I took to visiting her every day, after I’d spent hours gutting the wretched fish. Oh Lord, the very smell of them made me retch now, and the arch of their slimy bodies against my hands made me shudder. I dreamed of those popping eyes and gaping mouths night after night. When I was finished, I’d wash my hands for a full five minutes under the pump, using my own cake of soap – but I still fancied I smelled fish whenever I held them to my nose. My hands grew so red raw I could scarcely sew at nights, and it hurt when I clicked my new knitting needles.
Lizzie was helping me make a shawl. I’d call at the inn mid afternoon, when all the fishermen were slumbering. Tobias himself often lumbered upstairs to take a nap after drinking several pints of his own ale at lunch time. Lizzie and I could hear him snoring above our heads as we sat together in the kitchen.
‘Men! It’s hard to distinguish them from pigs sometimes,’ said Lizzie, helping me unpick two rows because I’d dropped a stitch.
I spluttered with laughter, but added loyally, ‘Except my father.’
‘Aye, Bobbie’s a fine man, I’ll grant you that. He used to be a wild one – but Katherine’s kept him on a very tight rein since they were wed.’
‘Was he really wild?’ I asked anxiously.
‘I’ll say,’ said Lizzie. ‘He was always the boldest of lads, utterly fearless. He was the clear leader of all the boys – and as for the girls . . .’
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. ‘He didn’t go after girls like – like Matthew Stevens?’ I blurted out, tormented by the thought of Father winking and grinning and jumping on all the girls.
‘No, no! Not at all! That Stevens lad is a menace – steer clear of him.’
‘Mina says he’s her sweetheart.’
‘She’s still a silly little girl, for all she’s full grown. No, Bobbie wasn’t remotely like the Stevens lad, chasing all the girls. The girls chased him. My goodness, Hetty, he was several years younger than me, but even I’d have chased after him. He was slimmer then, a whip of a lad, but hard muscled with work. His hair was brighter too, and he wore it curling on his neck, and his eyes were the clearest blue. No wonder Evie fell for him.’
‘But he left her!’ I said. ‘He is my father and I think him very wonderful, but I cannot forgive him for leaving poor Mama.’
‘That’s men for you,’ said Lizzie.
‘If only he’d stayed. He should have married Mama. She’d have been a much better wife for him than Katherine!’ I said fervently.
Lizzie laughed at me. ‘Maybe, though Bobbie seems happy enough with Katherine now,’ she said. ‘Well, he was, till you came along. You’ve not learned to get along with Katherine any better?’
‘She won’t try to get along with me! She hates me, Lizzie. And I hate her.’ I clashed my knitting needles together and promptly dropped another stitch. ‘Oh, look now! I cannot get the hang of this silly knitting.’
I was proud of my nimble fingers when I sewed and knew I could do very fine work – but those same hands fumbled helplessly when I tried to rib and purl and plain. It did not help that every girl child in the village past the age of five could knit beautifully. They carried their wool and needles around with them and knitted casually as they lolled on the rocks or sat on the harbour wall swinging their legs.
‘Patience, patience,’ said Lizzie, taking my knitting, deftly manipulating the needle and restoring the stitch to its rightful place.
‘Even Big May knits beautifully. She’s making a gansey for her pa and she carries the pattern in her head,’ I wailed.
‘She’s had years of practice, Hetty. You want everything to be immediate. You want to knit like a native, you want to be able to gut a fish in seconds—’
‘No I don’t! I wouldn’t care if I never saw a single fish again in all my life,’ I said, sniffing my fingers and wincing at the reek still there.
‘Well, we’d all starve if there were no fish, so that’s a silly way of talking,’ said Lizzie. ‘You’ll get used to it soon. I’ll lend you my special gutting knife. It’s got a fair old blade on it – you’ll get on well with that.’
‘Lizzie, you’re being so kind, but I don’t want to gut fish. Or sell them on the stall or salt them in barrels or fry them in the pan. I don’t want to pluck those flithers from the rocks or crack open mussels. I especially don’t want to bake a crab or boil a lobster. Can’t I – can’t I work in the inn with you?’
‘You can’t have a slip of a girl working in an inn. It wouldn’t be decent. And when those old men have sunk a pint or three you’d prefer talking to a shoal of fish, I’m telling you straight. Now stop your silly blathering. We’ll have a cup of tea.’
‘I suppose Mama could knit . . . I never saw her knit when we were at the hospital together.’
‘I doubt there was any need for fisher-lassies’ shawls and fishermen’s ganseys in the heart of London,’ said Lizzie.
‘And we never ate fish at the hospital, so she didn’t have to gut them,’ I said. ‘I’m sure she was right glad of it too.’
‘She didn’t work with fish when she lived in these parts,’ said Lizzie. ‘Her folk lived on farmland, three or four miles away. Evie was a milkmaid.’
‘Oh!’ I said. ‘So Mama was a country girl!’
I could have thrown my wretched knitting in the air, rejoicing. I’d been a city girl at the hospital, but I’d had five fine years with my foster family being a country girl myself.
‘Tell me more about Mama, Lizzie,’ I said, nestling up to her.
Lizzie took my knitting from me and started on a few rows herself, to help me out.
‘Her folk were farm hands. Evie worked on the farm too as soon as she was in her teens. They have a fine herd of shorthorn cows on Benfleet Farm – they give very creamy milk.’ Lizzie pinched my cheeks. ‘You should drink more milk, Hetty, and make those cheeks rosy and plump.’
‘Mama was always slender, yet I’m sure she drank milk every day,’ I said.
‘She was like a little elf girl beside us big lassies,’ said Lizzie. ‘But she was strong, mind. She’d haul great churns of milk about when she came to the village on market day in her little donkey cart.’
‘She had a donkey!’ I said. ‘Oh, what did she call it?’
‘I don’t know!’ said Lizzie, laughing at me. ‘I don’t think it was a pet. She just used it for work.’ She put her head on one side. ‘But of course she gave it the day off on Sundays and dressed it in a bonnet and took it to church with her.’
‘Oh, Lizzie! Don’t tease. Tell me more about Mama. What else did she do on the farm? Did she plough the fields?’ I remembered my foster father ploughing with the great shire horses. Jem probably ploughed those same fields now.
‘I don’t think lassies plough the fields – leastways, not round here,’ said Lizzie. ‘I expect she fed the chickens.’
‘Oh, chickens!’
‘And helped with the harvest and went tattie-howking – there’s always work to do on a farm.’
‘I know, I know. I lived on farmland when I was little.’ I was so excited I jumped up and whirled around the room. Mama had never been one of these dour women up to their elbows in fish. She was a farm girl and I had been a farm girl too. Oh, we were so alike!
I was filled with an intense desire to see this farm, to stand in the cow meadows and imagine Mama there.
‘Will you take me to see the farm, Lizzie?’ I asked eagerly.
‘It’s a little far for me now, Hetty. I have rheumatics in my knees. I doubt I could trek all the way there and back – and it’s not really my place anyway. You had better ask your father, see if he’ll take you.’
‘Then I will,’ I said.
I skipped nearly all the way back to Father’s house, and when I was inside I busied myself darning his socks and a hole in his gansey.
‘What are you fussing with his things for?’ said Katherine, frowning. ‘Give them here!’
‘I’m mending them. Father said I could,’ I insisted.
&
nbsp; ‘I do the mending in this household,’ she said.
‘Yes, but you don’t do it very well, do you?’ I said, wriggling a finger through a big hole in Father’s woolly sock.
‘You mind your tongue, you cheeky upstart. Dear goodness, I rue the day I first set eyes on you. You’re a little witch. You’ve cast a spell over my great lummock of a husband, you’ve made little Ezra look up to you, you’re even starting to win over my Mina – but it won’t wash with me.’ She came rushing over to me, her fists clenched. I was sure she was going to strike me. She stuck her face so close to mine that she sprayed me with spittle as she spoke. ‘I’ll never accept you as a daughter – never never never.’
I forced myself not to flinch. I felt the blood beating behind my eyes. ‘I don’t want to be your daughter,’ I declared. ‘You’ll never ever be my mother. I had the best mother in the whole world, the exact opposite of you. I’ll miss her sorely till the day I die. But I have found my other parent. I can’t help it if your husband is my father. He wants me here and there’s nothing you can do about it. Oh, it’s so sad for him to be stuck with you. He must wish he’d wed my mama when he had the chance.’
‘Hold that wicked tongue!’ she shouted, and she took hold of my hair and pulled it so hard my eyes watered. ‘You might have the temper that goes with your red hair, but I’ll not have you vent it on me!’
I reached up and yanked at her own dark curly hair, loosening half of it from its pins. It tumbled down past her shoulders in rich, shining brown waves. Her face was still red and ugly with rage, but I suddenly saw that she might have been considered a beauty when she was young. She could even have had a fine curving figure before childbirth and years of hard work made her stout and sturdy.
Father could have chosen Mama – but he had chosen Katherine. This made me hate her more. I pulled at her hair again and she slapped me so hard about the face that my knees buckled and I fell to the floor.
The noise of our scrap caused Mina to come rushing from the bedroom and Ezra to race from the privy, his trousers still round his ankles.
‘A fight, a fight, a fight!’ he squealed, in excitement and horror.
‘There’s to be no fighting in my house,’ Father roared, coming straight from his bed, still in his nightshirt. He bent down and pulled me up with one hand, holding Katherine fast with the other. ‘For pity’s sake! Two women at each other’s throats, and kinfolk too!’
‘She’s no kin of mine,’ Katherine spat. ‘Nor will I ever treat her as such.’
‘Will you stop this. Look at both of you, scrapping like little boys. Even Ezra wouldn’t demean himself like this.’
‘Yes I would, Pa. I love scrapping,’ said Ezra, but he was trembling, obviously disturbed by the sight of his mother fighting.
Katherine realized this. She took several deep breaths, quickly pinning her hair into place, and then pulled Ezra’s trousers up almost to his armpits. ‘Look at you, you naughty boy!’ she said, trying to sound stern, but her voice broke. She picked Ezra up and buried her face in his chest so we wouldn’t see she was crying.
I felt sudden shame, though she had started this new quarrel, had she not?
‘Are you all right, Mam?’ Mina asked, her voice high and frightened.
‘Of course your mother’s all right,’ said Father. ‘Come, Hetty. You and I will go for a little walk together and talk this over.’
‘You’re taking her side again?’ said Katherine.
‘I am trying not to take anyone’s side,’ he said. He went over to Katherine and circled her in his arms. Ezra was crushed between them for a moment, and then wriggled free. ‘But you are my wife, Katherine, and this house is your domain. Hetty must learn to do as you say within these four walls.’
Katherine gave a little sniff, but as Father and I walked out of the house she nodded at me in triumph.
We set off up the lane towards the cliffs. I glanced at Father. He was staring straight ahead, his forehead puckered, dark circles under his blue eyes.
‘You look so tired, Father,’ I said timidly. ‘Shouldn’t you go back to bed? You’ve only been sleeping for an hour or two.’
‘I’m tired all right – tired of all this strife between the two of you,’ he said. He looked at me, shaking his head, and then peered at my arm distractedly. ‘What’s that on your hands, Hetty?’
I’d slipped his sock over my hand as I darned – and I found I was still wearing it now, in spite of my vigorous fight with Katherine. ‘It is your sock, Father,’ I said, taking it off hurriedly.
‘My sock?’ he repeated, sounding astonished.
It suddenly seemed so comical I burst out laughing. Father frowned, but his mouth wobbled and soon he was roaring with laughter too. Every time our laughter died down I flapped the sock in the air and we convulsed again.
‘Oh, Hetty, Hetty, you are such a puzzle to me,’ he gasped weakly. ‘Dare I ask why you are wearing my sock like a mitten?’
‘I was darning it, Father, and making a good job of it too!’ I said, showing him the patch. It was so neat it was scarcely visible and I’d made certain sure not to cobble the stitches because I’d suffered blisters half my life with poorly darned hospital stockings.
‘It’s not maidenly manners to praise your own work, but I have to agree with you. It’s as good as new,’ he said, thrusting the sock in his pocket.
‘That was why Katherine was scolding me, Father,’ I said.
‘Scolding you for stitches as neat as ninepence?’ he said.
‘She feels she should be the one to mend your clothes, though I must say she doesn’t seem to get round to it. All your socks are a total disgrace, more hole than wool. But don’t worry, Father, I will mend them all for you, no matter how much she objects.’
‘Oh, Hetty, I know you mean so well. You’re simply trying to please me. But can’t you see how this makes Katherine feel? She’s been captain of my house the way I’m captain of my boat. She doesn’t want some young whippersnapper coming along and showing her what to do – especially as you’re clearly a champion at stitching. Can’t you try to be a little more tactful, dear?’
‘I don’t think that is my forte, Father,’ I said sadly.
‘Well, I dare say it isn’t usually mine, either,’ he said.
We reached the clifftop and he threw back his head, drinking in great gulps of air as if it were water.
‘There! No better way of clearing the head,’ he said. ‘Breathe deeply, Hetty.’
I breathed in and out in an exaggerated fashion, pulling Lizzie’s shawl tightly around my shoulders. I stared out across the vast grey sea. I thought of all the fish swimming in the murky depths, all the fisher-folk falling from their frail little boats and wafting down, down, down, lying in grisly state upon the sandy bottom till their hair was twined with seaweed and their bones turned into coral.
I shivered, and Father put his arm round me.
‘The sea’s so splendid, isn’t it, lass? It must be a strange sight for your eyes. It seems such a shame that you’ve been brought up in a great sooty town all these years.’
‘I’m not a town girl, Father. I’m a country child,’ I said. ‘For my first five years I lived in a cottage in a little country village. I used to run in the meadows and paddle in the stream with my foster brother. I rode on the horses as they ploughed the fields and I slid down all the haystacks and I tickled the great pink pig that lived in our back yard.’
‘You can remember all that so clearly?’ said Father.
‘As clear as day. I used to think about it every single night when I was imprisoned in the hospital. I thought then that I was simply missing my foster family. I didn’t realize that the countryside was in my blood.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Mama lived on a farm, didn’t she?’
Father stiffened.
I slipped my hand into his. ‘Will you take me and show it to me, Father?’
‘I thought you said you did not want to meet your mama’s kinfolk?’
‘Yes,
I know. That’s still true enough. But I should so love to see where she lived and picture her there. Oh, Father, please take me. Take me there now?’
‘I can’t today, Hetty. It’s too far and I have to snatch another couple of hours’ sleep before going out to work.’
‘Then I’ll go myself,’ I said, turning round and staring out across the distant green and purple hills.
‘Yes, and you’ll likely get hopelessly lost and spend a night on the moors and be found gibbering like a loon days later,’ said Father. ‘You might fancy yourself a country child, but you’d get swallowed up by the moors in no time. I will take you – but not on a working day. I will take you on Sunday.’
‘Oh, Father, you promise?’
‘I promise, if you are a good girl meanwhile, and do your best to get on with your stepmother.’
‘You strike a hard bargain,’ I said. ‘But I promise too. I will do my best.’
8
FATHER WAS AS good as his word. When Katherine and Mina and Ezra set out for the little chapel on Sunday morning in their best bonnets, bib and tucker and polished boots, Father and I set out across the moors.
‘The Lord will be watching you sorrowfully,’ said Katherine, furious that he was not taking his usual place beside her in the narrow pew.
‘The Lord will understand,’ he said.
As we strode out, I kept looking up at the clouds in the sky, wondering if the Lord was indeed peering down at us. I pictured a very large eye like a second moon shining balefully from that mackerel-grey sky. I took care to keep my head lowered. But after twenty minutes’ tramping, the clouds parted a little and a watery sun appeared. In half an hour the sky was blue and the sun shining so strongly I took off my shawl and trailed it along the grass and Father shrugged off his gansey and rolled up his shirtsleeves.
‘The Lord seems to be smiling at us, Father,’ I said.
Father did his best to frown at me, but his mouth crinkled and he was soon smiling too. It was indeed heavenly to be up on the moors in the bright sunshine, traipsing through the springy grass and purple heather. I breathed in the sweet honey smells and listened to the birds singing all around us. No smells of fish and seaweed, no constant shush-shush-shush of the sea upon the shore.