Barbara Bradford - A Woman of Substance

After studying her new possessions for a few minutes longer, Emma began to replace them in the wooden box. It was at this moment that she felt something lumpy underneath the velvet which lined the bottom. She ran her fingers around the edge of the box. The velvet was loose and she was able to lift it up very easily. Its removal revealed a locket and a pin. Emma took out the locket and looked at it with curiosity. She did not remember ever noticing her mother wearing it. In fact, she had never seen it before. It was old, and beautifully worked, and made of real gold that glinted brightly in the light. She tried to open it, without success. She stood up, and hurried to find the scissors in her sewing box. After a few seconds, and with a little pressure, she was able to prize it open. There was a photograph of her mother on one side, taken when she was a girl. The other side was empty. Or was it? Emma looked more closely and saw that in place of a photograph there was a small lock of fair hair.

I wonder whose hair it is, she thought, trying to lift the glass covering it. But this was so firmly embedded in the locket she knew that if she prized at it too hard with the scissors it could easily shatter. Emma closed the locket and turned it over in her hands inquisitively. It was then that she saw the engraving on the back. It was indistinct and almost worn away by time. She could hardly make it out. She looked at it again, screwing up her eyes. Finally she brought the candle over to the trunk, and held the locket under the flickering flame.

The letters were very faint indeed. Slowly she read aloud, ‘A to E-1885.’ Emma repeated the date to herself. That was nineteen years ago. Her mother had been fifteen in 1885. Did E stand for Elizabeth? It must, she decided. And who was A? She could not remember her mother ever mentioning anyone in the family with a name beginning with A. She decided she would ask her father when he came back from the pub later. Emma now placed the gold locket most carefully on top of the black dress, and fingered the pin, peering at it closely. How odd that her mother should have owned such a pin. She frowned. This was the kind of stickpin a gentleman wore in his cravat or stock, most probably with riding clothes, since it depicted a miniature riding crop with a tiny horseshoe set in the centre. It was also made of gold, she could tell that, and it was obviously valuable. It had certainly never belonged to her father.

Emma shook her head and sighed, rather mystified, and she automatically placed the locket and pin where they had reposed before, covered them with the velvet lining, and then put the remainder of the jewellery away in the wooden box. Methodically she returned all of the other items to the trunk and closed the lid, still shaking her head in bafflement. There was no doubt in Emma’s sharp mind that the locket and the pin had been hidden by her mother, for some unknown reason, and this both puzzled and intrigued her. She decided then not to mention them to her father after all, although she was not quite sure what prompted this decision. She picked up her sewing box, blew out the candle, and went downstairs.

The kitchen was shadowy in the dim light emanating from the two candles on the table. Emma lit the paraffin lamps on the mantelshelf and the dresser, and carried the basket of mending she had brought home from the Hall over to the table, where she sat down to do her sewing. She worked first on a blouse belonging to Mrs Wainright, and then began to repair the hem on a petticoat of Mrs Fairley’s. Poor Mrs Fairley, Emma thought, as she plied her stitches, she’s as strange as ever. Quiet and sullen one minute, gay and chattering away the next. Emma would be relieved when Mrs Wainright returned from Scotland, where she was visiting friends. She had only been away for a fortnight, but it seemed like months. The Hall was not the same without her presence, and a peculiar nervousness was beginning to invade Emma with increasing regularity, and it bothered her not a little, since she found this acute edginess incomprehensible.

The Squire had also gone away, for the grouse shooting, so Cook had told her. He wouldn’t be returning until the end of the week, far too soon to suit Emma’s tastes. Things were quiet enough at the Hall, and, with Mrs Wainright and the Squire absent, Emma’s duties had lessened. That was why Mrs Turner had let her have Friday off, as well as Saturday and Sunday. ‘Spend a bit of time with yer dad, luv,’ Mrs Turner had said, adding sympathetically, ‘He needs yer right now, Emma.’ And so she had spent three whole days at home this weekend, cleaning and washing and cooking for her dad and Frank. The only thing that had spoiled it was the fuss about Winston’s disappearance earlier in the week. In Emma’s mind, the interminable discussions were ridiculous, since there was no apparent solution to the problem.

Emma smiled suddenly to herself. Because there was less supervision at the Hall, she had been able to slip up to the moors on some sunny afternoons, to sit under the crags at the Top of the World, with Master Edwin. They had become firm friends during his summer holidays from boarding school.

Emma had become the recipient of many of Edwin’s confidences. He told her all sorts of things, about his school, and the family, and most of them were special secrets she had promised never to reveal to a single soul. When Edwin had walked her across the moors on Thursday afternoon, he had told her that a great friend of his father’s was arriving in a week’s time, as a weekend guest. He was coming all the way from London, and he was a very important man, according to Edwin. A Dr Andrew Melton. Edwin was excited about the impending visit, because the doctor had just returned from America, and Edwin wanted to know all about New York. Not even Cook had been informed yet, or even Murgatroyd. Edwin had made her swear not to tell, and she had even had to say, ‘Cross me heart and hope ter die,’ as a reassurance to Edwin, making the appropriate gestures as well, crossing her heart and raising her right hand solemnly.

Emma’s thoughts of Fairley Hall, and, more particularly, of Edwin, ceased abruptly as her father came in from the pub, just as the church clock was striking ten o’clock. She recognized at once that he had been drinking more than usual. He was unsteady on his feet, and his eyes were glazed. When he took off his jacket to hang it on the peg behind the front door he missed the peg, and the jacket dropped to the floor.

‘I’ll get it, Dad. Come and sit down, and I’ll make yer some tea,’ Emma said, putting aside the petticoat and rising quickly.

Jack picked up the coat himself, and this time he managed to hook it on to the peg. ‘I don’t want owt,’ he mumbled, turning into the room. He took several jerky steps towards Emma and stopped. He stared at her for a long moment, astonishment flickering on to his face. ‘Thee has such a look of thee mam sometimes,’ he muttered.

Emma was surprised by this unexpected remark. She did not think she looked like her mother at all. ‘I do?’ she said questioningly. ‘But me mam had blue eyes and darker hair-’

‘Thee mother didn’t have no widow’s peak either, like thee does,’ Jack interjected. ‘That thee inherited from me mother, thee grandma. But still an’ all, thee bears a striking resemblance ter thee mam, right this minute. When she was a girl. It’s the shape of thee face, and thee features mostly. And thee mouth. Aye, thee’s getting ter look powerfully like thee mam as thee gets older. Thee is that, lass.’

‘But me mam was beautiful,’ Emma began, and hesitated.

Jack steadied himself against the chair. ‘Aye, she was that. Most beautiful lass by here thee ever did see. Weren’t a man in Fairley didn’t have his eye on thee mam at one time or t’other. Bar none. Aye, thee’d be right surprised if thee knew-’ He bit off the rest of this sentence, and mumbled something unintelligible under his breath.