Nancy Carson - A Fallen Woman

‘All well and good. But what d’you propose to do with ’em?’

‘Make jam,’ she said simply. ‘Or chutney. My mother can have some next time she comes. She’ll be able to pass some of it to the other narrowboat folks. Apples as well. Have you seen how many apples we got? I could make cider. Me and me dad used to make cider.’ She finished off the tea. ‘Oh, look!’ she suddenly exclaimed with a childlike whoop, pointing. ‘There’s a hedgehog over there.’

She handed Algie the empty tea mug and held her long skirt against her legs to stop it rustling as she crept towards the hedge at the bottom of the garden where she’d spotted her quarry. The animal rolled itself into a ball and remained still as it became aware of her approach. Marigold stooped down and stroked it gently.

‘It’ll prickle you.’

‘Course it won’t.’

‘You’ll pick up flees. It’ll be crawling with flees.’

‘Oh, look at the poor little thing, Algie,’ she cooed, ignoring his cautions. ‘Keep your eye on him while I fetch him some bread and milk. I bet the poor thing’s hungry.’

Algie smiled indulgently. ‘I’ll get it,’ he said, and ambled back towards the house. He loved this gentleness, this girlish sentimentality his wife always exhibited towards lesser entities. Such an endearing characteristic, which bemused him and yet delighted him too.

He returned with a saucer of milk and a thick slice of bread he’d hacked off the loaf. Marigold, meanwhile, was still trying to coax the bewildered creature into giving her some attention. Algie stooped down beside her. He placed the saucer of milk near the living ball of spikes and broke the bread into chunks.

‘Let’s leave him be,’ he suggested. ‘Let him find the bread and milk for himself.’

Marigold turned and smiled, and he thought how delightful she looked, her skin caressed and tinted by the low golden sun. He stood up, took her hand and led her away from the hedgehog.

‘Sometimes,’ he said slowly, deliberately, ‘I look at you, and at our Rose…and I see this house…and…’

‘And?’

‘Well…’ He shrugged, hardly able to express himself adequately. ‘I ask myself whatever did I do to deserve it all?’

‘Oh, Algie,’ she softly sighed. ‘You daft thing.’

He squeezed her hand and turned to look at her. ‘I suppose I’ve got Aurelia to thank in the first place. It’s a good job she and I knew each other. I mean, if it hadn’t been for her going to stay at your Aunt Edith’s at the same time as you were there having our Rose, we might never have found each other again, had we?’

‘I know,’ she answered dreamily. ‘I thought I’d lost you forever. It was as if you’d disappeared off the face of the earth. And there I was having your child.’

‘But what a blessing it was to find you…and what a hell of a shock to find out you’d just had my child. It changed my life…’

‘Mine as well,’ she cooed. ‘I’ve never been so happy, Algie.’ Her eyes misted with emotion.

‘Nor me…Yet it’s all been such a change for you, flower. I mean a life on the narrowboats, never knowing where you’re gonna be from one day to the next, is different from living in a house fixed on dry land, eh?’

‘Course it is.’

‘But you’ve adapted. You’ve adapted well.’

‘Well, my mother taught me all there is to know about cleaning and cooking, and they’re the same wherever you are. Some things I miss though – like when I used to run ahead of me dad’s brace of narrowboats to open the locks ready.’ She laughed as she recalled it. ‘But I don’t miss the times when we heaved to at night, and me and me mother used to maid, mangle and peg out the washing on the towpaths, come rain, snow or shine.’

‘Nobody would guess, looking at you now, as you’d spent your life on the narrowboats, though. You can put on a show of elegance and good manners just as well as Aurelia.’

‘Except I’m a bit more shy than what she is. Aurelia’s got lots more confidence than me – she ain’t backward in coming forward – comes from being educated proper, I reckon.’

‘Maybe so, my flower, but one thing you ain’t short of is common sense. And that counts more than having had an expensive education – for a girl at any rate.’

They had reached a bench that was in desperate need of a lick of paint. Beyond it, over the hedge, was a field edged with a row of tall elms.

‘It’s funny the way things turn out, ain’t it?’ Marigold went on, smoothing the creases out of her skirt as she sat down. ‘I mean…I know we was lucky to have this house as well, and that bit of money your mother inherited—’

‘Which we put into the business,’ he interrupted.

‘Yes, but you work hard, Algie. And you’re careful with money.’

‘I don’t take chances. But in business you can’t afford to stand still either. Things are changing all the time. Especially in the bike business.’

‘I suppose sometimes you make your own luck, eh, Algie?’

He put his arm around her and she snuggled up to him. ‘Maybe I hit on the right thing at the right time with the bikes,’ he said. ‘It was just a feeling I had that building bikes was the right thing to do. Anyway, we’re doing all right. We’re getting more orders all the time. In fact, I’m setting on two more men next week – old workmates from Sampson’s.’

Marigold regarded him with sudden anxiety. ‘Oh, Algie, do you think that’s a good idea?’

‘What? Employing old workmates?’

‘Pinching Benjamin Sampson’s workers.’

‘Sod Benjamin Sampson. Anyway, Sampson’s ain’t doing too well, by all accounts.’

‘All the same…it could cause more trouble between you and him.’

‘I don’t see why. Folk can choose where they want to work so long as there’s work enough. Anyway, Benjamin Sampson wouldn’t think twice about sacking them if things got that bad. So why should they be loyal to him? Their only loyalty is to themselves and their families. Besides, I’ll be paying them more money.’

‘As long as it don’t make things awkward between me and Aurelia.’

‘Why should it?’

‘I think the world of her. She is my sister.’

‘Half-sister,’ he corrected with a smile. ‘And I know you think the world of her. But this is business, Marigold. Nothing to do with Aurelia. So why should it make things awkward between you two?’

‘P’raps it won’t. But she has enough to contend with, what with Benjamin and all. The things she tells me…’ Marigold rolled her eyes.

‘Oh? What sort of things?’ He wondered what poor, lovely Aurelia might have to contend with that he wasn’t already aware of.

‘Well, they don’t sleep together no more, for one thing. Not since before Christina was born.’

‘Fancy…’ He pondered Aurelia and her troubled marriage for a moment. Such a waste of a worthy woman; Benjamin Sampson was an utter fool. ‘Let’s go and see how your mate the hedgehog is getting on,’ he said in an effort to divert himself and Marigold from the subject of Aurelia and her troubled marriage. He stood up and together they ambled in silence to the spot where they had encountered the prickly creature.

‘Oh, Algie!’ she exclaimed, with obvious delight. ‘I swear some of that bread has gone. I wonder if he had a drink of milk as well.’ She stooped down to inspect the area for clues. ‘I bet he has, Algie.’ She stood up again. ‘I’m going to put more bread and milk out for him tomorrow night. D’you think I should?’

‘He might fancy a change,’ Algie replied, tongue-in-cheek. ‘Try him with a pork chop with some gravy and cabbage.’

‘Oh, hark at you! Why can’t you be serious? D’you think hedgehogs like cheese?’