A Safe Harbour (54 page)
Authors: Benita Brown
Tags: #Technology & Engineering, #Sagas, #Fisheries & Aquaculture, #Fiction
And what about my dreams? Somehow I must make a better life for my child even though it means I must give up any idea of happiness with the man I love.
The child moved within her and for the first time the movement caused her pain. She placed both hands over her belly and sat motionless until the spasm passed. But her reflective mood had been broken and she realised that as well as being tired she was hungry. Susan had sent her up to her room as if she was a child to be ordered about and had not even thought about providing her with a meal.
So it was just as well that she had the means to make a cup of tea and a lump of rich fruitcake in the tin. She would risk indigestion and have a feast by the fire. She leaned forward and, using the poker, she nudged the kettle nearer to the fire so that it would start to boil. She decided that before eating anything she would wash herself and get ready for bed. Once out of her clothes she would feel more comfortable.
Kate poured water into her wash bowl from the large jug of cold water she brought up to her room every morning. Then she took the kettle over to the washstand and added some hot. The steam rose and curled upwards into the dark corners of the room. She had not lit the lamps.
Before taking her clothes off she knelt by the fire and built it up a little. Why not be comfortable? It won’t help William if I sit here as cold as charity just because he is leaving to sail across a wide cold sea to a country that would soon be in the grip of winter. But when the fire sparked and flared and began to give off a warm, cosy heat, she felt guilty nevertheless. Even the journey across the Atlantic would be rough. If storms delayed the vessel would William spend Christmas at sea, all those miles away from his family and the woman he loved?
She sat on the edge of the bed to take off her shoes and stockings, then stayed there while she undid buttons and hooks. Finally she rose to take off her underwear and stood naked in the firelight. She caught sight of her shadow thrown on to a wall. There was no mistaking the curve of her belly and the fullness of her breasts and what that fullness meant. She was just about to turn and go to the washstand when the door of her room opened.
Susan Armstrong had not bothered to knock and now she stood there with a tray and stared at Kate open-mouthed. Kate snatched up her shift and covered her nakedness but it was too late.
‘You shameless bitch,’ Susan said. ‘Does my poor mother know what kind of a whore she’s sheltering in her home? I’m sure she doesn’t. How could you deceive her like this? And which one of those fine gentlemen friends of yours is the father, I wonder? Adamson or the American? Or mebbes you don’t even know!’
Chapter Twenty-four
‘I think this is your man,’ Sam Phillips said.
He had sent word to the office for Richard to come to the infirmary. They stood at each side of one of the narrow beds in the long high-ceilinged room and looked down at the pale, unshaven patient who, although sleeping, still managed to look ruffianly. Sam thought Richard looked as pale and as gaunt as the man on the bed.
‘It could be,’ Richard said. ‘I recognize him and there’s no other crew member missing. Will he live?’
‘Probably. He was lucky. He drifted out with the tide and fetched up on Sand End at the river mouth. He was found there the next morning and brought here.’
‘He didn’t travel far, then.’
‘No, and I don’t think he knew much about the journey.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Just smell the man! Even now when he’s been cleaned up he still stinks of alcohol.’
‘Has he said anything?’
‘Only that he can’t remember how he got in the river.’
‘You say that as though you don’t believe him.’
‘Well, he must have been drunk, I’m fairly sure of that, but I believe he’s hiding something.’
‘If this is the man who went overboard he wouldn’t want to admit to being on board the
Tyne Star
at all. He’s a fine worker when he’s sober but the drink seems to madden him. He’d become a troublemaker and a liability. The skipper had paid him off that very day.’
Tyne Star
at all. He’s a fine worker when he’s sober but the drink seems to madden him. He’d become a troublemaker and a liability. The skipper had paid him off that very day.’
‘So what do you think happened?’ Sam Phillips asked.
‘He probably spent all his pay on drink at a pub in Clive Street and then staggered back to the
Star
to sleep it off.’
Star
to sleep it off.’
‘You think he was woken up by the noise of what was happening?’
‘That would make sense.’
‘And, still drunk, he went out and got involved in a fight?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, he’s not going to admit to that, which means that apart from the watchman you haven’t got a witness.’
‘That hardly matters. The culprit has flown.’
‘William Lawson?’
‘So it seems.’
‘The elder brother of the man who led the riot, I understand.’
‘It was hardly a riot.’
Sam sensed that Richard was unwilling to talk about the incident, even though it would cost him a considerable amount of money to have the trawler raised. And Sam thought he knew why. The man who had done the damage was a Lawson. The brother of the man who had led the riot. And also the brother of Kate, the beautiful flame-haired girl whom Richard had taken back to his own home and who was expecting a child.
‘Has the man’s family been told?’ Richard asked.
‘Yes, poor wretches. One bag of bones of a wife and three starveling children. They looked as though they hadn’t had a good meal in years. The head of the miserable household spent his pay on drink, no doubt.’
‘I’ll see they’re looked after,’ Richard said. ‘The money will go straight to the woman. And I’ll find a place in a refuge for them if you think I need to.’
‘That might be for the best. But make it as far away from this villain as possible. I don’t trust him.’
After Richard had gone his old school friend reflected that, in his opinion, even the sinking of his trawler had not made a pennyworth of difference to his feelings for Kate Lawson. Poor Caroline, Sam thought. I can’t bear the way that Richard is making a fool of her.
The black-plumed horses set off bearing Charlie’s coffin in a glass-sided hearse. The sound of their hoofs rang out on the cobbles and echoed round the narrow streets. Mutes in tall hats led the procession, walking in step as if they were listening to some funeral march that no one else could hear. This was not like any other village funeral. Alice was determined that Charlie should go out in style. And her daughter had not opposed her.
Kate was not going to the funeral. Susan had told her to keep away. ‘You’re a disgrace,’ she had said the night before, ‘and I don’t want you defiling my father’s memory. I’m not going to say anything to my mother tonight, obviously. But you’d better spend tomorrow packing your bags because I want you out of here.’
On the day of the funeral the shop was closed. Even Susan had to agree that it wouldn’t be proper to open. Kate didn’t have much to pack so she tidied out the drawers and put everything in neat bundles ready to be parcelled up when the time came to leave. She had no idea when that would be but at least now there was nothing to stop her arranging her own passage to America and her journey on to her Aunt Winifred’s home in Canada.
Charlie was dead. Alice did not need her. There was no place for her here or anywhere else in the village where she had been born. She had given most of her savings to William, as well as the money Howard Munro had finally paid her for posing for the portrait. But she still had her aunt’s money order to take to the bank and the letter for the shipping office. One trip into Newcastle was all it would take and she could say goodbye to Cullercoats.
She looked round the room. She had been happy here. As happy as it had been possible to be in the circumstances. She had worked hard but Alice had treated her well. Susan’s words came back to her. Had she deceived Alice? She supposed she had. She had never told an outright lie, she simply hadn’t mentioned the fact that she was with child. Susan had leapt to the wrong conclusion about the father of the child and Kate had not wanted to demean herself by contradicting her. She had too much pride to enter into a shouting match and, in any case, she knew that she wouldn’t have been believed.
Most of the villagers would be at the funeral and a fair number of them would be going to the funeral tea at the church hall. The village would be quiet. Kate decided to go out. She still had Alice’s cloak. She hoped the kindly soul wouldn’t mind if she borrowed it for one last time.
It was the first of December and frost sparkled on the ground. The air was bitingly cold, so much so that it actually hurt to breathe. Poor Charlie, Kate thought. All those years of being warmed and cosseted by his devoted wife and now he was about to be lowered into the iron-hard ground.
The beach was deserted, too, and Kate walked down the slope wondering if this might be the last time she would come here. She paused at the entrance to the cave, their cave, not just Jos and hers but Jane’s and Thomas’s too. Thomas, Thomas, what have you done, she thought. You took a half-formed plan, a crazy idea and turned it to tragedy. You’ve caused your brother to flee the country and have broken the heart of the girl you once loved. But even in her grief and anger with her brother she knew that none of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for Jos . . . Kate tried hard to visualize him and found his face had faded from her mind. She’d thought she’d known him so well but now she realized she hadn’t really known him at all.
By the time she walked back up to the village, small groups of people were hurrying towards the church hall. Most of them kept their heads down to avoid the knife-sharp wind but one or two of them looked at Kate curiously then put their heads together as if they were talking about her.
She realized with a dreadful certainty that Susan had spread the word about her condition. She decided to go back to the shop but, suddenly, a group of young women barred her way. She looked up to see Joan Donkin and her sister Ellen, along with Ann Watson and Sally Dodd.
‘I hear you’re expecting?’ Sally simpered in her silly, squeaky voice.
‘Is it really true?’ Ann asked. She had always been prepared to give folk the benefit of the doubt.
‘Of course it’s true,’ Joan said. ‘I’d already guessed, you know, when Mr Adamson brought her back to his house. Why else would he bother with a common fish lass?’
‘But I’m told the bairn might not be his,’ Ellen Donkin said. ‘She’s been carrying on with the American, too, hasn’t she?’
‘Surely not,’ Ann said.
‘No question about it,’ Ellen told her. ‘That’s why Susan wouldn’t let her anywhere near her innocent bairns. And now she wants her out of her mother’s house.’
All this time Kate stood quite still and kept her head high. She looked into their faces one by one as they spoke and didn’t flinch. She felt her temper rising but hung on to it. Not one of them, even doubtful Ann, was worth compromising her reputation for.
Reputation
! Susan Armstrong had seen to it that she had none left. But she still had her pride and she was not going to engage in a street brawl like a . . . like a common fish lass! She laughed when she realized what words she had chosen. For, of course, fish lasses were far from common. They were hardworking, brave and loyal. Not like these four harpies.
! Susan Armstrong had seen to it that she had none left. But she still had her pride and she was not going to engage in a street brawl like a . . . like a common fish lass! She laughed when she realized what words she had chosen. For, of course, fish lasses were far from common. They were hardworking, brave and loyal. Not like these four harpies.
Her laughter had surprised them and, momentarily silenced, they were waiting for her to say something – to deny her condition, defend herself. But she wasn’t going to. She wasn’t even going to tell them the truth that the baby she was carrying was that of her old sweetheart, Jos, whom she’d been planning to marry. Even if they believed her they would still find some reason to scorn her. Just like her own father they would call her a loose woman. Not one of them – and she included her father in this – knew anything of love.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘would you mind stepping aside?’
‘Oh, la-di-da,’ Joan said. ‘Just listen to my lady talking posh. Are you practising for when you’ll be Mrs Adamson? Well, you’d better not hope for too much from that direction. Do you think Mr Adamson would marry the sister of the man who sank his trawler? Of course he wouldn’t. Especially when he has the beautiful Miss Caroline Travers just waiting for him to pop the question.’
‘What about the American?’ Ann asked. ‘Do you think he will marry her?’
‘I suppose he might,’ Joan said. ‘He’s an odd one, after all. But even he would want to be certain that the bairn was his, wouldn’t he?’
‘You . . . all of you,’ Kate said, looking from one to the other, ‘you disgust me. Now step aside before I knock you to the ground. And don’t think I couldn’t!’
Her tormentors were so astonished that they backed away and Kate stormed past them. She hadn’t gone far when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned, her eyes blazing, to find herself staring into the troubled face of Howard Munro.
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