The Fleethaven Trilogy (133 page)

‘No,’ Ella said sadly, ‘not even when it came to bringing
up her orphaned
bastard
granddaughter.’

‘Now, now,’ he chided her again gently, but as he
squeezed her shoulder again, she knew he understood.
‘There’s just one more thing I want you to understand,
Ella. It’s important to
me
that you know and – and . . .’
his voice was husky, ‘for the sake of your mother’s
memory.’

She stared at him, waiting. She sensed he was finding it
difficult to talk about feelings he had kept buried for so
long. ‘We – we loved each other very much, but when we
found out we were so closely related, we knew we could
never be anything but brother and sister. It took us a long
time to come to terms with it and I suppose, deep down,
we never stopped loving each other in a very special way.’

Ella nodded. ‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘I saw it whenever
you both met. Even as a child, I could see.’

He sighed. ‘But life moves on. We both found other
people to love. Rosie . . .’ He smiled fondly as he thought
of his wife and said, with modesty, ‘Evidently Rosie had
always loved me and I found I could love her too. Perhaps
not in the same way I once loved Kate. Differently, maybe,
but just as much. I’m so lucky,’ he murmured, ‘that because
Rosie loved Kate too, she’s always understood.’ He paused
and then ended softly, ‘So now, you know it all.’

Not quite, Ella mused, but she kept her thoughts to
herself. I still don’t know who
my
father is. As they turned
away and, with one last silent farewell to her mother,
headed back towards the car, an idea began to form in her
mind, growing until it became a pledge.

One day, she vowed, I’ll find my dad.

When they walked through the back door of Brumbys’
Farm and into the kitchen, they found Esther sitting at the
kitchen table, her arms resting on the scrubbed surface,
gazing into the distance as if she, too, were taking a trip
back in time. Slowly she lifted her head and her eyes
focused on the present again, on Danny and Ella. They
stared at each other for a long time, and, suddenly, the
young girl thought she caught a glimpse of a strange
expression in the older woman’s face; one she had never
expected to see. It was fleeting, yet she was sure she had
seen it; a silent plea for understanding. It was gone in an
instant and the resentment was back.

Danny, trying to warm the icy atmosphere, sat down on
the other side of the table. ‘Get that kettle singing, Ella
lass,’ he said, but his gaze never left Esther’s face. ‘I’m fair
parched after all that yakking.’

‘Aye, I should think there’s been plenty of that!’ the
older woman said acidly.

Danny reached across and took her wrinkled hands in
his. ‘I told it fairly, Missus.’

‘Ya’d have done better to hold ya tongue altogether,
Danny Eland.’ There was a pause, then she added with
grudging reluctance, ‘Still, if she had to be told, then I’d
rather it be you do the telling than anyone else.’

As Ella turned away and busied herself over the hob,
she heard her grandmother ask softly, ‘Did she say owt?’
and Danny, equally quietly, answered, ‘Not much. But
then, it’s a lot to sink in all at once.’

At that moment they all heard the rattle of the back
door and Jonathan came into the kitchen, filling the room
with his gentleness. He sat down at the table and a few
moments later when Ella set cups of tea before them,
they were all chatting, the tension lifted by Jonathan’s
presence.

Ella, sitting down too, listened quietly. No wonder, she
thought, Gran had fallen in love with him all those years
ago. She felt a sudden stab of sadness at the thought of
what she had learnt recently: that this kind, lovable man
was not her real grandfather.

Now, having learnt today how that came about, she
could not help wondering about the man who overshadowed
all their lives, even to this day; her grandfather,
Matthew Hilton. Just what had he been like?

That night when Ella went up to bed, she paused on the
landing, listened a moment and then, holding her breath,
stealthily lifted the latch on the door of her grandparents’
bedroom. She tiptoed across the room to the mantelpiece
and, holding the candle she carried higher, picked up the
photo of the man in the old-fashioned uniform.

In the flickering light she gazed down at the young face.
So this was Matthew Hilton. This was her real grandfather
and he was Rob’s grandfather too. No wonder the photograph
had reminded her of Rob.

Ella chewed thoughtfully at her lip. Kate, her mother,
had inherited the auburn hair of her own mother, Esther.
But she, Ella, was neither dark like her grandfather, nor
auburn like her mother and grandmother. So, from whom
did she get her blonde hair?

There could only be one answer: from the man who
was her father.

Carefully, she replaced the photograph and went into
her own bedroom. She stood in the centre of the room and
her gaze was drawn towards the huge blanket box in the
corner where she knew all her mother’s belongings were
still stored and had been ever since they had been brought
from their home in Lincoln. Almost holding her breath,
she tiptoed across the room and lifted the heavy lid. She
propped it open with the lift-up bar at one side and, almost
with a kind of reverence, she lifted out her mother’s
handbag. The leather was stained and the fastener was
rusty. She forced it open and the fusty smell of sea-water
wafted from its interior. The memories crowded into her
mind and she swallowed hard. Such a feeling of loneliness
and longing flooded through her that Ella felt like the ten-year-old girl she had been then when she had packed her
mother’s things into this chest. She hadn’t opened it since
that time, not once. Even now, she still wanted to close the
lid and leave the sad memories locked away. But if she
wanted to find any clue about her father, then she had to
search her mother’s papers.

Determined not to be diverted, she took a deep breath,
put in her hand and pulled out all the items still resting
there. All the personal, intimate things brought her mother’s
presence suddenly into the room. The girl swayed and
clutched at the side of the chest.

‘Oh, Mum,’ she whispered, ‘I still miss you so.’

Resolutely, she steadied herself and spread everything
out on her bed. It was the letter that intrigued her: maybe
that was the one her mother had received that had made
her go off that day? But the crinkled sheets were just a
blotchy wash of blue ink; not one word was legible.

She sighed and put everything back into the bag, holding
each item in her hands for a few moments: Kate’s lipstick
and powder compact, even the keys to Peggy’s house in
Lincoln; they were all still there just as she had packed
them away, undisturbed for six years. She closed the stiff
fastener and laid the bag aside.

Next she carefully removed the folded garments, one
after another, until she came to a square box. She lifted it
out and carried it back to her bed and tried to lift the lid,
but the box was locked.

Back at the blanket box she leaned over, scrabbling to
the very bottom amongst the clothes, a box of books, a
cardboard box in which she found an assortment of baby
clothes, but there was nothing in the way of a key which
might fit the small box. She leant against the chest and
stared at the box on the bed. There was something niggling
at the back of her mind. She could remember searching for
the key before, and when the police had brought Kate’s
handbag back, she had been sure that it would be there.
She recalled her disappointment when it wasn’t. But there
was something else, something she ought to know, but Ella
just couldn’t pull it to the forefront of her mind, and the
more she tried, the more elusive the memory seemed to
become.

Sighing, she packed all the clothes back into the chest,
and, lastly, put the small polished wooden box back, but
on the top of all the other items. She closed the huge lid of
the chest and began to undress.

Sleep did not come easily. Her mind was too full of all
that she had heard from her uncle Danny that day, her
head full of pictures of the places they had visited, the
memories he had evoked, not only for himself but for her
too. Memories of her lovely gentle mother; of life in the
little house in Lincoln with Aunty Peggy. There had been
just the three of them, cosy and secure in their little world
with never, as far as she could recall, a cross word between
them. She couldn’t remember ever being in trouble then
with either her mother or Peggy.

Was it only since she had come to Brumbys’ Farm that
she had become a wild, rebellious, naughty child, forever
in disgrace with her strict grandmother?

She couldn’t remember falling asleep, but suddenly she
sat bolt upright. The room was in total darkness. The key!
She could remember seeing a key and now she knew where:
in her mother’s sewing machine. In the small box which
held bobbins and machine attachments, there had been a
tiny key. She remembered seeing it when she had made her
blouse and skirt. It was exactly the sort of place her mother
would have kept the key to her precious box; close beside
her every day as she worked.

Ella slipped out of bed and padded across the floor to
the door. Holding her breath she opened it, wincing at
every little squeak. She crept down the stairs, pausing to
listen every time a stair creaked.

In the living room, she drew aside the heavy blue velvet
curtain so that moonlight beamed in. Quietly, she lifted
the lid from the machine and took the smaller lid from the
box at the side. She scrabbled amongst the clutter there
until her fingers closed on the key. Replacing the lid and
leaving the machine as she had found it, she sneaked back
upstairs. Once in the safety of her bedroom, she breathed
easily again and with the door firmly shut she lit her
candle, wishing, not for the first time, that her grandmother
would agree to have electric light, and went again to the
blanket box.

Taking the smaller box back to her bed, she wriggled
her cold feet under the covers and, sitting up, rested the
box on her knees. Mentally crossing her fingers, she
inserted the key into the lock. It fitted, but was stiff to turn
through lack of use. Ella found her heart was thumping
with excitement as she opened the lid. The box was a
vanity case with glass bottles each in their own place. In a
small central compartment with a padded lid there was an
envelope with the words ‘Danielle Hilton, aged three’
written on the front. Inside was a photograph of Ella and
a curl of strawberry blonde hair wrapped in tissue paper.
Ella smiled and laid the envelope to one side on the bed.
Next she found her mother’s WAAF badges and a photograph
of Kate with Mavis and Isobel, all in uniform. In the
background, Ella could see the huge shape of an aircraft.
There was an old, rather faded, photograph taken in the
front garden of the farmhouse of her grandmother and
Jonathan standing beside an old man leaning heavily on a
stick. That must be Esther’s father, Will Benson, Ella
thought, the man whose grave she’d seen the previous day.

There was nothing else in the small compartment and
Ella felt a stab of disappointment. Surely there must be something
else . . . letters, photographs – there
must
be more.

She ran her fingers round the box, feeling its polished
smoothness. Then at the side, she noticed two tiny ring
handles and pulled them up. The whole of the top of the
box lifted out to reveal another, deeper, compartment
below and Ella’s eyes gleamed. In it lay a bundle of papers
and letters. And on the top sat a huge, perfectly formed
whelk shell. She picked it up and cradled it on the palm of
her hand for a moment. Now why on earth, she pondered,
would her mother keep a whelk shell? She placed it beside
her on top of the quilt and then, with mounting excitement,
Ella began to look carefully through each item.

The first was her own birth certificate, and as she opened
the long, stiff paper, she found she was holding her breath.

Now, at last, she might find out . . . But under the
heading ‘Name and Surname of Father’ there was nothing
written, only two lines drawn across it. Ella groaned aloud
and then clapped her hand over her mouth. For a few
moments she stared wide-eyed at her bedroom door and
held her breath. But there was no sound of the other door
opening and her grandmother’s voice demanding, ‘Now
what are you up to, Missy?’

She looked down again at the long paper in her hands.
It gave details of her birth. She hadn’t realized before that
she’d actually been born in the terraced house in Lincoln,
she mused. Then her mother’s name, Katharine Hilton.
Here was the stark proof that her mother had never
married, even though Ella remembered people in Lincoln
calling her ‘Mrs’ Hilton. Somehow until she saw it written
plainly before her eyes, there had always been a last vestige
of hope that maybe her mother had been secretly married
and he’d been killed in the war. Maybe . . .

But no, she thought, she really was what her grandmother
called her.

She folded the certificate and laid that to one side too.

Next she lifted out a packet of letters. On the first
envelope the address was written in bold, yet neat, handwriting.
Ella bit her lip, hesitating a moment, feeling
suddenly guilty at prying into all her mother’s secrets. Yet
she had to know, she had to find out about her father.
Surely, her mother wouldn’t have minded? Surely by now,
as Uncle Danny had suggested, Kate would have told her
everything, if only she had still been here to do the telling?

Sighing softly, Ella untied the ribbon holding the letters
together and opened the first one.

My Dear Kate

I have settled in well here, but it is not a patch on
my previous posting. I hope you are well – I do miss
our little chats
.