Tangled Threads by Margaret Dickinson Page A

only seventeen, could not possibly know just how difficult that promise would be to keep.
    Together they took a last look around the house. They were having to leave so many of their possessions.
    Mary smiled pensively as she ran her fingers along the back of Walter’s wooden chair and, seeing her, Eveleen had to swallow the lump that rose in her throat. In the parlour, Mary nodded
towards the cabinet where her best china tea service was still displayed on the shelves. ‘That was our only wedding present, you know.’
    ‘Who from?’
    ‘Your dad said it was from Mrs Rachel Dunsmore, but I reckon he bought it himself, just to make me think that someone, other than him, thought enough about me to buy us a gift.’
    ‘We ought to take it with us,’ Eveleen said, but Mary shook her head firmly. ‘No, we’ve got everything we need. Someone else can have it.’
    As Eveleen led her mother towards the door she noticed that Mary took one last lingering look at the sparkling willow-patterned cups, saucers and plates that she had so lovingly washed every
week of her married life.
    ‘I just hope someone will take good care of it,’ Mary murmured.
    Eveleen locked the door and slipped the key beneath the loose brick beside the doorstep. Taking her mother’s arm, she led her towards the farm dray. Jimmy was already sitting on the back,
swinging his legs and chewing on a piece of straw. Ted was standing awkwardly beside him, kicking aimlessly at loose stones while Bill stood near the two huge black and white shire horses. He had
been given time off to drive the family to their new home.
    ‘You’d best be back by the next evening, else it’ll be the worse for you,’ Eveleen had heard Josiah Jackson telling him.
    ‘I’ll do my best,’ Bill had replied in his deep, placid tones.
    ‘You’ll do better than that, else you’ll be following them next week.’
    Bill had faced the farm bailiff and said steadily, ‘And who would manage the horses, Mr Jackson, if you sack me?’ At which the bailiff had thrust his gaunt features close to
Bill’s face and muttered, ‘No one’s indispensable, Morton. Just you remember that.’
    ‘Oh I will, Mr Jackson. I certainly will.’ Bill kept his tone deferential but his expression implied, No, no one is indispensable, Josiah Jackson. Not even you.
    Now the day had come to take the Hardcastle family to their new life. The kindly man feared for them. More than anything he pitied the young girl who seemed to have such a burden of
responsibility resting on her young shoulders: a mother who was not quite stable, especially since the death of her husband, and a youth who had the makings of a real rascal. Here, in this
community who knew, liked and respected the family, Jimmy might have been kept on the straight and narrow. Lord alone knew what would happen to a lad like him turned loose on city streets.
    ‘Now then, missis,’ Bill moved forward to help Mary on to the front of the dray. ‘Where is it we’re headed? Nottingham, is it?’
    Mary did not answer. She was holding a handkerchief to her face and sobbing.
    Eveleen glanced helplessly at Bill. Her mother was making as much fuss as if they were indeed heading for the workhouse. The girl forced herself to be patient with the unhappy woman. Mary had
suffered a most grievous loss with her husband’s death and to be cruelly deprived of the only home where she had been truly happy was a devastating second blow.
    Eveleen was suffering too, and not only for the same reasons as her mother. Added to her misery was Stephen’s callous rejection of her. She glanced back one last time at the farmhouse. In
the pale light of early morning the dwelling looked lifeless and lost as if it, too, did not want to see the Hardcastle family leaving. Her gaze flickered around the yard, taking one last look.
    The previous evening she had gone alone to the beck. ‘Goodbye, Dad,’ she had murmured to the place where she had found him. ‘For now. But