But the main reason for her warm feelings towards Kenelm was the little boy sitting on her lap. Kenelm had given her Stevie, and the child growing in her womb too. Whereas Amos was still obsessed with Jane. Elsie had seen them together at the May Fair, deep in conversation, Jane dressed up to the nines and carrying a superfluous little parasol, Amos hanging on her words as if she was a prophet with pearls of wisdom dropping from her lips. If Elsie had pinned her hopes on Amos she would still be waiting. She kissed the top of Stevie’s gingery head, immeasurably glad that she had him.
She still thought of Amos on Saturday nights, though.
Kenelm bowed to Arabella and said: ‘The bishop sends you the compliments of the morning, Mrs Latimer, and begs to let you know that breakfast is served.’
‘Thank you,’ said Arabella, and she got to her feet.
They all went inside. Elsie took Stevie to the nursery and handed him over to the nurse. Elsie had taken an early breakfast in the kitchen, and now she put on her hat and went out, eagerly heading for the school.
Elsie could not use the Assembly Rooms for her school onweekdays, but she had rented cheaply an old building in the south-western suburb called Fishponds. There were usually at least fifty children. Those who had not previously attended the Sunday school knew almost nothing, and their teachers had to start from scratch: the alphabet, simple arithmetic, the Lord’s Prayer, and how to eat with a knife and fork.
She stood with Pastor Midwinter and watched with delight as the children arrived, chattering at the tops of their voices, scrawny and ragged, many without shoes, all with minds thirsty for knowledge as the desert for rain. She felt sorry for people who spent their lives making woollen cloth: they would never know this thrill.
Today she taught the oldest children, usually the most difficult to manage. She first taxed their brains with arithmetic: currant buns cost a halfpenny, so how many would you get for six pence? Then she taught them to write their own names and one another’s. After the mid-morning break she made them learn a psalm by heart and told them the story of Jesus walking on the water. They became restless in the last hour, when the building filled with the smell of cheese soup.
Amos arrived at dinner time, immaculate as always, today wearing the dark-red tail coat that was Elsie’s favourite. He helped serve the meal, then Elsie and he took a bowl each and sat apart to talk. She resisted the urge to stroke his wavy hair and was careful not to stare into his deep brown eyes. She longed to go to sleep beside him at night and wake up with him in the morning, but it would never happen. At least she had this close friendship, and for that she was grateful.
She asked him about the strike.
‘Hornbeam won’t negotiate,’ he said. ‘He refuses to consider changing his plans.’
‘But he can’t run his mill with no hands at all.’
‘Of course not. But he thinks he can outlast the strikers. “They’ll come crawling to me, begging me to take them back,” he says.’
‘Do you think he’s right?’
‘Maybe. He’s got more reserves than the workers. But they have resources of a different kind. At this time of year the woods are teeming with young rabbits and birds, if you know how to trap them. And there are wild vegetables – chickweed, hawthorn buds, lime leaves, mallow stems, sorrel.’
‘Thin fare.’
‘There are less honest ways to get by. This is not a good time to walk in the dark with money in your purse.’
‘Oh, dear.’
‘You shouldn’t worry. You might be the only affluent person in town they wouldn’t rob. You feed their children. They consider you a saint.’
But a saint would be in love with her husband, Elsie thought; with her husband and no one else.
‘In truth no one knows how this will end,’ Amos said. ‘In other strikes around the country, the masters have won in some places and the hands in others.’
The afternoon session was shorter and Elsie was home in time to give Stevie his afternoon snack of buttered toast. Then she joined her mother for tea in the drawing room.
Her father came in a few minutes later. He had something on his mind: Elsie could tell by the way he fidgeted. ‘Have you been shopping, my dear?’ he said to Arabella as she handed him a cup.
‘Yes.’
‘You favour the establishment of Kate Shoveller, I believe.’
‘She’s the best dressmaker in Kingsbridge – in Shiring, even.’
‘I’m sure.’ He dropped a lump of sugar into his tea and stirred longer than was necessary. At last he said: ‘Is she still unmarried?’
‘As far as I know, yes,’ said Arabella. ‘Why do you ask?’
Elsie, too, was wondering what the bishop was getting at.
‘There is something odd about a healthy woman who remains single into her thirties, don’t you think?’
