Children of the Tide (6 page)

He swallowed hard, he was hardly likely to. ‘No. I won’t, Sammi. Trust me.’

She took his arm and showed him inside the
carriage. There, tucked up in a corner of the upholstered seat, was a small wrapped bundle. ‘I’m taking him home to Garston Hall.’

He felt such a tremendous lightening of spirit, a great sense of relief flooding over him. Aunt Ellen! Of course! She wouldn’t turn the child away. He wasn’t so sure that Uncle William would approve, but he was convinced that Sammi’s warm-hearted mother would come up with a solution.

Perhaps I won’t have to confess after all
– not yet, anyway. His mind flickered to his wedding: perhaps afterwards he could tell? And it wasn’t unusual, he thought, as his conscience eased, for families to look after each other’s children. The poorer working classes did it all the time.

‘Oh, Sammi. What an angel you are.’ He put his arms around her and gave her a great smacking kiss on her cheek. ‘I love you.’

She pushed him away. ‘Get off, Gilbert! You’re as bad as James. That’s just what he said.’

He watched the carriage as it lumbered away, then Sammi put her head out of the window. ‘Will you give my love to Billy? Tell him I can’t stop.’

He nodded. Her brother would be beavering away, anxious to be doing well at his first week’s work with Masterson and Rayner.

‘I’m sorry, Gilbert,’ she called again, just before the carriage pulled out into the street. ‘I forgot to ask. What did you say your trouble was?’

‘It’s nothing. Nothing at all.’ He waved a good-bye to her. ‘It’s only that I’m late.’

As the carriage approached the village of Tillington, Sammi put her forehead against the window and looked out. The mill beyond the church showed black against the wide sky, and the white canvas sails were sweeping square to the north-east wind, their shades partly closed to spill the gusty breeze.

Her father’s cousin Thomas and his three sons Tom, Mark and George would be working hard in the heart of the mill, harnessing the power of the wind which drove three pairs of millstones to grind the raw grain. She thought of them running nimbly up and down the steep and narrow access ladders to the five floors, while their sister Betsy would perhaps be indoors, going about the womanly tasks which she had reluctantly undertaken four years ago at the age of fourteen, when the housekeeper, who had looked after them all since their mother’s death, had also died.

The pair of greys pulling the carriage turned instinctively down the winding road towards her home village of Monkston, even before Johnson gave the signal. Sammi was thankful that the weather was dry, for the old road often became a quagmire after rain, when the potholes and ridges made by the wheels of carriages and carts filled with rainwater and mud, and made it almost impassable.

She looked up at the high banks on either side of the narrow road: yellowhammers were nesting in the hedgerow, and early bluebells were emitting their glorious heady perfume. Sammi pulled down the window and then picked up the baby. ‘Look,’ she said,
holding him up, ‘Your first flowers. If you’d been a girl we could have named you Flora.’ The baby puckered up his mouth and started to cry. ‘Well, that sounds healthy enough.’ Sammi rocked him. ‘I was beginning to get quite worried about you. But you’re not a girl,’ she mused. ‘So what name shall you be given, I wonder?’ She felt a small chill as the thought struck her that her parents would be angry with her for bringing him home, but she brushed it aside and refused to think about it.

Her home, Garston Hall, was nearly a hundred years old and had been built on the site of an old castle. It was designed to follow the Gothic architecture so admired at the time, and was embellished with round towers, turrets and battlements, and in the autumn its south face was covered in red creeper. To the east, by the round tower, a cascade of winter jasmine straggled and tumbled over the stone walls, and facing north, a glossy-leaved ivy battled against the elements. It was also very close to the sea, with only an orchard and rose walk between it and the house, and a fifty-foot drop over the cliffs to the sands below.

Her mother was waiting at the door, fully dressed in her warm cloak and hood. She came out as the carriage approached, the wind catching hold of her skirts and whipping away the shawl which she had draped around her shoulders.

‘I’ll get it.’ Sammi jumped from the carriage and chased after the fluttering shawl.

‘Leave it. Leave it, Sammi!’ Her mother called after her. ‘I must go. You are
so
late. I particularly told Johnson that I wanted you home early. You are too bad!’

‘I’m sorry, Mama.’ Sammi kissed her mother. ‘Johnson did say. It’s all my fault. Well, not completely. I—’

‘Oh, hush now, Sammi. I must drive into Tillington. Richard has taken the gig, otherwise I would have
borrowed that rather than this great lumbering thing. I’m sorry, Johnson. You’re going to have to go back into Tillington again.’

Johnson touched his top hat and murmured something and glanced at Sammi.

‘Mama! Before you go! I have something to tell you.’

‘Not now, Sammi. I have a call to make and I’m already late.’

Johnson opened the carriage door, his eyes averted to the sky.

‘Victoria has gone to bed with a headache, she’s not well, so don’t disturb her, there’s a dear. There’s cold meat in the larder if you’re hungry. Help yourself. Don’t bother Cook if she’s busy.’

Sammi waited with baited breath as her mother put her foot on the step.

‘What’s this? You’ve left something. Sammi!’

The baby stirred as an icy blast from the open door filled the carriage, and he opened his mouth and wailed. Hunger and thirst cramped his stomach and he screwed up his face and screeched.

‘Sammi! For heaven’s sake. What’s this?’

‘It’s a baby, Mama.’

‘I can see it’s a baby, foolish girl! But what’s it doing in our carriage?’

Ellen Rayner leaned in and lifted him out. ‘Whose child is it? Is it hungry? Why, it’s such a young baby!’ She looked at her daughter in alarm, her large blue eyes widening. ‘Sammi! You have some explaining to do.’

‘Can we go inside, Mama? He’s cold and hungry. I’ll need to warm some milk.’

‘Milk!’ Sammi’s mother swept inside with the child in her arms. ‘He needs the breast, not warm milk! Where’s his mother?’

Sammi cast a glance at Johnson waiting resignedly by the carriage. He raised his eyebrows at her as she closed the door. ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed. ‘’Fraid you’re going to have to wait again.’

Cook hovered with a basin of warm milk, and the two kitchen maids gaped open-mouthed as Sammi’s mother sat on a kitchen stool and spooned the milk into the baby’s lips from a tiny silver teaspoon. Martha, the elderly housekeeper, had gone off to delve into her linen cupboard to find something more suitable to wrap around the baby.

‘These are clean sheets,’ Sammi explained, but Martha only humphed in displeasure.

‘They’re onny fit for rags, these bits; not suitable for a new bairn, and he wants summat warm, especially for round here.’

‘He won’t be staying,’ Ellen Rayner said matter-of-factly. ‘So don’t anyone get too excited. As soon as I find out where this daughter of mine found him, he’s going back where he belongs.’

‘Mama. Can I explain?’ Sammi sank down onto a chaise longue in the drawing-room, and watched as her mother deftly unwrapped the child and dressed him in a sweet-smelling cotton carrying gown, the bodice tucked and threaded with ribbon.

‘This was Richard’s and then Billy’s,’ she said, ignoring Sammi’s question. ‘And then we got new ones for you and Victoria. I can’t think where Martha has been hiding it all this time.’ She wrapped him in a square of white blanket which Martha had cut from a larger one, and fitting the child comfortably into the crook of her arm, she turned a resigned face to her daughter. ‘Yes, Sammi,’ she said calmly, settling herself back into her chair. She had removed her cloak and undone the broad ribbons on her capulet hood which covered her fair, smooth chignon. ‘I think you had better start at the beginning.’

She sat listening, without questioning, until Sammi had finished, then she looked down at the contented sleeping baby. ‘And you are telling me that James is the father of this child?’

Sammi shook her head. ‘No. What I said was, that the woman claimed that he belonged to James.’

‘That boy?’ She removed the blanket from the baby’s head and gently fingered the pale pulsating down. ‘And his mother, was she dark or fair, do you know?’

Again Sammi shook her head. ‘James can’t really remember, but he said that Gilbert said she was dark.’

‘I see!’ Her mother pursed her lips. ‘And what did his mother have to say about all of this? Mildred would be delighted to be presented with a grandson no doubt?’

‘She’s furious with James, Mama, and says that he must go away so that no-one finds out; and Anne is being beastly towards him and refuses to speak to him,’ she added heatedly. ‘I don’t think he’s totally convinced that it is his child, but he is so confused.’

‘Well, quite rightly everyone will be shocked and angry; and it could be his child, Sammi, though I have to say I am very surprised,’ her mother mused. ‘But we only see our friends and family as we believe them to be. Everyone shows a different face for different people or circumstances, and the cousin James that we perceive might well be cast in a different mould.’ She rose to her feet and reached to press the bell on the wall. They heard its faint ringing in the kitchen. ‘But you still haven’t explained why you brought him here. He can’t stay here, you know that?’ She instinctively rocked him. ‘He will have to go back to Anlaby. He’s their responsibility, whether they like it or not.’

‘They’ll send him to a charity home.’ Sammi started to weep. ‘They’re awful places. I’ve been. I went with James. The children have to work in the kitchens; they can’t play and there’s no-one to love them. Please, Mama. Please don’t send him there.’

‘He’s not a puppy or kitten, Sammi, that we can put in a box in the stables,’ her mother said sharply, ‘and I see that you’ve brought Sam back too. Wouldn’t Mildred let James keep him either?’

Sammi wiped her eyes and took a deep shuddering breath. ‘James said that if he had to go away, he wouldn’t be able to look after him, so I said I’d bring him back here until he could.’

A frown wrinkled her mother’s smooth forehead. ‘So Mildred really means James to go?’

‘She means it.’ Sammi gave her nose a huge blow on a handkerchief. ‘He was going off to York to see his drawing master, to ask if he could recommend what he should do.’ She cast a beseeching look at her mother. ‘Mrs Bishop in Tillington has just had another child, she always says she has enough milk for a houseful of babies. I thought we could ask her if she would nurse him? I’ll pay her out of my allowance, just until James finds a position, and then he’ll pay me back. He promised he would!’

‘You little minx! I can read you like a book. You’ve been planning this all the way home, haven’t you? This is what you had in mind the whole time!’ Ellen turned to the housemaid who had knocked and entered. ‘Ask Johnson to bring the carriage round again, please.’ She stood deliberating for a moment after the maid had left the room, and then pulled a cynical face. ‘I just hope you didn’t speak to your Aunt Mildred and Cousin Anne of Mrs Bishop and her ample milk supply. How very shocked they would be!’

Mrs Bishop was pleased to nurse the baby. ‘Bless thee, Mrs Rayner,’ she said, ‘tha’s saved my life. This little lass of mine is a right poor feeder; try as I might she won’t tek ’milk and I’m fair beside myself to be rid of it.’

Ellen Rayner hastily stood up and indicated to Sammi, who was hovering over Mrs Bishop’s large white breasts as the baby hungrily searched for her nipple, that they should go.
We’re known to be liberal, I know
, she thought,
but this, I think, has gone far enough
. ‘It won’t be for long, Mrs Bishop. The baby
won’t be staying; he’s not our responsibility – but if you could nurse him until other arrangements are made?’

‘It’s not wise to give him more than one nurse, ma-am,’ Mrs Bishop settled back in her chair. ‘It unsettles ’em. Still, it’s up to thee, I’m onny ’milk nurse.’

Sammi sat beside her mother in the carriage and looked anxiously at her as Ellen put her head against the lace headrest and said quietly, ‘You know that your father will be angry with you?’

Sammi gave a little shrug and pressed her lips together. ‘He doesn’t stay cross for long, Mama. His humour soon returns.’ She knew that her father’s temper, as fiery as his greying red hair had once been, could always be turned to laughter and her advantage.

‘Not this time.’ Her mother gazed frankly at Sammi. ‘This time you’ve really gone too far. This latest escapade is just not acceptable.’

Her father was angry. Very angry indeed. But not just with her. He was angry with his brother Isaac, his sister-in-law Mildred, and with James for allowing Sammi to bring the child out to Garston Hall.

Sammi stood in front of him in the drawing-room with her eyes lowered and her hands behind her back as he spoke in bitter tones of his family shedding their responsibilities onto someone else.

‘Uncle Isaac and Aunt Mildred don’t actually know that he is here, Pa,’ she ventured when he finally paused for breath. ‘Uncle Isaac told James to find somewhere that would take him, and Aunt Mildred wouldn’t discuss it. Only James and Gilbert know he is here.’

‘So why did you bring him here?’ he roared, and she flinched.

‘I couldn’t bear to leave him,’ she whispered. ‘If he belongs to our family, he deserves more than those dreadful places.’

‘So James has been playing in the dirt and we’re left to pick up the pieces!’

‘William! William! That’s enough,’ Ellen chided her husband. ‘We don’t know what happened. The child’s mother is dead. There are things here that we might never know of, nor wish to know.’

‘Ring the bell, Ellen,’ he commanded, ‘and ask them to tell Johnson to bring the carriage round.’

‘But where are you going? Supper will be ready.’ Ellen gazed up at her husband in some alarm.

‘I’m going to drive to Anlaby to see my brother and his precious wife, and find out just what is going on!’