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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The day after her encounter with Joe, Sarah suggested to her grandmother that it would be wise to go back and gather as much of the remaining lungwort as possible before someone else discovered its whereabouts. Ada was suspicious of Sarah’s eagerness to go herb gathering, when before she had considered it an unwelcome imposition, but she was always grateful for supplies of the plants that she didn’t grow herself. So it was that within the week, Sarah set off again for Tinker’s Wood. She’d dressed carefully, choosing her second-best blouse and skirt in the knowledge that wearing her best clothes for such an errand would have alerted her grandmother to the fact that something was afoot. Even so, she’d been careful to slip out of the house before Ada had the chance to scrutinise her too closely.

As she made her way down the garden she paused at the rose bed to sniff deeply. She thought about taking a rosebud or two to tuck in her hair, then rejected the idea, instead scooping up a handful of newly fallen petals, keeping them in her pocket until she was out of view of the house. Then she scrunched up the petals and scrubbed them against her cheeks, hoping that their deep crimson colour would bring out the roses there. At the very least, she felt, her skin would take on some of the glorious scent.

Sarah tried hard to pretend that she was undertaking a normal outing but she was nervous and giddy, shrinking back into the hedge at the sound of horses’ hooves on the lane and appearing so flustered that the carter was moved to observe to his mate, ‘Isn’t that young Sarah Gibson? She’s a bold lass, always ready with a greeting. Whatever can have afflicted her today?’

Sarah simply wanted the first part of her errand to be over, and to remain unobserved throughout, convinced that her guilty longing for a meeting with Joe Bancroft must be written all over her face. She couldn’t have explained why it was that she wished to see him so much, nor what instinct made her wish to keep it a secret. All she knew was that she had thought of little else but Joe’s smile since she had seen him last, and the way that it lit up his eyes. And, without fail, the memory of the way those eyes lingered on her brought a blush to her cheeks.

Now, in a hurry to complete the legitimate part of her errand, Sarah gathered the lungwort along the edge of Tinker’s Wood with great haste, barely noticing as her hand plunged in amongst the nettles to grasp the flowering stems of the herb. It was here that Joe Bancroft came upon her unexpectedly, seated at the edge of the wood, ruefully sucking fingers made swollen and itchy by the surfeit of stings.

‘Oh, it’s you!’ Sarah, caught unawares, blurted it out. She had hoped and expected to see him a little later in her outing, along Tinker’s Way, where she would have been more composed and in control of herself.

Joe – who had been poaching in the woods – had taken care to tuck the rabbit that was destined for the pot into one of the capacious pockets of his jacket, and it was hidden from Sarah’s sight. He gestured to the ground beside her.

‘May I?’ he asked.

‘Why yes,’ said Sarah, arranging herself as prettily as she could and hoping that the dappled shade under the trees was showing her to her best advantage.

Joe loosened the red neckerchief from around his neck and used it mop his forehead.

‘’Twill be a right hot ’un today, I reckon,’ he said. ‘Yon herbs will be after wilting.’ He nodded in the direction of Sarah’s basket.

She hastily pushed the basket further into the shade with her foot and just managed to stop herself from saying, ‘Yes, I must get them home to my grandmother,’ which was the first thing that had sprung to mind. For she had rehearsed a second meeting with Joe over and over in her head, and in her imagination the conversation flowed freely. She now found herself tongue-tied, with not a single sensible thing to say to this man.

Joe leant towards her and she shrank back a little. ‘What hast thou done to thy hand?’ he asked and, reaching out, he took Sarah’s small hand in his. She was aware of the calloused roughness of his skin as he gently opened out her fingers, turning her hand back and forth as he examined the raised and reddened areas. Then he lifted the sore fingers to his lips and blew on them with extreme gentleness. Sarah, who had been half expecting him to kiss them, was startled. The sensation was both soothing and cooling, and something else entirely. Joe kept his eyes fixed on hers as he repeated the action. This time he finished by kissing the tips of her fingers.