for the best,’ she agreed, and stepped forward with a smile and planted a kiss briefly on his lips. ‘I’ll see you Sunday then, like we arranged. Here at three.’
Arthur felt the use drain out of his very being at the touch of her lips on his as he watched her walk away, a silhouette in the darkness. It was such a fleeting but a blissfully tender moment, a moment he would never forget, whatever might befall them.
Jane and Moses Cartwright lived in a tiny rented house situated on a steep hill called South Street. It was no great distance from Haden and Hannah Piddock’s equally humble abode, but to visit his young wife’s mother and father was a trouble for Jane’s husband, since he had to do it on crutches. Moses had received a gunshot wound in his leg during the siege of Sebastopol, which had shattered the shin bone. His leg had consequently been amputated below the knee, and Moses was still not certain which had been the more traumatic of the two terrifying experiences, the shell wound or the amputation. But at least he had survived both, and he lived to tell the tale. Indeed, he loved to tell the tale. He told it well to Jane Piddock on his return to England. He had courted Jane before he went to war and she was heartbroken when he went. His returning minus half a limb did not deter Jane and she agreed to marry him, despite the fact that everybody said he would be unable to work. She still had her own job moulding firebricks at the fireclay works. She could keep them both on the little money she earned, with a bit of help from her father.
That Thursday evening, they ventured slowly to Bull Street, as they had begun to do on a regular basis since Moses had returned from the Crimea. The light was fading and, at each step, Moses was chary as to where he planted his crutch lest he found a loose stone on which it might slip and upset his balance. They arrived at the Piddocks’ cottage without mishap, however, and Moses was accorded due reverence and made to rest on the settle in front of the fire.
‘Our Lucy, pop up to the Whimsey and fetch we a couple o’ jugs o’ beer,’ Haden said when his older daughter and son-in-law arrived.
‘Give me the money then,’ Lucy answered.
So Haden handed her a sixpence, whereupon she duly found the two jugs and ran to the public house. When she returned, he thanked her and shared the beer between them all, pouring it into mugs.
‘How’s that gammy leg o’ yourn, Moses?’ Haden enquired and slurped his beer.
‘It’s bin giving me some gyp today, Haden, and no question. D’you know, I can still feel me toes sometimes, as if they was still on the end o’ me leg. You wouldn’t credit that, would yer?’
‘Well, at least you ain’t got no toenails to cut there now, eh?’
Moses laughed generously. ‘Aye, that’s some consolation.’
‘There’s plenty of talk about the Crimea and that Florence Nightingale,’ Hannah said as she darned a hole in one of Haden’s socks. ‘I bet you happened on her when you was lying in that hospital, eh?’
‘I was nowhere near Florence Nightingale, Mother.’ Moses referred to Hannah as Mother, but to Haden by his first name. ‘Nor any hospital for that matter. Her hospital was at Scutari, miles from where we was.’
‘So who looked after yer?’
‘There was a kind old black woman they called Mother Seacole.’
‘A black woman?’ Hannah questioned, looking up from her mending.
‘Ar. All the way from Jamaica. A free black woman at that. She crossed the ocean just to help out when she heard about the sufferings at the Battle of the Alma. Her father was a Scotsman by all accounts, a soldier. I reckon she knew a thing or two about soldiering as well as nursing. Anyroad, she set up a sort of barracks close to Balaclava, and she nursed me there and a good many like me. She used to serve us sponge cake and lemonade, and all the men thought the bloody world of her. I did meself.’ Moses smiled as he recalled the woman’s kindnesses. ‘But that Florence Nightingale and her crew would have nothing to do with her, everybody reckoned. Stuck up, ’er was. I could never understand that … It was ’cause Mother Seacole was a black woman, they all said … Anyroad, that Florence Nightingale was generally treating them poor buggers in her hospital what had got the cholera or the pox. And there was thousands of ’em, I can tell yer. We lost more soldiers to cholera than we did in the Battle of the Alma, they reckon.’
‘Did you ever see anything o’ the Battle of Balaclava?’ Haden asked.
‘Not me, Haden. But I heard tales from them as did. Bloody lunatics them cavalry of ourn, by all accounts.’
‘I’d hate war,’ Lucy said. ‘I can’t see any point to it.’
Haden looked at his younger daughter with admiration. ‘Our Lucy’s a-courting now, you know.’
‘Courting?’ Jane queried with an astonished grin. ‘It’s about time. Who’m you courting, our wench?’
‘I ain’t courting,’ Lucy protested coyly.
‘Well, she’s got a chap who reckons he’s a-courting her.’
‘Arthur Goodrich bought you a tankard o’ beer to get on the right side of you, Father. I’ve seen him once or twice, but it don’t mean I’m courting serious.’
‘So what’s up with this Arthur Goodrich?’ Jane enquired.
‘Oh, he’s decent enough, our Jane, and respectable. I’m sure he’d be very kind and caring, but I just don’t fancy him.’
‘You mean he ain’t handsome enough?’ Jane prompted.
‘Handsome is as handsome does,’ Hannah opined, and withdrew the wooden mushroom from the inside of Haden’s mended sock. ‘I married your father for his ways, not his looks. I’d never have married him for his looks. I’d never have found ’em for a start.’
Lucy chuckled at her mother’s disdain and her father’s hurt expression. ‘Poor Father.’
‘I married you for your money, Hannah, but I ain’t found that yet neither. I wonder who got the best o’ the bargain.’
‘You did, Haden. You got me. All I got was you.’
‘He does strike me as being a bit of a fool, that Arthur, now you mention it, our Lucy,’ Haden pronounced. ‘Although he seems harmless enough. But fancy him thinking he can have you when you got your sights set on somebody who’s handsome enough to become a national monument. As if looks mattered, like your mother says.’
‘They matter to me,’ she answered quietly
‘Then, ’tis to be hoped as you grow out of it, our Lucy,’ Jane said in admonishment.
Lucy was at once conscious that Jane had agreed to marry Moses when he was not only very ordinary looking, but also physically mutilated, without one leg, without hope of work or anything approaching prosperity.
‘Every chap can’t be handsome, the same as every wench can’t be beautiful,’ Jane continued. ‘Looks am only skin deep anyroad. What more can you want from a man other than he be decent and honourable and caring? You want somebody who’ll look after you, and who you can look after in turn. Contentment is in being comfortable with somebody, our Lucy, not worrying about whether he’s got looks enough to turn other women’s heads. And you can be sure that some women would move hell and all to get their claws into that sort when your back’s turned, just because he’s blessed with an ’andsome fizzog.’
‘I never looked at it like that,’ Lucy admitted quietly.
‘Then p’raps it’s time you did.’
‘He sneedged into me beer, that King Arthur,’ Haden proclaimed. ‘I dain’t take very kindly to that. Said he’d got a chill