The Fisher Lass (4 page)

The man was nodding. ‘You’ll do, lass. Shall you be following us down to Yarmouth?’

There was the only slightest hesitation before Jeannie said, ‘Aye,’ but it was enough for the man to glance sharply at her once more. ‘I need to be certain, Jeannie.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Jeannie said swiftly, but Billy McBride was still not wholly convinced.

‘Some man here?’ he probed bluntly.

If her heart had not been so heavy within her, Jeannie would have laughed out loud. She swallowed and, with a fleeting glance towards Nell, who was quietly watching and listening, said,
‘Only my father.’ As she said the words, she nodded seawards, towards the homecoming fleet.

‘Och, I ken.’ The man smiled now, satisfied.

It was not that she deliberately intended to mislead the foreman, who, though brusque in his manner, seemed fair enough, but Jeannie found it difficult to confide in anyone.

As he raised his voice and shouted to two girls standing together, binding each other’s fingers, ‘Flora, Mary, you’ve got a new gutter . . .’ Jeannie lifted her head,
smiled and moved forward to meet her new workmates.

‘See you tonight, hen,’ Nell called after her and Jeannie turned, waved and said, ‘Thanks, Mrs Lawrence.’

Their glances held each other’s for a moment as the older woman said softly, ‘Thank
you
, Jeannie Buchanan.’

The organ music seemed so loud. It reverberated through Robert’s head, louder and louder, until he wanted to put his hands over his ears and run out of the church.

‘You look awful. For God’s sake don’t pass out on me again,’ Francis hissed at his shoulder.

‘Thanks,’ Robert muttered wryly. ‘You do wonders for a chap’s morale. Besides,’ he added morosely, ‘it’s you I’ve to thank if I do look a
mess.’

To the unobservant eye, Robert would have looked no different from what the guests might be expecting to see in a nervous bridegroom. Both he and the best man, indeed all the gentlemen of the
wedding party including Edwin as usher, their father and the bride’s father, were attired in black suits and waistcoats, with silk ties around stiff, winged collars. They each wore highly
polished black shoes and white spats and carried a top hat and white gloves. A snowy handkerchief, neatly arranged in the top pocket, and a white carnation in the lapel completed the look and if
the bridegroom’s face was pale, his dark brown eyes shadowed, then they would say fondly that it was the occasion overwhelming the young man of only twenty.

But his brother was not so sympathetic. ‘Serves you right,’ Francis retorted. ‘I can’t abide a chap who can’t hold his liquor.’

Robert glanced sideways at him, but the darting pain behind his eyes made him turn his head back to face the altar.

‘Nor,’ Robert heard Francis snigger, ‘a chap who can’t rise to the occasion when he has a member of the fair sex – er – just handed to him.’

‘Oh, for goodness sake, Francis. Don’t be so crude. Not here, of all places.’

But his elder brother had no reverence in his being and Robert regretted having asked him to stand as his best man. In fact, now he came to think of it, he had not himself asked Francis nor even
wanted him. It had all been taken for granted, all taken out of his hands by his parents and his future in-laws.

‘Of course your elder brother must be your best man,’ their mother had decreed and there had been an end of it.

He wondered if the fact that Francis, the first-born son and heir, had been the only one of the three Hayes-Gorton brothers to be sent away to boarding school, had set him apart. Robert, three
years younger than Francis, and then Edwin, born a year after Robert, had both attended the local Grammar School as day pupils.

‘I will not allow you to send all my sons away,’ their mother had insisted.

But had Francis’s time away from home given him his supercilious manner? And had he learnt there, too, from unsuitable peers, the dissolute life he now led? Francis had stated, with such
determination that allowed no argument from their parents, that he had no intention of marrying. With a rare flash of insight into his own character, he had said, ‘I suppose I could be quite
fond of Louise, but I would not be cruel enough to marry her. My way of life would break her heart in a couple of weeks.’

And so Samuel’s desire for a grandson had become a duty for the second son to fulfil.

Robert had been swept along on the tide of his family’s machinations and in this bemused state he found himself standing before the altar in St Michael’s Church at eleven
o’clock on the morning of the fourth of September in the year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Twenty-four waiting for the organ to strike the first triumphant chords in the music that would
herald the arrival of his bride.

A girl, he realized with a shaft of horror, whom he hardly knew.

How on earth had it all happened? He wondered if she too had been inveigled into this marriage. Was she also feeling as he did at this moment? Utterly panic-stricken.

‘I can’t go through with it, Francis. I can’t marry Louise. I—’

His brother’s grip was vice-like on his arm. ‘My dear boy, of course you must go through with it. Just cold feet, that’s all.’

But this was more than cold feet, more than just wedding-day nerves. Robert made to pull away, to pull free, but Francis held him fast.

Now the older brother spoke through gritted teeth. ‘It’s all gone too far now. Think of the trouble you’d cause. If nothing else, think of the company.’

‘The – the company? Is – is that all you can think about?’

Slowly Francis turned his head, his cold blue eyes a steely gaze upon his younger brother. ‘The Gorton Trawler Company – and what this marriage will mean to it – is all that
matters.’

Robert felt a cold sweat. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Louise. She was a sweet girl, with blonde hair cut short to frame her delicate features that were like those of a fine
porcelain doll. Though he did not, he thought as another spasm of fear gripped his insides, love her.

‘Francis, I really can’t . . .’ he began but when he turned his head again, the pain stabbed once more. Robert groaned aloud and then tried to stifle the sound that seemed to
echo around the rafters of the church roof. ‘I’ve never been this bad before.’

Francis gave a snort of laughter. ‘Well, I lost count how much ale you had and then,’ he paused significantly, ‘you went on to the rum.’

Now Robert groaned again, making no effort this time to conceal the noise. ‘Oh hell,’ he said under his breath. ‘You know rum makes me bad. Why didn’t you stop me?’
There was a pause, then bitterly, Robert added, ‘It was you giving me it, wasn’t it? Pouring it down my throat.’

‘I thought you ought to have a good time on your last night of freedom.’

‘You call that a good time?’ the bridegroom said with feeling. ‘When I can’t even remember leaving the pub let alone anything after that.’

‘What a shame. Then you have no recollection of the girl?’

‘Girl? What girl?’ Robert turned towards him again, ignoring the stab of pain this time. ‘What – what happened? What did I do?’

At that moment, the organ broke into the bridal march and there was a stirring through the church as the congregation rose to its feet.

‘Forget it,’ Francis said. ‘I think Edwin took care of it anyway. And if there’s any further bother—’

‘Bother? What sort of bother? Tell me,’ Robert demanded as they got up.

‘I said, forget it. It’ll be all right. You’re getting married and your beautiful bride is walking up the aisle behind you at this very moment. Just forget about what happened
last night.’

‘But I don’t know what did happen . . .’ he began but Francis was pushing him forward to stand before the steps at the end of the aisle.

As Robert fixed his gaze upon the huge stained-glass window above the altar, he was thinking, not of his bride walking slowly to stand beside him, but of a girl in the darkness of the alley
bending over him and shouting at him.

Jeannie soon slipped into the work as a gutter alongside the other fisher lasses standing at the farlanes – the waist-high troughs overflowing with slippery herring. Mary
and Flora were friendly, laughing and joking as they worked, but their hands moved like lightning. Flora was the other gutter in their team of three, slicing open the fish with a long, easy motion
from head to tail, scooping out the insides and then tossing the fish to Mary, the packer. It was a bright, warm morning and soon the girls were taking off the thick scarves from around their
necks. The fish dock rang with their laughter and their Scottish voices. Jeannie felt good to be amongst her own kin. The Lawrences had made her welcome in their home and not just because of the
gratitude they felt but also because she was a Scottish lassie too and far from home. Nell would remember, even after all these years, what that felt like.

Jeannie half-listened to the gossip flying around her as she worked, but when Flora said, ‘It’s the Hayes-Gorton wedding today,’ her interest sharpened.

Mary was laughing. ‘Aye, and the bridegroom’ll have a thick head this morning. They were pouring the drink down his throat last night in the Fisherman’s . . .’ And then,
lest anyone should think she had been present, she added quickly, ‘So I heard.’

‘Och aye,’ Flora teased, quick on the uptake. ‘I bet you were there, Mary Fraser, with your man.’

Joining in the repartee, Jeannie winked at Flora and called back over her shoulder to their packer. ‘You got a man then, Mary?’

‘No, I havena,’ came the quick reply, a little too quickly to be convincing and Jeannie and Flora laughed aloud.

‘She’d’ve liked to be marrying Robert Hayes-Gorton hersel’ this morning.’

‘Who wouldna?’ Mary’s voice was dreamy but her busy hands never slackened their pace.

Careful to make her tone sound deliberately off-hand, Jeannie asked, ‘What’s he like then, this Robert What’s-’is-name? Who is he anyway?’

Flora actually paused for a moment in her work and stared at Jeannie. ‘You mean you dinna ken who the Hayes-Gorton family are?’

Jeannie shook her head. She had a shrewd idea from the conversation that had passed between the members of the Lawrence family the previous evening, but by feigning ignorance now, she realized
she could learn more.

Behind her, Mary giggled. ‘You’d better tell her, Flora.’ She lifted her head and shouted to the other girls working close by. ‘Listen, everyone. Story time.’

‘Go on, then, Flora,’ called a voice nearby. ‘“
Once upon a time . . .
”’ There was a ripple of laughter, but then those within earshot fell silent,
ready to listen.

The centre of attention, Flora preened herself. ‘The Gorton Trawler Company is the second biggest trawler owner in Havelock . . .’

‘And the biggest is the Hathersage Company,’ put in another voice.

‘Ssh, let Flora tell it.’

‘Aye, she’s a born storyteller. Go on, Flo.’

All the while a thousand bound fingers never stilled, sharp knives flashing. Hands plunged into the brine-filled farlanes to pick up the fish. Herring, their scales sparkling in the sunlight,
were ever on the move being gutted, tossed and packed. The coopers moved amongst the girls, inspecting the packers’ work, removing the full, heavy barrels and bringing empty ones. Thirty-five
barrels a day, Billy McBride demanded from each team and with eight hundred to a thousand fish to each barrel, the fisher lasses stood there hour after hour with not a moment to waste. Banter and
laughter, or a story, were welcome diversions.

Like an actress centre-stage, Flora began. ‘The Gorton Company was founded in the 1880s by Thomas Gorton. He was just an ordinary fisherman then, but he married the daughter of the feller
who owned the boat he skippered. The girl’s father was against it.’ She laughed. ‘I s’pose he thought Thomas was just after his boat.’

‘And was he?’

Flora shrugged. ‘I like to think they really loved each other.’

‘Did they elope?’ a voice asked and the listeners laughed.

‘To Gretna Green?’ someone else joked.

‘I dinna ken if they went to Gretna, but they did run away to be married.’ Now Flora held their attention once more. ‘They were awfu’ happy together in their wee terraced
house near the docks. But she was an only child so when her father died, she and her husband inherited the trawler.’

‘I thought so,’ muttered a voice, more cynical than the rest, but Flora ignored the interruption.

‘Thomas Gorton skippered it himself for a while but then he bought another boat and another until he had a fleet of ten or so. They say he was a nice old man. A real fisherman through and
through. Tough, but always fair. And he stayed all his life in the same house.’ She nodded briefly in the direction of the rows of terraced houses where the fisherfolk lived and where the
Scottish girls found lodgings. ‘Old Thomas died about twenty years ago and his son, Samuel, took over the company.’ Flora paused for effect, knowing she had her listeners spellbound, so
she began, as all good storytellers, to embellish the truth a little.

‘He was a different kettle of fish altogether.’ She smiled at her own pun.

‘And still is,’ muttered a voice thick with resentment.

‘He bought a posh house on the outskirts of the town and began to live the life of a laird. True, he carried on building up the company, but he cut the men’s basic wages and their
share of the catch to buy more ships.’

‘Hathersage is worse, though,’ came the voice again. ‘He’s a tyrant.’

Flora went on. ‘The Hayes-Gortons now own fifteen boats and about a hundred-and-eighty families depend on them for a living.’

‘Oh, good at arithmetic, isn’t she?’

‘Hathersage has got twenty boats.’

‘And don’t forget, if a catch is bad, or the price drops, the deckies barely earn a living wage.’

‘I’ve heard of men coming back from two or three weeks at sea and they owe the company money because they’ve already borrowed against their wages.’

‘Aye, and then the wages they expected don’t come, so they’re in debt,’ another voice complained bitterly.

‘How did it come to be
Hayes
-Gorton?’