but that was her dream, and nobody was going to take it away from her, not even Betty Robson and her shallow friends. However, right now she was the smelly lass from the flay-pits, whom nobody gave the time of day to, and her dreams were simply that: dreams with no substance.

  2

  Flappit Springs, 1857

  Adam Brooksbank looked around him and questioned why he had returned to the godforsaken wilderness that used to be his home. The rain was coming down in stair-rods and the wind was blowing so fiercely that the sign of The Fleece, the hostelry that he and the hauliers had just passed on their way to his family farm, creaked and groaned, trying its best to break free from its hinges.

  He’d forgotten how dark and foreboding the moors between Keighley and Halifax were, and how repressive on a day like this. Yet they were wild, with a strange attraction that pulled you into them and enveloped your very soul, if you let them. He stood and looked back down into the Worth valley and watched as candles and lamps were lit in the windows of houses, in readiness for the coming evening. The smoke from the industrial towns of Keighley and Thornton wasn’t reaching the moorland today; instead the wind was driving it down the valleys, making visibility into the surrounding mill towns impossible, despite the howling gale. Adam shook his head. Poor buggers, he thought; he’d rather be sodden and frozen up here, where the wind blew free, than slogging his life out in a cotton or steel mill – a life of drudgery and toil. And what for? A back-street house that belonged to the mill owner, and a privy shared by all the street. No wonder there was so much crime and discontent in both towns.

  He swore again as a large drip slid down his neck, and the wind blew more fiercely as he put his head down and walked up the long-derelict path to his ancestral home of Black Moss Farm. The hauliers, with his earthly possessions piled high upon their horse and cart, followed him, cursing at such a place on such a wild night. The farm looked even more desolate and wild than he remembered it, as he glanced up and saw the familiar outline of the low-roofed house set under the moorland tor, and the dark silhouette of the sycamore tree that he had played in and around as a child.

  Memories of his childhood came back as he stood in the once spotlessly whitewashed porch and put the key into the heavy, locked oak door. He had to twist it a time or two before the door yielded, but on entering the old farmhouse, Adam’s heart beat fast, as his mother’s and father’s faces came rushing back into his memory – as if it was only yesterday that he had said goodbye to them both. He glanced around for an oil lamp to throw light upon the old home, lighting the one that hung from a low beam and watching the flames flicker and make shapes on the old walls as the hauliers came back and forth with his goods. They were eager to get home; the moors were no place to be on a wild night like tonight. It took them all of thirty minutes to unload the few possessions Adam had bothered to bring with him.

  ‘We’re off now, mate, before the night gets any worse. Everything is unloaded now – we just need paying.’ The haulier and his lad stood in the bare room, their hair wet through and the hessian sack around their shoulders giving them little protection from the fierce elements.

  Adam quickly trimmed the wick on his oil lamp as it started to splutter and die, before placing it on the mantel and replying to the haulier. ‘My grateful thanks, gentlemen. I’m sorry the weather’s not been kind to you. How much do I owe you?’ He reached into his pocket and took out his money.

  ‘A guinea, mate. That furniture took some hauling up that bloody hill, and my horses will appreciate the downhill journey – it nearly broke their backs coming up.’ The haulier held out his hand in readiness for payment.

  ‘Aye, well, here’s the guinea in payment, and a shilling each for your help. I couldn’t have done it without you.’ Adam patted the back of the haulier as he quickly pocketed the coin, hardly believing his luck.

  ‘This is a godforsaken place. You can’t smell it today, but the stench from the flay-pits nearly knocks you down, if the wind is blowing in this direction, not to mention the noise of them blasting from the quarry at Denholme. What’s a gentleman like yourself wanting with a place like this?’ the haulier asked with a wry smile on his lips, as he watched the lad, dumbfounded that he’d been given a shilling just for doing his job, go out of the door. ‘The farm’s been empty for some years. I’ve never known anybody live here as long as I’ve been around here.’

  ‘I needed to come home – be my own man. I’ve had enough of being at somebody’s beck and call. This was once a good farm, until I turned my back on it more than ten years ago,’ Adam answered honestly, although he didn’t give away too much.

  ‘So you’re from here?’ The haulier was inquisitive. Who was the man who was foolish enough to move into the farmhouse that caught all the wilds of the weather and moor that could be thrown at it? Nobody ventured near Black Moss Farm, which stood brooding and forbidding, alone on the path just past the crossroads between Halifax and Haworth, Keighley and Thornton.

  ‘Aye, I am. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve much to do before nightfall, and your horses are waiting.’ Adam ushered the man out of the door and into the gale that was battering the fellside. He didn’t mind people knowing that he was back on his old patch, but not yet. He needed time to get settled, to get the house back into habitable order and to look at what shape the forty acres of land were in. He knew the local folk would be gossiping as soon as they saw a light in the old homestead, but for the next day or so he just needed peace.

  ‘Goodnight to you then, sir. And good luck, because you’ll need it. You’d not find me staying here the night; it’s too wild and remote for my liking!’

  ‘Aye, perhaps you are right – I’ll need your luck. But I know the countryside’s ways and I could do with some peace, so I’ll embrace my old home with open arms. I’ll be fine here on my own; in fact I will relish it. Take care, and thank you again for your hard work.’

  Adam watched as boy and man covered themselves with more sacking and whipped the horses into motion, once in their seats. The steam was already rising from the horses’ backs, and he couldn’t help but think they’d need a good rub-down and the hand of a diligent stable boy on their return to Keighley. He closed the door behind him and looked around at the dirty grey walls, which used to be spotless, and the filthy flagged floor that was once polished to within an inch of its life. He remembered that his mother always had chequered curtains at the windows and a pegged rug by the hearth, with a vase of wild moorland flowers on the table, as she and his father sat next to the blazing fire discussing the day’s events, while she knitted and he smoked his pipe. But those were in the good old days, when he had not been so headstrong and selfish.

  Adam felt a cold shiver run down his back and realized quite how cold the old home was. He found and lit yet another lamp, then searched for something to light a fire, to get some warmth into the old place. He then looked at the fireplace: the remains of a crow’s nest filled the hearth, having obviously fallen down from a previous spring, along with one of its now-mummified occupants. Should he take a chance and hope that the chimney was not blocked by the troublesome pests? He pushed the twigs and their occupant into an orderly heap and reached for an old newspaper that had been left by the side of the fireplace, glancing at the headlines and the date of The Keighley Chronicle and smiling as he screwed up the paper, placing it under the ready-made kindling sticks. The headlines reminded him of his close friend Ivy
Thwaite, as he read: ‘Police Confiscate Mechanical Fortune-Telling Device’. Ivy had no time for suchlike; she was a true spiritualist and hated the hoaxers who preyed on the vulnerable and heartbroken that searched for their loved ones after death. Without her, he would have been lost after the death of his beloved wife Mary, and might have been tempted by the hoaxers’ convincing deceits, in his search for forgiveness for not saving Mary from her death. Ivy had been a close friend for many years and at one time Adam had thought of courting her, but she had been too headstrong for him. He shook his head, thinking that it would never have lasted; and besides, Mary had appeared in his life and he’d known instantly that she was the one for him.

  He rose from his knees and braved the gale outside, walking to what he knew was the coal house, hoping there would be at least a cob or two still remaining in the dark corner of the stone-built shed. Finding a small pile of coal still there, he quickly returned into the house, built the fire up and placed a mutton pie that he’d bought from a street seller in Keighley into the rusty side-oven to warm. He sighed and looked around him, and it was then that he realized how thankful he was that he had been brought back to his roots. Now it was time to rebuild his life and try and forget the past.

  With the fire lit and the mutton pie warming in the side-oven, Adam sat back and gazed into the flames of the fire. So much had happened since he had left Black Moss as a younger man: he’d lost both parents and his wife, and had seen quite a bit of the world, but now he was home and he meant to settle down. Tomorrow he’d go to the nearby flay-pits, where they tanned hides, and buy some lime to whitewash the walls, then advertise his need for a local lass to clean and do the housework. She’d have to be a quiet one, a lass who didn’t gossip; he’d no time for flibbertygibbets who chattered all the time. He aimed for a quiet life compared to the last few years – God willing!

  Adam felt himself dozing, his head getting heavier and his eyes closing, as the heat from the fire warmed his bones. The events of the day jumbled in his mind and, as the cloak of sleep overcame him, memories of his past came flooding back. The fateful day when his life had been torn apart by the act of a thieving beggar and his own actions.