The Silley Woman

By Audrey Lush

Bess Silley lived in the public house, The Silley Woman - named after her Grandmother, she lived there happily with her parents.
Bess's happiness was marred by the mysterious disappearance of her Father. She then sought solace from her friend Steve Noble and grew to love him.
Lonely when Steve joined the Army, it was then a new love crossed her path, only to bring her more unhappiness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Feb 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781467884969

Audrey Lush

Audrey Lush was born in 1925. Her parent's were publicans, running a village pub in Dorset called `The Hops and Barleycorn'. Later, her first book, called `Hops and Barley' was based on her childhood experiences at the pub. Audrey's Father farmed the land around the pub and her Mother made butter, which was sold along with the milk and other produce which was grown on the farm at the shop which was part of the pub. When Audrey was eight, she moved with her parent's across the border into Hampshire, where her parent's ran a large farm. She lived there until she married into a local farming family. She has three children. Audrey, always full of humour and fun produced variety shows that toured local hospitals and care homes, all the money raised went to local charities. Many of the comedy sketches written by Audrey at that time are retold in her books. She was involved with this for about thirty years. Painting was Audrey's hobby and her artwork was given as gifts to friends and family who live around the world. During the last twenty years, impaired vision has altered her life, she could no longer paint, so started to write. Audrey is an inspiration to others with her disability. She says she owes much gratitude to her friend who has helped her to put her thoughts into writing and achieving her ambition.

Book preview

Chapter 1

From his vantage point, high on the roadside bank where he was cutting the hedge, Steve Noble smiled as he looked down on a lovely girl pushing her bike the last few steps to the top of the steep hill.

She stopped for a breather in the lane just below where Steve was standing.

My, that made you puff, he laughed.

And the young girl looked up in surprise. Her laughing blue eyes met his dark brown ones, hers sparkling as she said. It will be a bit easier when I go back down the hill later on.

He had never seen this lovely vision dressed in blue, with shiny golden hair and laughing blue eyes before. ‘So she couldn’t live in the village of Brockley, thought Steve.

What are you doing in these parts?

I’m just going to visit my aunt; I’ve got a few hours off duty, so I caught the bus from Southampton to my friend’s house where I leave my bike to come to see her, was her reply.

Before Steve could answer, she asked. Do you live here?

Pleased that this lovely girl—who he guessed was about his own age—was interested in him, he said. At the moment, I’m helping out at my Grandfather’s farm, Ten Shilling Farm, he’s not well. Pointing behind him towards the hills beyond, this hid the farmstead, he added. My home is at Paradise Farm in Dorset, but I’ve always spent a lot of time here with my grandparents.

Putting her foot on the bicycle pedal ready to ride away, the girl said. Nice to have met you, I must be off, have to be back on duty tonight.

Steve called after the departing figure. We’ll finish this conversation another day.

Yes, came the reply floating back to him.

With the hook still resting on the top of the hedge, Steve watched the vision in blue pedal away towards the village. He had never felt like this before.

Later that day, Steve was in the yard at Ten Shilling Farm when a figure in blue pedalled furiously past the farm gate and she waved when she saw him. He wondered if she had seen him wave back in return.

After a long days work, Steve rested his back against an old apple tree in the orchard at Ten Shilling Farm. It was a warm autumn evening, growing dark. The young man was pleased, at last, to escape to the peaceful orchard. His mind was full of the day’s events; mainly the lovely girl whom he thought must be a nurse, or training to be one. He sighed, here in the quiet of the orchard, alone, where he could dream.

Steve could not forget those laughing blue eyes. He’d have to ask in the village if anyone could tell him who she was and whom she visited. Perhaps her aunt was the old spinster who lived on the outskirts of the village, he thought to himself.

Tomorrow evening Bess would be calling with ale from the Silley Woman for his Grandfather and a few bits of shopping from the village shop for his Grandmother, so he could ask her and if Bess didn’t know, he’d ask some of the lads on Saturday evening, they usually met on the bridge and some of the lasses joined them. He had to know her name.

Bess and Steve had been friends; it seemed to Steve, ever since he could remember. Whenever he came to stay with his grandparents at Ten Shilling Farm, Bess had been like the sister he’d never had. His brother, much older than him, was working on their Father’s farm in Dorset.

By the time she was ten years old, Bess had been helping her Mother Martha, who was the landlady at the Silley Woman alehouse.

Now, in the past few years, Bess had grown fond of Steve and she looked forward to the holidays when Steve came to help on the farm. Whenever Steve had taken Bess home, he’d only ever given her a quick goodnight kiss on the cheek, but he was aware, though his Grandmother did not seem to approve, that everybody seemed to think he and Bess were sweethearts, especially Bess’s Mother. She could see a rosy future for her daughter if she married into a farming family.

Steve sighed, he wanted to make a career for himself in the Army, and he would join up as soon as he was eighteen. He wanted to travel and see the world.

Steve sat on in the darkness of the orchard, thinking of the happy times he had spent there at the farm and remembered his Grandmother telling him how his great Grandfather Noble had been given the farm as a reward.

This was her story:-

"Your great Grandfather was butler at Four Winds, the big house and estate that belonged to Lady Easton’s family. When young Pricilla Easton married Brigadier Symes, they came to live at Four Winds. It was a real love match, the Brigadier being quite a bit younger than Pricilla Easton and she was wealthier by far, but they were always equal in her eyes, so happy.

They had a lovely little daughter. Sadly Pricilla Easton died when Rosalie their daughter was just five years old. The Brigadier just went to pieces; although he adored his little girl he took to drink to drown his sorrows and then gambling took him over.

A room at the top of the Easton Arms pub became a gambling den for the rich around the New Forest.

Treasures and plots of land had already been sold to pay off the Brigadier’s debts, when one evening he held a gambling session in the games room at Four Winds.

Intoxicated by drink, the Brigadier had lost heavily at cards all evening and had just wagered his whole estate on a last turn of the cards, when George, your great Grandfather, who had been watching the cardsharps, was asked to serve yet more drinks. He approached with the tray of the ordered drinks and tripped, falling onto the table, upsetting the cards, thus saving the estate.

Disgraced and still with heavy outstanding gambling debts, the Brigadier gave your great Grandfather a ten shilling piece as a reward. Ten-shilling piece was a plot of land that was due to be sold for the sum of ten shillings, hence the farms name. So the Noble’s have been here ever since."

Steve remembered he must have been about twelve years old when he curled up on the colourful rag rug which was in front of the big inglenook in the parlour at Ten Shilling Farm. Granny’s nimble fingers had skilfully hooked the coloured strips of material into a piece of hessian to make the rug, taking numerous hours he thought. Many of her memories had been woven into her warm masterpiece.

Steve, as a little boy had always wondered why the local alehouse had such an unusual name. One winter’s evening, his Grandparents, seated one either side of the fire, jointly told the story of the Silley Woman alehouse, which took much longer to tell.

It was in the1880s they told Steve, when Silas Silley and his wife Liza went to live in the house down by the stream. Silas grew a small field of barley and this gave Liza an idea. The barley was cut and Liza bought some dried hops and she fermented the barley, to which she added the hops and her other secret ingredients. So, in the outhouse behind the cottage Liza brewed her ale. This became known as the Ale House and in no time at all folks were going to the Silley woman, as Liza was known, with their jugs and bottles to buy their ale. Hence it became known as the Silley Woman alehouse.

On the rest of the land Silas grew vegetables. Early every Saturday morning, after having hitched the piebald mare, called Magpie, into the cart already loaded with the vegetables, Liza set off for market. She scrubbed the cart out when she got home and drove the horse and cart to Chapel on Sunday morning. Liza Silley would listen to the preacher ranting on about temperance and the ruins of drink then drove home and worked in the brew-house to brew the ale the rest of the week.

Having given up hope of ever becoming a Mother, Liza must have been in her late thirties before she had her only child, Fred. Local gossip said that a travelling tinker who stays for a couple of nights at the alehouse could have helped her out. Liza said that Fred was easy going like his Father—was Silas his Father?

Then Liza, needing help in the alehouse, took on little Martha Philpot, poor little mite, her skinny body was dressed in rags and nearly starved when Liza took her in, but Liza fed and clothed her, worked her hard and for the first time in her young life Martha was happy, she was well fed and although her clothes were ill fitting they were warm, but they were the best that Liza could provide and were better than the rags she had always worn, so Martha felt like a princess. I expect she was happy with board and lodging and two pence a week.

Boundary Lane in Brockley, which lay on the edge of the New Forest, was always busy with timber carriages rattling along. Many of the men who worked in the wood called at the Silley Woman alehouse, especially at lunch times.

Liza and Martha soon found trade for their bread and cheese, pickled onions, or a slice of home made cake, to satisfy the hungry men’s appetite. Martha, who was already worked off her feet, had suggested to Liza they make rabbit pies. Fred was always catching rabbits in his wires, many of which he took to market. Soon meat pies became a speciality at Silley’s Ale House.

One dark winter’s night, Martha had been asleep in the loft above the alehouse, when she heard sounds below. She had earlier thought she heard the sound of cartwheels on the track leading to the alehouse and had raised herself on her elbow to listen, hearing no sound she thought she must be mistaken. However, Silas heard something and thinking it was someone stealing his vegetables, he told Liza that he was going to investigate and she warned him to be careful.

Silas it seemed disturbed two men in the alehouse.

Martha had come down the rickety ladder just in time to make out the figure of a man wrestling with Silas.

There was a thud, a shout and the rattling of cartwheels along the track, a cask of ale bumping around in the cart, adding to the noise.

Martha had hurried to the slumped body of Silas. Liza came hurrying in through the door and in the light of the lamp that she had brought with her they saw Silas lying in a pool of blood.

Sitting the lamp down on the stone floor, Liza leaned over her husband, saying to Martha to fetch a towel and call Fred to fetch the doctor. Silas groaned and tried to lift his head which Liza cradled in her lap. He seemed to be conscious and tried to sit up.

Martha, breathless, came running back in to the murky alehouse and together she and Liza wound the towel around Silas’s bleeding head. With great effort from Martha and Liza and with much groaning from Silas he was finally on his feet and after a long while they reached the foot of the narrow crooked stairs. Step by step, the weak man was held, sometimes pushed from behind by his wife and Martha. Silas was not only tall but big and he filled the narrow stairway.

Silas struggled into the bedroom and with a great sigh of relief, fell to the floor where he lay prostrate beside the big double bed, which almost filled the bedroom. Again, Liza knelt down beside him and as she bent over him she put her ear close to his mouth and through rasping breath he murmured Mullins. This was his last word.

The undertaker, Ivor Berrymen, weighed up the grave situation, the narrow stairs that turned to the left half way up and the size of the deceased. Holding his top hat reverently in front of him, he turned to weeping Liza and said. I’ll have to cut a hole in the bedroom floor to get the coffin through.

So that’s how Silas left his bedroom, feet first to the scullery below.

On the day of Silas’s funeral, as the undertaker left his funeral parlour, he turned to lock the door and looking up at the sign above it he noticed that it read I BERRYMEN (and women) UNDERTAKER. Some wit had written and women, much to his annoyance. He then left on his sad mission to the house of Silas Silley. Gleefully he rubbed his hands together, but never breaking undertaker’s tradition of not letting a smile cross his face.

When finally Mullins and Butcher, his accomplice were sentenced in court, Mullins had been proved to be the one who killed poor Silas, so Butcher received a shorter sentence.

When the Mullins family left the courtroom that fateful day, the Father threatened Liza with. We’ll get revenge for this, you’ll see.

Liza’s information to the police regarding the men of the Mullins family having the Mullins mark, which was a red heart shaped mark on the left hand side of the neck, had been a help in Mick Mullins arrest.

So Liza had told Fred and Martha that the Mullins name was never to be mentioned again.

The night of terror and the threat of revenge were to haunt Martha forever.

Liza’s health deteriorated and now Fred helped Martha with the market stall.

One day they had set up their goods for sale on the stall, Fred was usually talking to some other stallholder as usual, or as he called it. Looking for a bargain.

Fred was at the stall when a young lad was bartering with Fred over the price of a cabbage for his Mother. Martha was thinking what a handsome lad he was, when turning away from serving a customer she heard him say to Fred. Toss you for it, like the last time.

Martha was annoyed with Fred, she thought ‘a penny was a penny,’ when she heard the boy say Heads or tails?

Heads. Was Fred’s reply.

The coin spun on the stall table, which was just a piece of wood resting on two boxes.

Tails! Triumphantly called the youngster.

Before he could take the cabbage, Martha’s hand shot out and picked up the coin, she was too quick for the boy. Reaching across the stall she quickly grabbed his grubby collar, saying. You scoundrel!

She dropped her hand, her mouth went dry and in that moment horror struck her. At the base of the lad’s neck she had seen a red heart shaped mark. The Mullins mark!

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