Til Death Do Us Part (5 page)

Tom stepped into the building and halted, listening nervously for any sounds of movement or voices. All was still and silent and the only sound and movement he could actually hear and feel were the thudding pulse of his heartbeat, and rapid rasping of his breath.

‘Goddamn you, Thomas Potts, for being such a despicable coward!' He angrily castigated himself for what he always perceived as his physical cowardice when faced with any prospect of violent confrontation. ‘Now go forward!'

As silently as possible he moved along the passage, checking each cell in turn to make sure that it was locked, lowering the door hatch and looking inside to ensure it was empty.

Tom reached the end of the passage, found that the rear door was also locked, turned to go up the stone stairs, and heard the sudden heavy metallic clatter of hobnailed boots from above. He recoiled in shock and emitted a strangled shout.

‘This is Constable Potts. Come down here and show yourself!'

‘I'm already coming down, aren't I?' a hoarse shout replied as hobnails clattered on the stone steps and the burly figure of Willie Tyrwhitt appeared. Scarlet-faced with anger he bawled, ‘The bloody bitch has gone! And I wants to know what you'm going to do about it, Tom Potts?'

‘What?' Tom was completely taken aback. ‘I'll thank you not to speak so disrespectfully of my mother!'

Tyrwhitt gaped at him in astonishment. ‘Your Mam? Who's said anything about your Mam? What's her got to do with anything?'

‘Is my vile beast of a son insulting me yet again, Master Tyrwhitt?' From upstairs the Widow Potts' shriek carried clearly to both men's ears. ‘I thank the Good Lord that you are here to protect me from him, Master Tyrwhitt! I'm sure he intends to do me grievous harm!'

Despite his dislike of her as a person, Tom could not help but feel relief that no harm had befallen his mother. He lifted his hands in a rueful gesture, and told the other man, ‘Please ignore her accusations, Master Tyrwhitt. I do assure you that they are without foundation. Now tell me clearly, why are you here?'

‘My Newfoundland bitch. You've got to search and find it afore any harm comes to it.'

‘I beg of you, Master Tyrwhitt, don't let that beast of my unnatural son come up to my room! He means to do me grievous harm!' Widow Potts shrieked.

Bodily weary through sleeplessness, distraught with worry about Amy, Tom's control momentarily snapped, and he shouted back, ‘If you don't keep silent, Mother, then I swear I
will
do you a grievous harm!'

‘Never mind blarting at your Mam! You needs to get out there now and find my Newfoundland! It's worth a bloody fortune as a breeding bitch!' Tyrwhitt scowled threateningly. ‘And if any harm comes to it I'll be laying charges against you for neglecting your lawful duty!'

Tom took a deep breath, and struggled hard to answer quietly. ‘It is not part of my lawful duty to go searching for straying dogs, Master Tyrwhitt. But, if you'll give me a description of the animal, then if I do see it I'll do my best to catch it and return it to you.'

‘It aren't a bloody runaway,' Tyrwhitt spluttered indignantly. ‘It's been stole! Pinched from my kennels while me and my missus was at your wedding party last night! The back yard gate's been broke open and there's a bloody great hole in the kennel fencing, so it's been stole. Now what am you going to do about it?'

Tom considered briefly and, despite all the troubles that were besetting him, experienced the onset of the atavistic hunting instinct that always pulsed through him when told that a crime had been committed.

Now in his thoughts he told Amy, ‘I'll come to see you just as soon as I'm able, my love.' Aloud he said quietly. ‘Give me a full description of your dog, and I'll make investigation into the robbery, Master Tyrwhitt.'

‘It's a heavy-coated, black-furred Newfoundland bitch with no other markings. Two years old, standing twenty-six inches at the shoulder and a good four and a half feet from head to tail, and answers to the name o' Judy.'

With the description implanted in his memory, Tom nodded. ‘Very well, Master Tyrwhitt. Might I suggest that you have this same description cried throughout the parish with the offer of a reward for information about any sightings or present locations of it?'

Tyrwhitt nodded in his turn. ‘I'll go directly and tell Jimmy Grier to start the crying this very morning. Good day to you, Constable Potts.'

‘Good day to you, Master Tyrwhitt.' As Tom watched the burly figure go out of the main door he steeled himself for the inevitable heated confrontation with his mother.

‘I'll make it plain that after the way she behaved yesterday I'll no longer tolerate her bad humours and behaviour . . .'

As he went up the stairs his resolution hardened, and he knew that he was fully prepared to do exactly what he intended. He knocked on the door of his mother's room and entered.

She was sitting in the armchair by the window. She glared at him and opened her mouth, but before she could utter a word, Tom pointed his finger and warned grimly, ‘Stay silent and listen. Or I swear that I'll throw you out of the window!'

She blinked several times, her mouth closed, and there was a wariness in her eyes.

‘Amy is now my wife, and the mistress of this household. You will behave towards her with respect and address her with politeness. If you do not, I'll drive you from this house, and be damned to what people will say of me!'

He paused to give her opportunity to reply, but none came, and so he continued, ‘I'm going to fetch my wife home now. Are you going to make any objection to her coming?'

She shook her head, causing her hanging jowls to wobble violently.

‘Do you give me your word that you will behave towards my wife with respect and politeness?'

She nodded.

‘Good! So let us all try our best to live peacefully together.' Tom turned on his heels and left her glaring after him, hissing beneath her breath, ‘You may have got the better of me for now, you vile beast, but you're forgetting that I know of more ways than one to kill a cat!'

Tom walked across the Green towards the Fox and Goose Inn, his trepidation increasing with every step he took.

‘Please God, let her agree to come back with me!'

Still wearing her wedding finery, after a sleepless night Amy was staring despondently out of the window of her attic bedroom. She was bitterly regretting her drink-heated tantrums of the previous night, and wished desperately that Tom would come to her. She saw him approaching and her heart began to pound. When she judged that he was in earshot she opened the casement and called down to him.

‘Are you coming to see me, Tom Potts?'

He came to an abrupt standstill, his own heart pounding, his throat constricting so painfully that his voice sounded mangled as he shouted back, ‘I'm coming to beg you to come home with me, Amy, because I love you more than life itself, and cannot face a life without you.'

She giggled with delighted relief, and beckoned. ‘Then come up here and help me pack my things again.'

He broke into a shambling run and Amy opened her door and shouted downstairs. ‘Tom's coming up to help me pack, so don't you lot delay him down there.'

When he came into the attic, stooping under the low ceiling, tears of relief and happiness brimmed in her eyes. She clasped her arms around his neck and rained kisses upon his lips and cheeks and his own tear-wet eyes.

Tom returned her kisses in joyous relief that they were reunited. Then guilt and dread flooded through him, and he drew back his head and confessed, ‘I'm very sorry, Amy, but I have to tell you that my mother's still at the lock-up. But she'll not trouble you, because I've warned her that I'll not tolerate one iota more of her rudeness towards you, and I swear upon my poor father's grave that I'm going to move heaven and earth to find her other lodgings, so that we can live by ourselves—'

She clapped her hand over his mouth, and ordered sternly, ‘Shush now! I don't give a fig where the old cow is or will be, just so long as she'll not be sharing our bed. And you just make sure that when you share it with me tonight, you'll be fresh shaved. Because your bristles are rubbing my face raw.'

He looked stricken with mortified shame, and began to babble apologies, but she only giggled mischievously and told him, ‘Be quiet now and kiss me again, then we must go.'

When the couple came downstairs, Tom's muscles and lungs straining beneath the heavy weight of the large, iron-bound chest containing his wife's ‘bottom drawer', Gertrude Fowkes, Maisie Lock and Lily Fowkes were waiting by the front door.

‘We'm all coming wi' you, Master Potts. To get our dear girl settled in nice and snug.' Gertrude Fowkes waved both hands in emphatic rejection of any demurral. ‘No! I'll not be gainsaid! I wouldn't be able to get a moment's peace if I didn't come and help you both get settled in. Amy's been like a daughter to me these many years, and I loves her as if she was my own blood.'

Tom racked his brain for words to dissuade the woman, but none would come and he could only shrug in helpless acceptance.

Maisie Lock's eyes glinted with amusement at Tom's discomfiture. ‘Yes, we'll not be denied, never mind what your Mam might say in objection.'

Tom reddened with embarrassment, and flustered hastily, ‘I'm sure that my mother will raise no objections. We're both sure, aren't we, Amy my dear?'

He looked apprehensively at Amy, dreading a contradictory reaction to his assertion. But to his relief she only nodded calm agreement with his words.

Inwardly Amy was savouring this imminent triumphal entry into the lock-up at the head of her supporters, and how it would demonstrate to all and sundry that she was its new mistress.

‘This is going to shoot you right up your fat arse, you evil old bitch,' she thought, relishing the sweetness of victory over her bitter enemy, the Widow Potts.

As always in Redditch, gossip-mongers, some sympathetic, some malicious, had widely spread their varying accounts of the events at Tom Potts' wedding feast and the subsequent debacle of his wedding night. Curious eyes had noted that morning's shouted exchange on the Green between him and Amy and his subsequent lolloping entry into the Fox and Goose. Tongues had busily wagged, and housewives had suddenly decided that it was time to fetch their husbands' jugs of supper ale from that same inn.

When Tom emerged, a sizable audience of mainly women were eagerly awaiting the next act of the drama, and he groaned in dismayed apprehension.

‘Dear God, what are they going to do?'

The four women who followed him out on to the Green reacted differently.

Amy walked with preening pride, waving and smiling graciously to the onlookers like a newly crowned queen regnant. The onlookers in return were clapping, cheering, and shouting salaciously ribald advice on how she was to behave towards her husband.

Maisie Lock and Gertrude Fowkes were thrilled to be at the centre of such exciting attention.

Lily Fowkes was consumed with jealous envy, moaning over and over again, ‘It's not fair! It's just not fair! It should be me who's new-wed, and getting cheered at! Not one of our bloody skivvies!'

The onlookers moved en masse to follow the small procession towards the lock-up.

Behind the closed upper window of her room, the Widow Potts glared hatred at her approaching son and daughter-in-law.

Leaning heavily on her walking cane she shuffled from the room and made her laborious way down to the front door, opened it wide and stepped onto its threshold.

Tom saw the squat gross figure framed in the Gothic-arched doorway, and misgivings struck through him. He called on his last remaining dregs of muscular strength and lung capacity to quicken his progress. When he reached the shallow steps which led up on to the lock-up's narrow front platform he lowered the chest to the ground and, struggling to draw breath, demanded, ‘What do you intend doing, Mother? Because I warn you I will do as I threatened if you upset my wife in any way whatsoever.'

‘I'm here to apologize to your wife, and to beg her to let me make amends for the wrong I did her yesterday.'

‘What?' Tom could not believe that he had heard correctly.

His mother repeated what she had said.

Tom shook his head in amazement, still unable fully to credit what he was hearing.

Widow Potts repeated the exact sentences yet again, only this time added waspishly, ‘Dear God! Surely even a dolt like you can understand such plain English!'

‘What the bloody hell is that old bitch saying to Tom, I wonder?' Maisie Lock exclaimed in loud indignation.

Amy's temper fired and she ran to Tom's side. ‘What's she saying to you, Tom?'

‘I'm saying that I'm waiting here, daughter-in-law, to humbly beg your forgiveness for my behaviour yesterday; and to beg you also to give me opportunity to make amends for all the times I've been rude and cruel in manner or word towards you.'

It was Amy's turn to gape in astonishment, and to doubt her own hearing, but in the next instant she was also doubting the evidence of her own eyes.

Widow Potts dropped her walking cane, slumped down on to her knees and, lifting her gaze and hands heavenwards, shouted at the top of her voice, ‘Let the Lord above strike me dead this instant, if I do not truly and bitterly repent of all the hurt I've done to my daughter-in-law! Let a thunderbolt of lightning cast from His hand crash down on me this instant and strike me dead if I'm lying!'

‘I'll second that!' Maisie Lock gibed.

Tom instinctively reached down to lift his mother, but she struck his hands away, shouting, ‘No, Thomas, no! I want the whole town to witness my repentance.'

Those among the avid spectators who in the past had felt the lash of Widow Potts' bitter tongue, jeered and mocked. Other more tender-hearted individuals voiced sympathy for her.