Children of the Tide (12 page)

‘Hello, Sammi,’ she said drowsily. ‘I didn’t know you were here.’

‘Hello, Tori. Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. Are you feeling better?’

‘I’m fine, thank you. I shall get up soon.’ Victoria winced as she eased herself up onto the pillows, and Sammi got up to plump them up for her.

‘I’ve had the most frightful headache for the last few days, but it’s almost gone now,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I need to get out for some air.’

‘You get too much air. You spend too much time wandering on the cliff top. It’s a wonder you don’t get blown away.’ Sammi moved across to the open window and closed it against the buffeting breeze. ‘Stay tucked up in bed where it’s warm, there’s a good girl. That sunshine is very deceptive, the wind cuts like a knife.’

‘No, I shall come down for supper,’ Victoria said with all the determination of a fourteen-year-old. ‘I feel as if I’m missing something when I’m up here. What’s been happening anyway? Mama has been preoccupied over something, and so has Papa, and I’ve hardly seen you since you came back from visiting James.’

Sammi sighed. ‘It will take for ever to tell, but I’m in trouble again as usual.’ She gave such a witless grimace that Victoria broke into a laugh. ‘It’s true, Tori. I don’t know why I can’t be good like you.’

‘I’m not good,’ Victoria protested. ‘I only seem to be because I spend so much time ill in bed.’

Sammi patted her hand. ‘I know. All right. Sit back and I’ll tell you what’s been happening. It all started while we were waiting for supper at James’s house, and the doorbell rang.’ As she related the events leading up to her bringing the child home, she felt a wave of depression flooding over her. Her mother had said she would discuss the issue of the child later when Sammi’s father was there.

She rang the bell for one of the maids to come and help Victoria to dress, and went downstairs. She had already changed for supper into a grass-green silk dress with a broderie anglaise collar and wide pagoda sleeves. She caught sight of herself in the oval mirror at the foot of the stairs and patted her hair which had been plaited around her ears, then she went across the hall into the drawing-room, where her brother Richard was reading a newspaper.

He partly rose to his feet as she entered the room, but sat down again as she plumped down beside him. ‘We’re having a family conference, I gather.’ He folded up the paper and put it beside him and slightly loosened his narrow tie which he wore beneath his brown wool jacket. ‘What’s it about?’

‘About me, I expect,’ she said gloomily. ‘And James’s baby.’

‘James’s baby! James who?’

‘Our James,’ she whispered. ‘Cousin James Rayner. Hush, Mama’s coming downstairs. You’ll hear about it soon enough.’

Their mother looked solemn as she stood looking out of the long window into the rose garden. Dusk had gathered, and pockets of shadows from the
timbered rose walk hid the pale shoots of clematis which intertwined with the tight buds of white and yellow roses, but in the misty half light, blue and white forget-me-nots glowed in massed profusion. The scent of wallflowers and woodbine drifted towards the house and mingled with the perfume of lavender which grew in shrubby bushes beneath the window.

Victoria came into the room and stood next to her mother, putting her hand into hers. She had dressed in an ankle-length, pale blue muslin dress which showed the edges of her white petticoats and the frill of her drawers; on her white stockinged feet she wore dainty black velvet slippers. Unlike her mother or Sammi, she did not wear a hoop beneath her gown, but layers of petticoats beneath her skirt rustled as she walked.

‘Isn’t it beautiful, Mama? I do so love spring. I think I prefer it to any other season, it’s such a special time.’

Her mother squeezed her hand. ‘And I remember you saying the same thing last autumn, when the leaves started to change colour. Every season has its own beauty, Victoria, even the winter, when the snow is on the ground.’

‘You wouldn’t say that if you were out working in it, Ma,’ Richard cut in. ‘Try digging out a sheep from a snowdrift or bringing a beast up from the cliff when it’s fallen over. Or,’ he emphasized, ‘being up to your knees in mud when you’re ploughing. Any sort of weather is all right when you’re inside looking out at it.’

They none of them believed a word he was saying. Richard of all people was always the first up to sample the morning air and usually the last to come home. He was a true countryman, indifferent to the weather unless it affected his livestock, his sowing, reaping or harvesting.

Their father came in as they were talking. William
Rayner had changed for supper into dark trousers and a formal black jacket, and around the neck of his high shirt collar he wore a bow-tied cravat.

‘I must tell you, Pa, before it slips my mind,’ Richard said. ‘We’ll have to move the fence near the old barn, it’s teetering on the edge. It’s good fencing, we don’t want to lose it.’

His father sat down in his chair and gazed into the fire. He suddenly looked older and tired. ‘Put someone on to it tomorrow. There seems to be no end to it,’ he said wearily. ‘Back and back.’

‘Yes, the sea will be at the front door before we’re finished,’ Richard commented. ‘There’s some land coming up for auction at Tillington, Pa. I think we should take a look at it.’

‘Yes, I heard. Well, the sea won’t reach Tillington. At least, not for generations. But this village is finished.’ His voice had a bitter edge. ‘Monkston will one day be no more, nor Garston Hall, it will be just a distant memory, like so many other villages along this coastline.’

‘Your mother always used to say that one day we would have to move back.’ Ellen gazed sadly at her husband.

William nodded. ‘It’s inevitable that we lose. We can’t fight the sea. In my father’s day there was a constant battle, the sea versus the land. But we have worked so hard, and we haven’t had the workforce, not like in the old days when there were village men available to work the land; though my father must have worked hard too,’ he added, ‘running the estate and the shipping company.’

‘Don’t forget your mother,’ Ellen chipped in. ‘This place was her whole life, he couldn’t have done it without her.’ She went across to her husband and kissed his cheek. ‘But that is all in the past, we must look forward to the future, wherever it is.’

Martha tapped on the door. ‘Supper in ten minutes, ma-am?’

Ellen nodded her thanks and turned to her husband. ‘Shall we discuss the child after supper?’

‘What is there to discuss, Ellen?’ William frowned. ‘There can be only one decision. The child is not our responsibility. He has to go back to Anlaby.’ He looked across at Sammi knitting her fingers together as she watched their faces. ‘There will be a rift within the family because of this, Sammi. Isaac and Mildred will be too embarrassed to visit us. Things will not be the same.’

‘They will stop coming anyway, William, now that your mother is no longer here,’ Ellen said softly. ‘She was the thread that kept us all together. Isaac likes to come, but Mildred and Anne hate the weather out here, they complain of the cold even in the summer. They only ever came under sufferance. You can’t blame Sammi!’

‘I wasn’t apportioning blame,’ he reasoned. ‘But you must understand, Sammi. The child can’t stay here.’

‘I
don’t
understand.’ She rose to her feet and burst out impetuously, ‘I don’t understand! They will put him in one of those terrible places. He’ll have no identity, no name, no-one he can call his own.’ She burst into tears.

‘Sammi! Sammi! Be still a moment and listen.’ Her mother came across to her and put her arm around her. ‘He won’t be sent to a charity home. I’ve spoken to Gilbert and he promised me he would speak to his father and to James; he said that something would be done; that they were wrong to let you assume the child’s care.’ She lifted her daughter’s chin so that she would have to look at her. ‘He is not your responsibility, Sammi,’ she said firmly. ‘You cannot become involved.’

Sammi wiped her eyes as she followed her parents into the dining-room. Victoria gave her a look of sympathy, but Sammi put her head down lest she start to cry again. Victoria hadn’t seen the baby,
therefore she couldn’t understand how vulnerable, how dependent, how beautiful he was, with his soft transparent skin and dark eyes. She gave a deep trembling breath.
Mama and Pa are afraid for me. They think I will spoil my chances of marriage, that people will say the child is mine
. She sat down at the table and stared at the soup dish in front of her.
What can I do?

She had always been the scapegrace of the family. Bold and impulsive, she had always drawn the others into her improbable schemes when they were children. Now, her parents were expecting her to behave in an adult manner. Her mother was constantly encouraging her to attend parties and dances where there were eligible young men attending, yet anxious, she knew, that she would make a love match, and not a marriage of convenience.

But I’m not ready for that. I’m not ready to tie myself to a stranger
. She stopped in mid-thought.
The baby is a stranger, but I am involved. I feel bound to him, because no-one else seems to care. James won’t know what to do
, she fretted.
The baby will have to go to a charity home if Uncle Isaac refuses to help. He won’t want to cross Aunt Mildred. And why is she being so stubborn, refusing even to discuss the child? Refusing almost, his very existence! She will, I feel sure, abandon him
.

She finished her soup and waited for the next course: mackerel, freshly caught only this morning by one of the fishermen in the village and baked in a herbed crust of pastry with flour milled by her cousins at Tillington.

I’ll go to Tillington and stay with Uncle Thomas
. She was suddenly inspired.
I will ask his advice. He said everything would turn out all right. That’s what I’ll do! I’ll ask if I can stay with them until I hear from James; they won’t be embarrassed by gossip or angry like Pa is, and while I’m there I’ll search for a good home for the baby myself
.

She looked up and gave such a sweet smile to her
mother across the table, that it was answered by a crease of misgiving across her parent’s forehead.

It won’t be as if I’m running away
, she reasoned, as the idea took hold.
They’ll know I’m perfectly safe with Uncle Thomas and Tom and the others. That’s what I shall do. I’ll go to Tillington
.

Betsy eased back the bolt on the door and slipped out, closing it quietly behind her. It was five o’clock, and the dawn had already broken. Slender streaks of white and rose fingered the wide skies, and a chorus of blackbirds were calling in the elms behind the mill. There was a flurry of tiny wings as a wren flew busily in and out of a hawthorn hedge along one side of the yard, and from a neighbouring farm she could hear the barking of dogs.

She had heard her father and brothers come to bed not an hour ago, when the breeze which had been blowing steadily all through the night, finally stilled. The sails ceased their gyrating, the creaks and groans of the rotating cap settled and the spin of the wallower bevel gear which drove the cast-iron shaft and the great spur wheel ceased, as the massive brake wheel was wedged securely to stop the sails; and the millers could dust themselves down and tumble into bed to sleep like dead men until she roused them again at six o’clock.

She slipped into the garden behind the house and through the gap in the hedge onto the footpath which bordered the field behind. She glanced quickly behind her to make sure that there was no-one about, and then walked swiftly towards Redshaw copse.

Will he be there, or was he only baiting me?
She felt breathless with barely concealed excitement.
Anyway, I don’t care if he isn’t
. She was trying to convince herself, in case he didn’t come, in case Luke Reedbarrow was merely having fun with the miller’s daughter, as he so often called her. She had met him
on the previous day in the village, where she had gone on a message for her father to the wheelwright. He was leaning on a gate, looking into a grassy paddock where sheep were grazing. He’d turned towards her as she passed and gave her a lazy smile, removing the grass stalk that he was chewing from his mouth. He was dressed as if for work with leather leggings and heavy boots, and he had a battered felt hat tipped on the back of his head. She’d merely given him a superior nod and looked away as she passed, but he’d put out his hand to detain her.

‘What’s tha hurry, Miss Betsy? No time to talk? Is tha frightened tha brothers might catch thee talking to common folk?’

She’d stopped then and protested that she did as she pleased and would talk to whomsoever she wished. ‘I’d even talk to somebody like you, if I had a mind,’ she’d said in what she imagined a cutting manner. ‘But I haven’t.’

He’d simply grinned back at her and chewed again on the piece of grass. ‘It’s a bit public here, Miss Betsy, half of ’village would have us married off if they should see us jawing.’

She’d tossed her head and looked at him through lowered lashes. ‘Don’t act the village half-wit, Luke Reedbarrow,’ she’d said derisively. ‘You don’t fool anyone talking the way you do.’ He’d stood up straight when she spoke, and looked down on her. He was huge, bigger than any of her brothers. The top buttons on his flannel shirt were undone and she could see his muscular neck and the dark hair curling on his chest.

She swallowed and felt herself blushing as he looked at her. He had a head of thick fair hair and she found that she was surprised that his chest hair wasn’t the same colour, nonplussed at the realization that she found the sight of it so pleasurable. He asked her to meet him, so that they could just have a little talk, he said. But she had, of course, refused. He’d
persisted, and when she lamely said she was busy all through the day and couldn’t get away, he challengingly suggested meeting at dawn.

‘You said you could do whatever you wanted,’ he said, dropping the broad country accent which he always adopted when talking to her. ‘Go on. Just this once. If you dare.’

The challenge was rashly accepted. She wasn’t going to be dared by such as him. Who did he think he was? She cared not a jot, but she would show him that she could do whatever she wished and meet whomsoever she wanted.