Rosa's Island (11 page)

He wanted to kiss her cheek but reluctantly drew away from her. ‘Let's see what else is in there.'

She rummaged again in the chest and brought out the crisp white cotton sheets, which she looked at and then wrapped up again. ‘Shan't need those just yet.' She gave a shaky laugh.

‘Not till you find somebody special?'

She raised her eyes which were still bright with tears, and looked at him. ‘Not till I'm ready,' she said.

In a corner at the bottom of the chest was a small box tied with ribbon. She opened it and blinked her eyes as the gold of her mother's
wedding ring glittered in the dull light of the lantern. ‘Gran must have put it there,' she said huskily. ‘But I'd forgotten.'

‘Will you wear it?' he asked softly.

‘Not yet,' she whispered. ‘One day I will,' and she returned it to its box and put it back into the chest.

She found the squeeze box and they laughed as it made a shrill squawk as they pressed it in and out. ‘Couldn't dance to that.' Matthew grinned in the shadows. ‘No matter how we tried.'

‘What's this?' Rosa pulled out a bundle of papers and peered at them. ‘It's foreign writing.'

Matthew took them from her and held them under the light. ‘It looks sort of official,' he said. ‘As if it's legal jargon. Here's a signature,' he said suddenly. ‘Look, at 'bottom of this page.'

Rosa peered over his shoulder and then took the papers back. ‘It says Decimus Miguel Carlos. They're my father's!' she gasped. ‘I don't remember being told his name. Gran just called him – your da.
Decimus
Miguel
,' she repeated. ‘Decimus Miguel.' She smiled. ‘Now I feel as if I know him.'

Maggie's voice called from below. ‘Are you going to be all night up there? There's a right old draught coming from 'trap door. It's blowing 'fire out and Da's complaining.'

‘We're just coming,' they both called, and Rosa closed up the chest, putting the papers back underneath the linen, but leaving the squeeze box and the shawl out to take downstairs.
‘I'll come back up another day,' she said. ‘I'll be able to get up 'ladder on my own. Thank you, Matthew,' she murmured.

‘It's no trouble,' he muttered. ‘Just tell me when you want to come up and I'll get 'ladder out for you.'

‘No, I meant – thank you for understanding, when I was upset. For not minding and thinking me silly.'

‘I do mind,' he said gruffly. ‘I don't like to think you're unhappy.'

‘I'm not,' she said, and touched his arm. ‘It was because of finding Ma's shawl. It stirred me up. I'm not unhappy.'

He helped her to her feet. They were standing on the same joist and were very close. He bent his head low to avoid the roof trusses and touched her face with his fingers as if wiping away her tears. ‘That's all right then,' he said hoarsely and reaching up for the lantern, he turned away. ‘We'd better go down.'

‘So what did you find?' Maggie asked when they went into the kitchen. ‘Any treasure?'

‘No,' Rosa said quickly. ‘Just 'linen as Gran said, and the squeeze box, and this shawl which belonged to my ma.'

‘I remember it!' Mrs Drew reached for it. ‘She said it was a present from your da.' She held it up to admire it. ‘How beautiful it is.'

Mr Drew put down his newspaper and stared at the shawl, then reached across to finger it. He said nothing and returned to his paper, only didn't turn the page.

‘It's foreign, isn't it?' Maggie said. ‘You'd get
nowt like that round here. He must have brought it from Spain.'

Mr Drew cleared his throat and rattled his paper.

‘Put it on, Rosa,' Maggie said. ‘Let's see it on you.'

Rosa draped it around her shoulders. It felt lovely, soft and silky, and she whirled around to show it to advantage.

‘That's enough!' Mr Drew barked. ‘We'll have no shaming vanity, no ostentatious behaviour in this house.'

Rosa stood still, the shawl slipping off one shoulder, but said nothing, only stared at him. Maggie and her mother remained silent too, but Matthew oppposed his father as Henry usually did when he was here. ‘It's onny thing she has of her ma's,' he declared. ‘She's doing no harm, Da.'

Mr Drew gazed in astonishment at Matthew, who rarely crossed him, then picked up his paper again. ‘I'll say nowt more about it,' he muttered.

Presently Mr Drew put down his paper. ‘I'm off to bed.' He consulted his pocket watch. ‘It's late. Half past nine. We've to be up early, Mrs Drew. I'm going into Hedon. There's a farmers' meeting.'

‘I'll come with you, Fayther,' Maggie said. ‘We need some things from 'haberdashers.'

‘Aye, but you'll have a wait. Meeting generally goes on overlong when they start yammering away.'

‘I shan't mind,' she said. ‘I can look around 'town or sit and listen, can't I?'

‘If you've a mind to.' He took himself off to bed and the atmosphere immediately lightened.

‘Aunt Ellen!' Rosa said. ‘Did you know my father's name? His first name, I mean?'

Mrs Drew considered. ‘Yes – it was something like Michael, I think. I could never quite understand his accent, he seemed to talk so quick, but Mary, your mother, called him – now what was it?' She frowned in concentration. Then her face cleared. ‘Miguel!' she said. ‘That's what it was. Miguel.'

Rosa cast a surreptitious glance at Matthew, who smiled at her. She didn't want to tell anyone else yet about the papers, and she knew that Matthew wouldn't. I'll find out what they are, she thought. But I'll have to go to someone who understands languages, and there's no-one on Sunk Island who can do that.

Maggie took the reins of the mare as she and her father rattled along in the trap down the long straight road off Sunk Island and on to Ottringham in Holderness. There were no large towns in Holderness, just a scattering of small villages and hamlets across the wide agricultural plain. The people of Holderness were known for their straight-talking, unpretentious, no-nonsense ways, similar in fact to the inhabitants of Sunk Island who in years gone by had come from the mainland.

But the isolation of Sunk Island had given the people who lived there a sense of exclusiveness from the mainlanders. They had little need for outside assistance; they grew their own food,
milked their own cows, made butter and cheese, killed their own pigs and gathered eggs from their ducks, geese and hens, and for their needs of household pots and pans, needles and thread, these they bought from the pedlars who came, bringing such requirements and the gossip from Holderness.

Mr Drew and his sons made occasional visits into Holderness and sometimes into the port of Hull, when the business of farming, the shipping of wheat and the buying of animals necessitated it, but for Maggie, who was always busy around the home and farm, a trip into the small market town of Hedon was a rare treat.

She was restless, and had been since the conversation she had overheard between her mother and Rosa about the possibility of Jim marrying Rosa. Ridiculous, she'd thought. To think of a bright young girl like Rosa marrying such a dull fellow. For although she was fond of her brother, she often grew impatient at his tardy ways.

But then she had listened to the quarrelling of Henry and his father and knew that nothing would resolve the differences between them, and her spirits had sunk when it struck her that that was to be her life for as long as she could foresee. Her mother was ill and not likely to improve, and I'll be left, she'd brooded in her lonely bed, with three men to look after, for she discounted the personable Matthew, who would no doubt marry in time; three men who will never agree: an oppressor, a melancholic and a drunk. And they will all always want their supper on the table.

Her father was silent for most of the journey
into Hedon, with just an occasional comment on the state of the land about them. The harvest was gathered in and women could be seen in some of the fields gleaning the stubble.

‘That silk shawl,' he said suddenly. ‘Was that where she found it? Up in 'loft?'

‘What?' Maggie was lost in her own thoughts and at first didn't understand his meaning. ‘Rosa, do you mean? Yes! Is it silk? I didn't realize.'

He shuffled on the bench. ‘Aye, I reckon it is. Not cotton anyway.'

Silk! she thought. I've onny ever seen silk in 'haberdashers and that was when I went into Hull, years ago.

‘Her da must have brought it from Spain,' she said. ‘Did he go back there? I mean, after he'd first come to Sunk Island?'

‘I don't know. I hardly knew him,' he muttered, adding abruptly, ‘was there owt else up there?'

She shook her head. ‘I don't think so. Just linen and a tea service, and that old squeeze box which you saw.' She couldn't help but add the latter with a hint of spite, for she felt he had been unfair to Rosa.

He grunted and remained silent until they reached the town where she dropped him off at one of the inns, where the meeting was to be held, and he told her to meet him later. She drove the trap into the marketplace and although it wasn't market day there was a busy crowd of women who, like her, had come into the town with their menfolk. They were gathered in
small groups gossiping and laughing, and some greeted Maggie. Because there were few of them, most of the Sunk Islanders were known in Hedon and the surrounding district.

‘How's thy ma?' one woman called to her.

‘Middling,' Maggie said. ‘Her back's bad.'

‘Just you at home now?' asked another. ‘I hear as how your Delia's gone to Hornsea. Cold draughty place is Hornsea,' she added, pursing her lips. ‘Though I dare say it's healthy. Not so damp as Sunk Island anyway!'

Maggie smiled and moved on. It was a fallacy that always followed them. Because Sunk Island had come up from the river, it was generally believed by others that the land was damp and that the population would never thrive, even though the crops did.

‘G'morning!' A bearded man in a tweed jacket and cord breeches touched his cap as he went by and she nodded in response. He looked familiar but she couldn't place him. She collected a few items of shopping and then went to have a cup of tea in a tea shop, and joined some of the other women who were gathered there.

Mrs Brown, a farmer's wife from Keyingham, moved up at a table to make room for her. ‘Don't have 'fruit cake,' she whispered. ‘It's not a patch on what you can make at home. But 'scones are not bad, they'd be better for a bit more fruit but they're today's baking.'

Maggie ordered tea and a slice of bread and ham and whilst she was waiting for it the woman chatted, giving out information about her family and how well they were prospering.

‘I hear that your brother's making great strides at Marsh Farm. Good crops are they?'

Maggie agreed that the harvest had been good.

‘But he's not got wed? Still relying on his ma for his home comforts?'

‘Yes,' Maggie agreed again. ‘He is.'

‘He's getting ower old,' Mrs Brown said. ‘If he doesn't look sharp all young women'll be gone. Though I daresay there'd be somebody who'd tek him if he looked about him. He'd be a good catch, any road, with all that land to his name.'

She sized Maggie up and down and remarked, ‘You'll not be bothered now, I expect – about getting wed, I mean? You're leaving it a bit late anyway,' she laughed. ‘And there's nobody else at home now to tek over, is there? Except that foreign lass. She's still with you, I reckon?'

‘She's not foreign, Mrs Brown.' Maggie hid her fury at the woman's slight of her marriage prospects, and poured her tea. ‘She was born on Sunk Island same as all her family, except for her da.'

‘Aye.' The woman frowned. ‘Well, that's what I meant. He were foreign, weren't he? I used to see him on 'odd time or two wi' Mr Drew.'

‘You saw him with my da?' Maggie was amazed. Her father had said he hardly knew him, and however would Mrs Brown have remembered from so long ago? ‘When?' she asked. ‘When did you see him?'

‘A few times. I used to go wi' our Jack on his waggon when he was loading corn onto 'boats at Stone Creek and I saw 'em then. Handsome, he
was, foreigner I mean, not your da! Aye, and I saw his ship once, moored out on 'river. Fine-looking vessel.'

Maggie considered this information and thought how odd that her father had never mentioned it, especially when Rosa was a child and so eager to hear stories of her father.

‘And,' Mrs Brown waved a finger at her, ‘tell you what I've allus thought peculiar! That day he disappeared, when he was supposed to be riding into Hull. Well, we were out in 'fields all that day and into 'evening, every one of us, bairns an' all, and he'd have had to pass our farm on 'road out. Couldn't avoid it, 'cos Ottringham road wasn't fit to travel on in them days. Well, nobody saw him pass, though we saw Mr Jennings's hoss go t'other way a week later.' She took a deep drink of tea. ‘I've allus thought it odd, that. A mystery. It's as if he niver left Sunk Island.'

When Maggie had finished in the tea shop she walked along the main street towards the inn where she hoped the meeting might be finished, but she could hear the sound of raised voices inside and guessed that it was still continuing. She hesitated outside. Her father wouldn't be pleased if she went in to look for him, he was adamant that his daughters should never frequent such iniquitous places.

She was feeling a little cold, having left her warm shawl in the trap, and was just debating whether to go and get it and wait there for her father, when a figure brushed past her.

‘Beg your pardon.' It was the same man she
had seen previously, the one who had seemed familiar. He took his cap off, revealing thick dark hair with greying sideburns. ‘It's Maggie Drew, isn't it?' he said, giving her a wide grin. ‘I thought I recognized you.'