Read Online Paupers Graveyard by Gemma Mawdsley - Free Book Online

Martin’s mother, a plump and jolly woman.
    His mother was thin and sick-looking, and rarely smiled. He wanted to ask her so many questions. Why, with the three of them working, was there so little to eat? Perhaps he already knew the answer. Wasn’t it plain to see in the fine trap and horses that Mick Dwyer, the local tavern owner, drove? Profiting from the weakness of the men, many said, and Timmy knew it was true in their case. Sometimes he wished his family were like Martin’s. There were many times, when he called in to see his friend on the way home from work, that he was greeted with a cup of tea and a hot bit of griddlecake with the butter dripping off it. He’d sit around the table with Martin and his mother, and tell them all the latest gossip from the Hall. They would listen wide-eyed in wonder to the stories about the gentry and Martin’s mother would refill his cup and cut him another slice of cake, as she urged him to tell her more. His favourite time of all was being there when Martin’s father came home. Tired from a day of casual toiling he would still come smiling through the door.
    â€˜God bless all here,’ he’d call and be greeted by his wife and a flurry of children. On seeing Timmy, he’d ruffle his hair. ‘And how’s the big man? Still keeping that Hall in running order are you?’ Timmy would laugh and say he was only a stable boy, but Martin’s father would have none of it. ‘Go on with you, I heard you run that place single-handed. They say it would go to rack and ruin without you.’
    Before he sat, Martin’s father put what he had earned that day into an old china teapot on the mantelpiece. ‘That will see us through another day, Maisie,’ he’d wink at Martin’s mother, and Timmy would feel himself grow warm inside with the look she gave her husband. There was no hatred in her eyes, just the proud look of a woman well thought of by the man she loved. Now looking at his mother and remembering this, brought tears to Timmy’s eyes. His mother noticed and pulled him towards her. She smelt damp and the hand that stroked his face was rough and bumpy with calluses, but it was his mother’s hand.
    â€˜I’m fine, son. You’re not to worry.’
    She had mistaken his tear-filled eyes for worry about her, and worried he was. No matter what it took, if it meant going down on his knees, he would get the unwanted offal and bones from the herdsman the next day. ‘You’ll have to get out of these wet clothes, Ma,’ he whispered. ‘You’ll catch your death.’
    â€˜I’ll do that, son, I’ve a shift hanging on the back of the door. I’ll put that on and hang these in front of the fire. They’ll be dry come morning.’
    â€˜I’ll go to bed.’ He got up knowing she needed her privacy and sorry that, for the first time in over a year, there would be no reading that night. Just before he left the room, a thought crossed his mind, and he stopped and turned around. She thought he had gone and was peeling off the wet clothes. Her back was towards him and he was aghast at how thin she really was. He could have counted every bone in her back, and her once snow-white skin was covered with large yellow and black bruises. How had she come by these? His father hadn’t beaten her of late. She tugged at the piece of rag that tied up her hair and pulled it free. Her hair tumbled past her waist, reddish-brown in the light of the fire. Just for a moment, he was able to imagine how beautiful she had once been.
    Timmy crept into bed and lay down beside the others. Only then he remembered what he had meant to say to her … it was that the rain would stop soon and the bushes and shrubs would be filled with wool. There had been so many new lambs born that year that, at times, it looked as though it had snowed on the fields. They could gather the wool in the evenings after work,