Waters of Time

Pauline Kirk

Description

Waters of Time was novelist and poet Pauline Kirk's remarkable first novel. It spans three generations and captures a feeling of time and space memorably. When successful academic and author Martha Cooper returns from Australia, she discovers family secrets which bring hope to her town, and change her own life.

Sujets

• Historical romance
• Sagas

Informations

• Publié par: Stairwell Books
• Date de parution: 07 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781913432157
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Waters of Time
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Pauline Kirk
 
 
 

 
 
Published by Stairwell Books
161 Lowther Street
York, YO31 7LZ
 
www.stairwellbooks.co.uk
@stairwellbooks
 
 
 
 
Waters of Time © 2020 Pauline Kirk and Stairwell Books
 
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, e-book or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author.
 
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
 
 
 
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-913432-16-4
eBook ISBN: 978-1-913432-15-7
 
Layout design: Alan Gillott
 
Cover art: Alan Gillott
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
For Jo
 
 
 
 
 
 
Prologue
 
Melbourne.
September 1986
 
My dear Laura,
So that your life should not be distorted by half remembered events as mine has been, I have written this account. You will remember some of the incidents yourself but I would like you to know how they seemed to me. Much of it you will not recall, for the beginning of my story goes back before either of us was born; to the days when Sandhill was a thriving town and cherry orchards and woodlands grew around Arton.
When you are a grown woman read what I have written and snigger if you like, but for your own sake, read. I hope I shall be around to see you do so. Having failed to die young and poetically I intend to go unpoetically, grumbling in my twenty-first century bed. Mind you, I shall feel an idiot when you announce the solicitor has given you a mysterious packet, I shall mumble something about, ‘Well, it seemed to matter at the time,’ and lock myself in the bathroom. Try not to laugh. Humour after all depends on whether you are the one watching, or the one slipping. Whatever you do, my effort in writing will have been worthwhile. I have taken a journey through the forests of the past, and have come out the other side, a little muddy perhaps and with a few nettle stings, but finding my way.
I will let my great aunt begin the story. During those golden weeks we spent together at Sweetbriar she recorded her memories for me. They give a sharper picture of our past than I could ever offer.
But perhaps I am bewildering you already? Can you recall Great Aunt Mary? By the time you came into her life she was already a very old woman, but even then she avoided confusion like she avoided dirty collars. When I came to transcribe the tapes she had made, very little editing was needed. The part of her life she described then is clear to me, but the rest is a patchwork, sewn from scraps of adult conversation overheard when I was a child.
Great Aunt Mary was over fifty by the year I was born; my adolescence took her towards seventy. All that time her crisp figure came and went through my life, always politely distant but ready in an emergency. When she was a mere seventy-nine and I was already overseas, arthritis forced a compromise with pride and she came to live with us. Even then she remained a visitor, never Family.
If you do recall her, I imagine it is as the old woman who sat on our verandah at Arton shelling peas, or as the slightly severe lady with the old-fashioned lace collar. I suspect that, like me, you will find it difficult to associate passion with such precise gentility. Yet it was a love story she told me, and a requiem for a generation.
I leave you to judge the rest.
 
 
 
 
 
ONE: Source
 
The date is as firm in my mind as if it had been carved on stone: Monday, 3 August 1914. By chance most of us were together that day. We were celebrating the annual Treat, the ritual visit to Arton. It was the last of its kind, a window in my memory to a lost world of summer days. The Edwardian era gathered at Sandhill Wesleyan chapel that day, in all its charm and frivolity; only a day later the same townsfolk had become twentieth century people with twentieth century fears.
I remember the chapel yard was already crowded with children and hampers when I arrived, and the paved space was steaming with horses. Parasols, shawls, muslin blouses and starched pinafores blurred into bright patches of colour. Lakins’ Forge had done us proud, lending their biggest wagon for the Junior class. The boards had been swept clean of swarf, and two thick legged horses had been harnessed and decked with ribbons. An equally thick legged man (but no ribbons) stood holding their heads. Jackie Parkes was a reassuring figure as he sat holding the reins. All around and behind him the little ones watched, their eyes almost as wide as their bonnets. ‘Morning, Miss Cooper,’ Jackie said.
Look what me Mam give me,’ Harry Parkes whispered, unwrapping a terrified peppermint pig.
Milly and Richard Lakin were sitting on the Infants’ wagon. It would have been fun for us all to have ridden together, but the Infants needed at least four adults to keep them from falling off or choking on humbugs and Milly would be useful there. Mr and Mrs Lakin waited in their motor car. A hat the size of a meat dish was tied on Mrs Lakin’s head, and next to her, her husband was sporting a motoring jacket that must have been ordered urgently from Birmingham, for the creases still showed across his shoulders. They had clearly ‘gone to town’ for the occasion. In the back was Master Henry Lakin, wearing the full rigging of a sailor suit. The Lakins were on holiday, that meat dish hat and sailor suit announced. For at least three hundred days of the year Mr Lakin worked as hard as the meanest sweeper up in his forge, but he knew how to enjoy himself the other sixty-five.
‘Read the news, Miss?’ Jackie asked.
‘I was reading Father’s paper before I came out,’ I admitted. ‘ The Leader was full of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.’ I was proud of remembering the name, but then I had been practising it as I walked.
‘All Europe is on fire,’ Jackie agreed. ‘Well, not exactly,’ he added lest he frighten a young lady. ‘That’s only a figure of speech editors use.’ He fingered the droops of his moustache. ‘They will be calling our men to fight soon,’ he predicted. ‘I shall look spiffing in uniform, don’t you think?’
‘If I were a boy I would go too,’ I announced.
A cheer went up from the senior boys hanging on to Jim Spence’s milk float and with a rattle and rumble the procession began to move onto Sandhill Rise.
From my wagon I could see across the whole town, to the Heath beyond. I remember thinking how cramped Low Town looked, compared with the higher parts where the people who mattered lived. Our families had their brass name plates and tradesmen’s entrances to prove we mattered; we had lived the same pleasant routine for three generations, since the first forges spread over the hillsides like a skin disease. Nothing less than an unexpected slump in trade or a very long war could disturb our calm. But those in the valley – they had always known smoke and grime and struggle. And they would be the ones fighting our war for us...
Gaining an assortment of butchers’ boys and early morning dogs the procession rattled and yapped on to the Birmingham Road and slithered finally into the Station Approach. A special train was waiting and everyone jumped from their wagons, suddenly scornful of transport that till then had seemed the latest fashion. Junior Boys were sorted from Junior Girls while the Reverend Barraclough gave so many conflicting orders it was safer to ignore him altogether, then two coachloads of chatter and delight moved off for Arton Town.
‘Now, girls,’ the first Miss Turner said, peering in from the other compartment and clapping her hands. ‘It’s been a very early start for us all. I suggest you settle down for a little sleep.’ She was evidently an optimist.
 
‘What a perfectly heavenly day,’ Milly Lakin declared, swinging round on her parasol in an abandoned manner which would have shocked her mother. Fortunately Mrs Lakin was sending a telegraph. ‘Mama loves sending telegraphs,’ Milly confided. ‘She forgets things deliberately so she can watch the operator. Were the little ones simply horrid? Ours talked and talked. The Seniors kept flicking bits of chewed up paper at the ceiling. Ever so many stuck. I wonder if they’ll fall on the next outing’s heads?’ Her laughter rippled across the hampers.
Mrs Lakin appeared and immediately Milly stopped pirouetting and smoothed her new muslin dress. ‘Oh bother,’ she whispered. ‘There’s a mark on my skirt already. I’ll swear spots fly through the air and land on me.’
Bending behind a stack of pigeon baskets we rubbed at the skirt. ‘Now don’t you tell,’ I whispered to half a dozen cooing heads and Milly giggled.
Her dress was beautiful. On any girl but Milly it would have looked entrancing, but Milly was already as tall as her brother, and her frame was as strong as any boy’s. Not even expensive kid gloves could make her fingers look slender, and it was fortunate her feet could be hidden under skirts and petticoats. She had been crimped specially for the occasion, with the result that her hair had taken on the texture of a doll’s wig, and the curls irritated her so much she shook them back from her face continually.
Scattering small children and railway porters in her wake, Mrs Lakin came towards us. ‘There you are girls,’ she said, as if we should have been somewhere else. ‘I think you two can lead the crocodile.’ Clapping her hands she obtained immediate silence. ‘Come along everyone. Little ones to the front. Teachers and congregation put yourselves every few yards alongside please. We don’t want anyone falling in the river.’
I remember passing a village school, and on the other side of the road, a large corn and seed mill which had Lakin, Lakin & Hobble painted across the front. I wondered who Hobble was, or whether he was a Lakin but couldn’t afford new shoes. W