The Fleethaven Trilogy (68 page)

He flinched as if her words were physical blows. He caught her by the arms and held her fast so that she could not turn away from him, held her so tightly that she was forced to listen to him. ‘Katie, don’t say that to me. Not to me. Me dad wouldn’t lie to me. He must know . . .’

‘Mr Eland, ya mean,’ she said cuttingly. ‘He’s not ya dad, is he? Any more than Mester Godfrey’s mine. We’ve both got
step
dads – now.’

Danny winced and Kate was immediately contrite. She was lashing out blindly in her pain, and hurting the one who was already suffering along with her.

She closed her eyes but fresh tears forced themselves from under her eyelids and coursed down her cheeks. ‘Oh, Danny, Danny. I can’t bear it. It – hurts so much.’ She flung herself against him, wrapping her arms around his waist, burying her head against him again.

‘I’ve always loved you, Katie, and I always will,’ he said gently.

‘But – but can’t we be together? Somehow?’ She raised her head to look into his face, her mouth slightly open, hanging on to his words like a drowning woman reaching for the hand of her rescuer, willing him to make it come right.

But Danny could not make it come right; there was only one thing he could promise her and it was all they had left to cling to. With dreadful finality, he said again, ‘We can’t marry, but they can’t stop us loving each other. Not ever, Katie, not
ever
!’

‘Oh, lovey, do you hate me?’

The back door of the Elands’ cottage had opened to Kate’s knock. Beth stood there, her eyes red and swollen. Kate threw herself against the older woman, her arms clasped around Beth’s thickening waist, and buried her head against the comforting bosom. She could feel Beth trembling.

‘Oh Katie, Katie, can you ever forgive me?’

Kate lifted her head and looked into the older woman’s face. She didn’t know what to say.

Gently, Beth steered Kate towards the range. She sat down in the chair while Kate sank down on to the rug, her head resting against the older woman’s knees. For a long moment Beth stared into the flames and then, in her soft voice, she began, haltingly, to explain. As the memories, both happy and sad, came flooding back, her voice became stronger.

‘I loved Matthew,’ Beth began simply, ‘I think I always had – right from a child . . .’

Like me and Danny, Kate thought bitterly, but she remained silent.

‘ . . . Even though he was a bit of a flirt . . .’ A fond smile curved Beth’s mouth. It was a kinder judgment than Robert Eland had given to Danny, and despite all the unhappiness that flirting had caused, Beth still loved Matthew enough to forgive him.

‘When Esther arrived at Sam Brumby’s farm – well – it was in his nature to try his luck with her. She was a very pretty girl and so fiery, she was a challenge to him. He could never resist a challenge.’

Kate looked up. ‘How d’you mean?’

‘For a time, Esther would have none of him, but the more she held him off, the more he wanted her.’ Beth’s voice dropped to a whisper as she admitted, ‘That’s where I made my mistake . . .’

Kate pressed her cheek closer to Beth’s knee but could think of nothing to say.

‘She wouldn’t give in to him, told him she wouldn’t give in to him – nor to any man – till she was wed.’

Kate was silent, knowing all this must have been true. It was her mother’s strict code of life – it still was! ‘Ya don’t give ya’sen to a man till you’ve a wedding ring on ya finger, girl,’ she’d told Kate repeatedly. ‘Dun’t ever bring a bastard into the world!’

Beth was sighing softly, but continuing. ‘Then Sam Brumby died and – to be fair – I don’t think ya mam had anywhere else to go.’

‘What about me grandad? Why couldn’t she go to him?’

Beth looked down at Kate’s upturned face. ‘Ya’ll have to ask ya mam about that, lovey . . .’

‘She won’t tell me anything.’

‘Well, perhaps ya grandad, then. Maybe – maybe he’s the one to ask.’

Yes, Kate thought grimly, she would certainly have some questions to ask her grandfather. Intuitively she knew that there was more to all this than even Beth Eland was telling her.

‘The Squire would only let her stay on the farm if she were married – so that the tenancy agreement could be in a man’s name. So – she and Matthew were married all quicklike. I dun’t know to this day how they managed it without any of us knowing.’

‘You – you didn’t
know!’
Kate was appalled.

‘No. I didn’t know till Matthew moved his things from – from this very house.’

‘He lived here? In this cottage?’

Beth smiled sadly. ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘He was born here and lived here with his parents till they both died. Then, for a while, he lived on his own. Of course, Grannie Harris next door and me saw he was all right for food and his washing . . .’

‘Where did you live?’

‘Next door.’ Beth indicated the adjacent cottage on the other side, where her father, Dan Hanley, the coastguard, still lived.

‘And Mester Eland?’

Beth’s eyes filled with sudden tears. ‘On – on a boat on the river bank.’ She glanced out of the cottage window to the place on the river bank where the huge hulk of a boat had once rested, shored up on poles and sleepers, half-in, half-out of the water.

Vague pictures, fleeting and disjointed, were flitting through Kate’s mind. Memories from childhood that she could glimpse in her mind but not quite hold on to and understand.

‘Did Matthew marry her to get the farm, then?’

Beth shook her head. ‘No – no, I don’t believe he understood what – what ya mam was up to.’

Kate’s head jerked up. She felt the coolness of Beth’s deep sigh brush her cheek. ‘He wanted her – lusted after her and she – she took advantage of that to get him to marry her so she could get the farm.’

‘You – you mean it was her fault?’

‘In a way but – but try not to be too hard on her, Katie. It’s very difficult for us to understand how someone – a young girl of eighteen or so – must have felt with no family, no home. Ask yourself what you would have done in the same circumstances.’

Kate stared up at Beth in surprise. ‘You’re – you’re taking her side.’

‘I’m – trying to tell you it fairly. But it’s not easy for me.’

‘So – all this – all that happened – that’s why you never speak to each other. You – you must be very bitter?’

‘Oh yes, I’m bitter all right.’ Beth’s mouth tightened and for a moment there was a flash of fire in her dark brown eyes, but it was gone in a moment as she sighed and added, ‘It’s funny though, if things had been different – we might have been friends, yar mam and me.’ A wry smile twisted the corner of her mouth. ‘And despite everything, we always seem to come together if one of us has trouble.’

‘How – how d’ya mean?’

‘Matthew went off to the war and was reported killed. Ya mam brought me a photograph of him. I – I still have it. It was a kind gesture. I’ve never forgotten that.’

Kate frowned. ‘But I – I thought me dad drowned. Here – at the Point?’

‘Matthew came back from the war a broken wreck of a man. Pitiful to see him, it was. Ya mam was wonderful then. She devoted herself to caring for him and he improved beyond what any of us ever thought possible. And that was down to Esther; with her strength and determination, she pulled him through. But she – she sacrificed her own chance of happiness to look after Matthew. I thought then, that somehow, in her own way, she must have loved him to do that.’

‘What do you mean, “her own chance of happiness”?’

Beth avoided Kate’s direct gaze, reluctant to answer. ‘She – she’d met Jonathan in the war – when ya dad was away.’

‘Oh – I see.’ Kate said flatly. She didn’t see it all, at least not clearly, but she could sense that Beth would not be drawn on that part any further. ‘And me dad – me real dad?
Did
he drown?’

Beth’s voice was a hoarse whisper. ‘There was a dreadful storm in the winter of nineteen-twenty. Matthew knew the boat we lived on wouldn’t stand up to the gales and the surging tide. He – drowned trying to rescue us – his son and – and me.’ Beth bowed her head and covered her face with her hands.

Kate gasped. This woman’s love for Matthew Hilton was still, even now, as strong as ever. Tentatively Kate put out her hand and touched Beth’s arm.

‘What about Mester Eland? Where – how does he fit into all this?’

Now there was a tender, loving smile on Beth’s mouth, a smile tinged with gratitude. ‘He loved me, he’d always loved me. As great a love as any man could have for a woman, Kate. When he knew I was expecting Matthew’s child, he married me to give Danny a name.’

Kate’s own voice broke. ‘He must have loved you very much to do that.’

Beth nodded. ‘Oh, he did. He still does. And I have loved him, truly I have, but in – in a very different way to the way I loved Matthew.’

She sighed deeply. ‘Robert’s been a good husband and a wonderful father to Danny, but he’s always been very resentful towards Matthew – and towards your mam. That’s why I’m glad to have been able to tell you about it mesen.’

Kate nodded. She was glad too, for the version Danny had heard from Robert Eland treated her mother and father far more harshly than did Beth – the woman who had been hurt most of all. Yet, it was understandable, Robert Eland, too, had suffered.

So it was told – the whole sorry tale. And now Kate understood, if not every little detail, then enough to know that what they said was true.

She and Danny were indeed half-brother and sister.

‘Has
she
told you it all, then? What’s she said about me, eh? ’Spect I’m the bad woman in it all . . .’

‘Why . . .?’ Kate’s voice was a whisper, but her eyes held her mother’s gaze relentlessly. ‘Why didn’t you all just tell us the truth? If we’d grown up with it – knowing – we’d have accepted it. Been just friends, been,’ the bitterness crept into her tone, ‘been brother and sister!’

She was standing facing her mother across the kitchen table.

Esther, hands on hips, her mouth a grim line, said, ‘There’d have been no need for you to know, if you’d done as I’d told you . . .’

‘You didn’t want us to know ’cos it was your fault . . .’

‘Oh aye, I thought as much! Trying to set you against ya own mother . . .’

‘Who? Danny’s mam? Oh no, dun’t blame her. She even told me not to think badly of you; said I should understand how it must have been for you with no family and nowhere to go . . .’

‘She had no right to tell you anything about me . . .’

‘She stuck up for you, Mother! Her, of all people!’

Esther blinked.

‘Yes, that’s shocked you, ain’t it? And she wouldn’t tell me much about you, either. Said I’d to ask you or me grandad.’

‘Ya’ll do no such thing. Ya’ll not say anything to ya grandad. It’ll upset him.’

‘Then you tell me. Go on,
you
tell me.’

‘No,’ Esther said through gritted teeth. ‘It dun’t concern you. You know now all ya need to know, an’ that’s too much! Ya’ll learn no more from me.’

‘Well, I’ll find out. One day I’ll find out everything. As for now – I’m going away. You wanted me gone four years ago, so now you’ll get your wish. I’m going!’

Suddenly the fight seemed to drain out of her mother and she sat down heavily on a chair, leaned her elbows on the kitchen table and dropped her head into her hands. ‘You don’t have to go, Katie. Not now.’

‘Oh yes, I do,’ Kate leaned towards her mother as if to drive the hurtful shaft in harder. ‘I can’t stay here – seeing him every day. Not the way we feel about each other. Mother – we’re in love. We want – wanted . . .’ her voice broke a little as deliberately she changed the tense, ‘to get married.’

Esther gave a soft groan. ‘I wouldn’t have had this happen to you – or Danny – for the world. I tried, really I did, in the only way I could think of to keep you apart. But the harder I tried, the more you seemed drawn to each other . . .’ She broke off, raised her head and looked straight at Kate, a sudden urgency in her tone. ‘He – he hasn’t – touched you, has he?’

There was silence in the kitchen except for the ticking clock and the hissing of the red-hot wood in the grate as Esther waited for the answer that was so important to her, meant everything to her.

Kate stared back at her mother, holding her breath. She had it in her power at this moment to wound her mother deeply; to plunge a knife into her heart in retaliation for the hurt she and Danny were feeling; to punish Esther for the actions of her youth which had brought about this tragedy.

She opened her mouth to speak, to say, ‘Yes, yes, yes, he’s touched me! We’ve lain together. We’re man and wife in all but name . . .’ But she couldn’t do it. All the years of love that lay between Kate and her mother, all the values that Esther had instilled into her daughter and Kate’s own natural, inborn honesty, would not allow her to tell such a dreadful lie. Slowly, Kate let out the breath she was holding and, with it, some of the resentment against her mother. After all, she had not been solely responsible either for what had happened years ago or for keeping it secret. Danny had been kept in ignorance too. Yet Kate could not blame Beth Eland so much; she had more to risk by telling her son the true circumstances of his birth. She must have feared losing his respect, perhaps even his love.

So, although shreds of resentment against her mother still remained for she believed Esther could, and should, have told her the truth years ago, now Kate said heavily, ‘No, Mam. We haven’t – done anything.’

‘Thank the Lord!’ Esther murmured.

Then, as Kate added, ‘But I have to go away, Mam. At least, for a while,’ all Esther could reply sadly, was, ‘Kate, oh, Katie.’

That night as Kate lay in bed, her knees pulled up to her chin, she cradled the whelk shell in her hand.

It was all she had left of Danny; and all she would ever have.

She gave a sob into the darkness as she remembered suddenly, and tears trickled down her cheeks.

Tomorrow was her birthday.

SEPTEMBER, 1939

‘W
ar! Oh no! Not again. Not another one.’

Kate watched in amazement as her mother stood in the middle of the yard, staring at her husband and wringing her hands in agitation. She could not remember having ever seen her so distressed. Angry, yes, many times, but the sight of tears in her mother’s green eyes shocked Kate.