The Buffer Girls Read Free

that’s it.’ He picked up his knife again. ‘We’re not going.’
    Emily sighed. There were going to be ructions in thishouse tonight and no mistake.
    ‘I’ve made your favourite for tea, Josh,’ Martha smiled at him as she placed a plate of steaming food in front of him, ‘stew and dumplings.’
    Josh breathed in deeply. ‘Smells wonderful, Mam.’ He picked up his knife and fork and began to eat hungrily whilst, by the range, Emily gently spooned stew into her father’s
mouth. There was nothing she could do toprevent Walter hearing Martha’s plans and, whilst he could not speak, she knew he would understand. Just occasionally, she could see a look of
comprehension in his eyes or a faint smile on his lips. She smiled at him tenderly, knowing that in a few moments his whole world, such as it was now, was going to be shattered.
    Martha sat down at the table, but she was not eating. She faced her sonacross the snowy tablecloth and took a deep breath.
    ‘I’ve been talking to Mr Trippet.’ Martha cleaned at the Trippets’ home, Riversdale House, two days a week. It was unusual – but not unknown – for her to talk
to the master.
    Josh looked up and Emily, glancing briefly towards him, marvelled at his acting prowess. ‘Oh, he’s home at the moment, is he? Is Trip here too?’
    Thomas Trippet– ‘Trip’ to his friends – was the son of Arthur Trippet, who owned a cutlery-manufacturing business in Sheffield but lived the life of a country gentleman
in Ashford. At nineteen, nearly twenty, Trip was only a few months older than Emily and almost two years older than Josh. The four children, for they’d always included Amy Clark, had been
friends since childhood, running wild and free throughthe village and roaming the hills and dales close to their home. They loved to stand on Sheep Wash Bridge, near to Trip’s home, watching
the farmers, who still used the river to wash the sheep before shearing.
    ‘Oh, look at the poor lambs,’ tender-hearted, six-year-old Amy had cried the first time the children had seen the old custom. ‘They’re crying for their mothers. Why are
they beingpenned on the opposite bank?’
    ‘To make the ewes swim across to them,’ Josh, two months older and so much wiser, had laughed. ‘That way they’ll be all nice and clean when they scramble out the other
side. Come on, I’ll race you home. Your dad will be watching out for you.’ And then he’d taken her hand and they’d run down the road towards their two homes that stood side
by side. Two yearsolder, Trip and Emily had lingered by the bridge until dusk forced them home too.
    At other times, the four of them would fish from the bridge with home-made rods and lines or throw sticks into the flowing water and then run to the other side to see whose stick emerged from
beneath the bridge first, to be declared the winner. Often, they would beg chopped vegetable scraps from the cook atRiversdale House or birdseed from Mrs Partridge, who kept a bird table in her
garden, to feed the ducks that always gathered around the bridge. One of their favourite spots was Monsal Head, where they looked down on the viaduct and watched the trains passing between Rowsley
and Buxton. A rare treat for the children had been to catch the train at the little station halfway up the hillside of MonsalDale and ride to Buxton, the two girls clutching each other as they
travelled through the dark tunnels on the journey. One of their favourite times of the year – and one in which the children would all be involved – was the thanksgiving for water
celebrated on Trinity Sunday and accompanied by the dressing of five wells dotted about the village.
    Grace Partridge would always be the oneto dress the well in Greaves Lane and each year she would say to Amy, ‘I need you to help me. Your dad and Uncle Dan –’ Grace referred
to her husband, Dan Partridge – ‘have got the bed of clay ready for me and now we must pick the flowers and press