Hell and High Water

  “Patience,” said Anne mildly. “Letty, you must not hurry the work. Small stitches, my dear.”

  Anne’s words fell on deaf ears. Letty was not designed to sit still and sew. Her face turned constantly to the window and the sea beyond: that was where she wanted to be.

  Watching her, Caleb lost patience. “That seam will not hold.” Snatching the work from her, he pulled out her crooked, uneven stitches and began to mend the garment himself. He kept his head down. He didn’t want to see more of Letty’s pity, or meet his aunt’s eyes. If Anne thought Letty’s rowing was unseemly she’d no doubt feel the same about him sewing. The air seemed to thicken with tension as he worked.

  When he was finished he handed the shirt to his aunt for inspection. The neatness of his stitching was enough to make both women’s jaws drop. Looking at Letty’s startled face, Caleb thought that God had played a poor prank on them both. Letty had a sailor’s heart and stomach: if she’d been born a boy she’d no doubt already be at sea. As for him, he’d surely been granted a talent that should rightly have belonged to a woman.

  There wasn’t a word spoken, but that afternoon Caleb became his aunt’s assistant. They laboured steadily in silence. Having seen Letty’s sewing, Caleb knew that the day’s tasks must have been finished in half the time they would usually have taken. There was still some daylight left when they were done. But whether Anne was more grateful or mortified by him working alongside her was hard to tell.

  Caleb would have liked to walk outside for a while alone but he could hear the village children playing in the street, the distant cackle of the women at the well and the laughter of the men in the tavern. He felt too raw to expose himself to their gaze. Instead he stayed inside until nightfall and when Letty and Anne retired to the attic where Dorcas was already sleeping he curled by the fire once more with Pa’s puppets.

  He could pay his way at least: that was some relief. But he’d lived a roving life, enjoying Pa’s lively company, his endless stories and easy laughter. He’d never imagined there would be an end to it. And now he felt himself to be so confined, so constrained within the cottage’s four walls that it was like being slowly buried alive.

  6.

  By the time Caleb arrived at his aunt’s he’d lost track of the days of the week. Indeed he’d been so shocked by Pa’s arrest and all that followed he couldn’t have said with any certainty even which month of the year it now was. But on the second morning he woke in Fishpool Anne declared that it was Sunday and to church they must go.

  Caleb owned only the clothes he stood in and, after his long journey, it was not surprising that he was in no fit state to be seen by a parson.

  Letty was sent for water from the well while Anne turned her attention to Caleb. From an upstairs trunk she fetched the few garments her husband had left on land. When Letty returned he was told to wash. The women kept their backs turned, but he still felt awkward. He and Pa had bathed in streams or swum in rivers. Having to manage with a jug and bowl in such a cramped space fearing that at any moment one of them might swing round and stare was a new and deeply uncomfortable experience. It made him sweat so much that the washing seemed pointless. When he was done he dressed hastily in borrowed clothes. The shirt was too large, as was the coat. The britches would not stay up without a length of cord tied about his middle. He was a ludicrous sight but he was at least respectably clean and that, it seemed, was all that Anne cared about. His aunt then turned her attention to her daughter and Dorcas was scrubbed until she wailed in protest. She was then placed in one corner of the room like a parcel.

  Once Letty was washed to Anne’s satisfaction and dressed in a threadbare, sun-bleached skirt, the four of them set forth.

  Letty led the way to the church, striding ahead without a backward glance. She didn’t want to be seen with him, Caleb thought, and Anne appeared to be equally embarrassed. She busied herself with Dorcas, avoiding the need for conversation with him or indeed anyone else. The villagers who trooped along the lane and up the hill chattered loudly and much of their talk, inevitably, concerned Fishpool’s new arrival. Snatches of it reached Caleb’s ears.

  “Her brother’s child.” “A convict!” “A thief!” “But who was his mother?” “A whore?” “A slave?” “Wrong side of the blanket.” “Bad blood.” “The shame of it!” “Disgusting thing!” “I wouldn’t want him in my house.” “They should put him on a ship. Take him back to where he come from.” “That’s right. Send him to the jungle, I say.”

  No more sense than a gaggle of geese, Pa would have said. He’d have rolled his eyes at their stupidity. Mocked their accents, made some joke, flung his arm around Caleb’s shoulders and begun to tell him an anecdote or story to stop him dwelling on their remarks. Together he and Pa would have shrugged off their talk as meaningless drivel. Anne walked ahead of him, her back stiff, her head turned towards the child on her hip. She said nothing: not to him, not to any of the villagers. All Caleb could do was fix his eyes on the road and keep walking.

  The church was small, low-roofed, with a squat square tower of a kind Caleb had never seen before. It was as if there might have once been a steeple which had buckled and been slowly crushed by the weight of the vast sky.

  The parson stood by the gate, greeting his flock by name as they arrived. Letty was no doubt already inside the building. Anne – who must have heard the villagers’ comments as clearly as Caleb had – held back a little and flushed scarlet as she introduced him to the parson.

  Caleb extended his hand in greeting, but the parson did not shake it. Instead he stared in evident horror at the open palm as if searching for evidence of the sinner’s blood that must flow through Caleb’s veins.

  Disconcerted to be so obviously shunned, Caleb turned away and found himself face to face with the parson’s wife – a small, mouse-like woman who began to babble with apparent nervousness.

  “Your name is Caleb, is it not? I gather you have had a long journey to get here, and I am so sorry to hear of your dreadful misfortunes. Are you well enough now? Are you settled at your aunt’s?”

  Her eagerness to talk was as disconcerting as her husband’s coldness. Caleb started to reply but was then distracted by the loud clatter of hooves and wheels as a large, open-topped carriage bowled around the corner of the lane and came to a halt by the church gate.

  The mere sight of the vehicle caused both the parson and his wife to stand stiffly upright and Anne to turn and run with Dorcas up the path and into the church along with the rest of the straggling villagers.

  Caleb did not move. He was intrigued to know who had such a powerful effect on these people. He’d never laid eyes on the wealthy gentleman who sat in the back of the carriage but still there was something about him that seemed familiar. The curve of his cheekbones, the line of his nose: both brought someone to mind, but the more he tried to remember who it could be, the more the memory eluded him.

  There was a lady seated beside the gentleman, expensively but not elegantly dressed. Both bonnet and gown seemed designed more to scream aloud their vast cost than to show her face or figure to their best advantage.

  Sitting next to the driver was somebody Caleb had no difficulty in identifying. It was the horseman in the powdered wig he’d encountered at Norton Manor: the man who’d suggested Caleb was the son of a whore and declared that Pa had died of the pox. The man who’d looked suddenly pensive when he learned of Pa’s transportation…

  “Who is he?” Caleb asked the parson’s wife, nodding in his direction.

  “That is Sir Robert Fairbrother of Norton Manor, and his wife beside him.” Her voice was high and tight. “Your aunt was maid to her before she married.”

  “No, I meant who is the man beside the driver?”

  “Oh … that’s William Benson, his steward. Why do you ask?”

  “I passed him in the road.”

  “He would have been out on his master’s business, no doubt. Sir Robert’s estate is of large extent: it comprises every dwelli
ng in Fishpool.” Her voice dropped to a whisper and she added, “The parsonage too.”

  Caleb didn’t respond. He was watching William Benson, who’d leapt down to open the carriage door.

  “You must go in now,” the parson’s wife urged Caleb. She flapped her hands at him as if trying to shoo him away. “Go quickly. Sir Robert likes his tenants to be gathered and waiting when he enters the church.”

  Does he indeed? thought Caleb. He did what he was told but with some resentment, walking steadily but not hurriedly up the path and sliding into a pew at the rear of the church beside his aunt. The moment the congregation heard Sir Robert and Lady Fairbrother enter the porch they bent their heads as if they were praying. Caleb was astonished. Who did this man think he was, that everyone in the village bowed down before him? Pa was afraid of no man. Well, he would be the same. Caleb sat stubbornly bolt upright until he felt a slap across the back of his head.

  It was William Benson. “Show your respect, boy.”

  Furious, Caleb started to get to his feet, but Anne seized his arm, her fingers pressing into Caleb’s flesh. Her face was deathly white and she looked at him desperately with eyes so like Pa’s that Caleb’s heart missed a beat. It was the same look Pa had given him inside the gaol. He forced himself to relax. To slump in the pew. To lower his head. From the corner of his eye he watched Benson strut down the aisle, proud as a bantam rooster. He was followed by Sir Robert and his wife, slow and stately as a pair of galleons in full sail. When they reached their family pew they settled themselves on silken cushions. While the rest of the congregation had to sit still and pay attention to the parson’s every tedious word, Sir Robert and Lady Fairbrother shut their eyes and commenced a nap that lasted the duration of the service. After the sermon, the congregation prayed for the souls of the dead, and most particularly for those lost at sea – a long litany of names that meant nothing to Caleb. Sir Robert and his lady were not required to utter a word. They did not pray, they did not sing and at the end of it all they were gently roused by William Benson. They stood and the parson’s flock kept heads bowed once more as the couple passed along the aisle towards the door.

  The parson may have preached on the debt mankind owed to almighty God, but it seemed to Caleb that here, in Fishpool’s small church, Sir Robert Fairbrother was far and away the more important deity.

  7.

  Time passed, and Caleb’s life fell into a pattern.

  Daily, Letty watched the ships sail over the bar and went in pursuit of those whose captains might be in need of new clothes. Daily, Anne protested when her stepdaughter jumped into the little boat and deftly turned its head into the currents that would carry her speedily to Tawpuddle. Daily, Caleb worked alongside his aunt all the hours of daylight. With two proficient stitchers in the cottage she was able to take in more sewing and finish it more quickly than before. Letty did the heavy work – hauling water, boiling shirts and sheets in the copper, wringing them out to dry – without a murmur of complaint, but Caleb could feel her resentment simmering beneath the surface. He might be paying for his keep but he was a cuckoo in the nest.

  He felt he could breathe freely only when Letty was gone from the cottage. When she was there she wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t speak to him. She’d barely said a word since that first night when he’d lost his temper so badly. He probably should have apologized but what did she expect, staring at him like that? He wanted to put it right for his aunt’s sake if not for Letty’s but didn’t know how to begin. And the longer he left it, the worse it became. A chasm of silence yawned between them that grew broader and deeper with each day.

  Dorcas, however, was a different matter. The child had grown used to his presence before the first week had passed. She’d happily crawl across the floor and play at his feet or hold up her arms so he could lift her onto his lap. Sometimes she fell asleep there and her trust, her simple, straightforward acceptance touched him more than he’d have believed possible.

  Seeing her daughter becoming so fond of Caleb pleased Anne. As they sat side by side sewing for hours at a stretch the sharp edges of their initial awkwardness with each other softened.

  His aunt, Caleb discovered, was an intensely private person – shy, reticent – so different to her brother! Pa had possessed the ability to fall into easy conversation with anybody, from bishop to beggar. Caleb, on the other hand, had never been able to converse freely with strangers. Oh, he’d tried a fair few times. But a fair few times were enough to put him off for life. People had looked at him as though he was a talking horse, or a flying pig. If they’d answered him at all they’d spoken slowly and very loudly, as if he was a total simpleton. Let them rot in hell, then! Other people’s conversation was something he could do without!

  But now, with Anne, he tried to imitate Pa’s manner. He made observations, asked questions, told stories of his roving life with Pa. He tried to draw her out but she wouldn’t speak of his father, however much Caleb tried to probe her. He came at the subject from every conceivable angle, but she never rose to the bait. One word. Two. Then silence. She would not speak of her past either, of her parents or of the childhood she’d shared with her brother. She wouldn’t even speak of her time in service and only once said anything relating to her husband.

  Caleb had tried a question he’d sometimes heard Pa ask – “Your husband. How did you meet?”

  “Oh … at Norton Manor,” she replied.

  “He was a servant there too?”

  “No! Edward has always been a sailor.”

  “So how did he come to be there?”

  It was like trying to tempt a snail from its shell. Bit by bit he found out that Sir Robert Fairbrother – in a great show of charitable benevolence – held a gala day each spring for the poor and unfortunate of the parish. Children whose mothers had died in childbirth or whose fathers had drowned at sea; widows struggling to keep their families fed and clothed – all were invited to the manor for an afternoon’s entertainment. Letty, having lost her mother, attended annually and one year had been escorted there by her father.

  Edward Avery had seen Anne for the first time when she was crossing the lawn bringing a shawl to Lady Fairbrother and … well, he’d set his heart on marrying her there and then. As she uttered those words Anne blushed deeply and Caleb suddenly felt uncomfortable. He’d touched on something intimate and didn’t want to know more. He didn’t ask any further questions about his uncle and she didn’t volunteer any further information.

  The only subject on which they could talk freely was literature – the writings of Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe, of Alexander Pope and William Shakespeare.

  Pa had taught Caleb to read when he was small but books had been a luxury they could never afford until last winter, when they’d drowned in a sea of them!

  They’d been in Porlock’s when Pa had heard tell of a country house a day’s walk from the city. Its owner had died and the heir lived in the north of England and was unable to make the journey until spring, when the roads would be passable. The place had been shut up and the servants sent away: Pa had no qualms about making use of it. Standing outside, looking up at its grand facade, he’d said, “No sense in us freezing to death while a place like this stands deserted. We’ll be keeping it warm for its owner!”

  It had been an easy task to break in and during the cold, dark months they had lived in luxury. Feather beds, linen sheets, roaring fires. And the library! Poetry, prose, plays – a great profusion of literature at their disposal! It was there that Pa had carved his new puppets and while he worked Caleb read aloud to him. They had been shipwrecked with Robinson Crusoe and travelled to strange and exotic lands with Lemuel Gulliver. They had laughed and wept over the comedies and tragedies of Shakespeare.

  Caleb did not mention the country house to his aunt but he spoke of the books he and Pa had shared. While they sewed, he and Anne discussed whether Brutus was right to lift a knife against Caesar, and whether it was Macbeth or his lady who was more to blame
for the murder of the king. It was in these moments he caught glimpses of the softly spoken, earnest and intelligent girl she’d once been. He could picture her and Pa debating matters of prose and poetry, for her mind was the match of her brother’s.

  Only once did Anne let down her guard. They had been talking of The Winter’s Tale, of the jealous king and his doomed queen, of their baby abandoned on the shores of Bohemia. A silence had briefly fallen while Caleb re-threaded his needle. When he looked up, Anne was gazing at him, a strange expression on her face. She was in a kind of reverie as though she saw not him, but something beyond. When she came back to the present she started.

  “I am sorry,” she said. “I did not mean to stare. I simply look for your father in you.”

  “And do you see him?”

  “Yes. Oh yes, indeed!”

  Caleb smiled, relieved. To be like Pa was all he’d ever hoped for.

  Anne said, “You are every inch his son. I wish…”

  Her voice died away. She bit her lip. She seemed poised on the brink of speech.

  Here was his opportunity! There was so much he wanted to know, if he could only ask the right question – one that would not startle her back into her shell…

  But then they heard the familiar bump of boat against jetty and Letty was there, hot, tired, irritable, dropping a pile of stinking clothes onto the floor. Anne’s head was already bent back to her sewing. Caleb threw a glare in Letty’s direction. She didn’t meet his eyes but the way her skin reddened told him she’d felt every ounce of his fury.

  8.

  The season slid from summer towards autumn, one day much like another, with only two events of consequence.

  The first occurred one afternoon in late August. Letty was in Tawpuddle; Caleb and Anne were working in tranquil silence and Dorcas was sleeping when they were disturbed by a sudden knock on the door.