The Fleethaven Trilogy (143 page)

Tears blurred her vision, but now, panic-stricken, she
brushed them aside and went towards the living room, into
the hall and up the stairs. She felt sick with fear. He was
dead; she was sure he was dead. He must be; that was the
reason her gran looked like she did.

Holding her breath, she pushed open their bedroom
door and peered round it, knowing she must look, but
afraid of what she would see.

Her grandfather was propped up in the bed against
three pillows, his eyes closed, his breathing laboured. His
face was strained and white, uneven stubble covering the
lower half. She moved to the bedside and bent over him.
‘Grandpa . . .?’ When he did not respond, did not even
open his eyes, she touched his hand. His skin was cold and
slightly clammy to her touch and she almost recoiled in
panic.

Then she was running, down the stairs, through the living room and back into the kitchen. She stood before
her gran, leant over her as she sat in the chair.

‘I’m going to phone for the doctor. I won’t be long.’

‘Don’t need no doctor. Can’t do no good.’

‘Well, I’m going . . .’

The old woman flapped her hands. ‘Aye, go. You go.
Just let him die in peace . . . an’ me an’ all!’

‘He’s not going to die. I won’t let him.’ Ella felt like
shaking the old woman. ‘Nor you either, ya daft old
beezum!’

There was the ghost of a smile on Esther’s mouth, a
spark in the green eyes that had seemed so dead. And the
words, when she spoke, were an echo from the past; a past
the old woman was trying desperately to cling on to. ‘I’ll
have none of your chelp, Missy!’

‘You’ll have a lot more of my chelp before I’m finished,
Gran.’

The old woman leant her head back against the chair
and closed her eyes as if even that brief exertion had
exhausted her.

Ella was running again, out of the house, through the
hole in the hedge, across the field where the corn had never
been cut and lay in flattened waste.

‘Oh, Gran,’ she sobbed as she ran. ‘Oh, Gran, what
have I done to you?’ Where had that strong, resilient, feisty
woman gone, with the bright hair and flashing green eyes;
the woman who took on the world, fearless and independent?
Where, oh where had she gone? It was like looking
at a ghost, a shadow of the woman she had been. As she
ran, panting painfully, memories haunted Ella. Esther
taking her hand at Kate’s funeral, ‘You’re coming home
with me.’ She hadn’t been obliged to take the girl into her
home. How many women of sixty-odd would have done
so? Esther teaching her to sew, to cook and bake. Oh, yes, at the time, it had all seemed like hard work, drudgery; as
if she were being used as no more than a skivvy. But
mentally Ella ticked off all the skills she had learned under
Esther’s watchful eye: she could milk cows, she could drive
a tractor, she knew when the bloom on the grass meant it
was ready for cutting, she knew when to harvest wheat,
barley, oats. She could ‘put away’ a pig; she could pluck
and draw chickens, turkeys, even skin and draw rabbits . . .

And then she remembered other times; her grandmother
smoothing crushed dock leaves on to the nettle stings; her
greying head bent over the tiny stitching, sitting up far into
the night to finish making Ella’s skirt for her to go out
dancing . . .

‘Oh, Gran, I’m so sorry,’ she wept.

‘Uncle Danny, Uncle Danny,’ she cried, breathless and
red in the face, as she reached the yard at Rookery Farm.
But it was Rob who emerged from the cowshed. She
stopped, shocked by the thrill of joy that ran through her
even in this desperate moment. She felt the urge to run to
him, this friend of her childhood, and yet, perversely, she
was suddenly shy. He had been a boy when she left, but
now, before her, stood a man. The year at college, and his
return home to farm the land he loved side by side, an
equal, with his father, had turned Rob from a good-looking,
though gangly, youth into a handsome man. His
black hair glistened in the pale October morning light and
beneath his open-necked shirt, his shoulders were broad
and muscular. He seemed to have grown taller too. The
very sight of him caught at her breath. He was staring at
her, gaping almost, as if he too were taking in the changes
the year’s absence had wrought in her. They had not seen
each other in all that time. They had spoken once, but only
on the phone, and now there was no time to talk, not even
time to greet him properly . . .

‘Can I use your phone? It’s urgent.’

‘Course ya can. Come on.’ As they walked quickly
towards the back door he said, ‘Dad said you were coming.
When did you get here?’

She pulled a face. ‘Middle of the night. There were
floods at Horncastle. We got trapped there for hours . . .’

‘Ya kidding?’

She shook her head. ‘Ironic, isn’t it?’

‘I’ll say . . .’ He opened the door and raised his voice.
‘Mam, it’s Ella. She needs the phone – quick.’

‘Oh, Ella, love.’ Rosie was hugging her quickly, but
catching some of the anxiety in Ella’s face led her at once
into the hall and to their telephone.

‘Do you know the doctor’s number?’ and when Rosie
flipped open a notepad, Ella lifted the receiver.

Minutes later she put down the phone. ‘He’s coming
straight away.’

‘You’d better get back, then. Come back later, when you
can, and see us.’ Rosie kissed her cheek again, squeezed her
arm and whispered, ‘I’m so glad you’ve come home, Ella.’

‘I’ll pop back tonight. I must ring Peggy, if you don’t
mind, Aunty Rosie.’

‘You know we don’t, love.’

‘I’ll come back with you,’ Rob volunteered, and Ella
nodded gratefully.

As they jogged back across the fields, Rob told her,
between breaths, what had been happening.

‘We had no idea what was going on, El. Me dad’s
blaming himself now, saying he should have done something
sooner, but every time we went to the farm, all ya
gran said was, “He’s resting,” or “He’ll be all right in a
day or two,” and to be honest, for a time, we believed her.
We tried to help with the work. Cut some of her hay and
stacked it. Some of the corn, an’ all, though we didn’t get to this one . . .’ He waved his hand to indicate the field
through which they were running. ‘Shame it’s gone to
waste. Then the day before yesterday me dad insisted on
seeing ya grandpa. And then he got a right shock, I can tell
you. That’s when he tried to ring you.’

‘And I was in York,’ she murmured, feeling a fresh wave
of guilt.

‘Dad tried to get the doctor in yesterday, but ya gran
seemed to get real – well – odd. Ranting and raving at us
to mind our own business and let her mind hers. Even my
grandma went across, but she couldn’t get any sense out of
your gran either. She came back mumbling to herself about
stubborn old women who ought to let bygones be bygones.
Your gran had shaken her fist at her shouting, “You keep
away Beth Eland,” and saying she didn’t need any help,
specially not hers. That they’d all gone and left her, Kate,
Lilian – and you. But she didn’t need anyone. She could
manage. She’d look after him, she said. And when I went
last night . . .’ He paused as they negotiated the narrow
plank bridge and ran on. ‘She gave me a right turn. D’you
know what she said to me?’

Ella shook her head.

‘“I don’t need you here, Matthew Hilton, I can look
after Sam . . .”’

Ella stopped in her tracks and stared at him. ‘She had
gone a bit funny, then. Gone back into the past. Matthew
was your – our – grandfather, wasn’t he?’

Rob nodded. ‘Aye, and he came to the farm to help her
nurse old Sam Brumby when he was dying. That’s when
all the trouble started . . .’

Ella nodded grimly. ‘Yes, and we’ve got trouble again
now. Come on . . .’

*

The doctor arrived within half an hour and examined both
Jonathan Godfrey and, though much to her disgust, Esther
too.

‘They’re both undernourished. They’ve been neglecting
themselves, Ella. I really ought to have them removed to
hospital. Your grandfather might have had a slight heart
attack, but I can’t be sure unless I can do some proper
tests.’

Ella shook her head. ‘I think it would finish them off,
Doctor. As long as you tell me what to do, I’ll look after
them.’

‘Right then . . .’ He dusted a chair and sat down at the
kitchen table. ‘I hope you’re ready for this, lass,’ he said in
his bluff but kindly way, ‘because it’s not going to be
easy.’

‘I could come and stay here to help,’ Rob, hovering in
the background, volunteered and Ella looked up to meet
his steady, concerned gaze.

Suddenly, time seemed to tilt, and ghostly shadows
shifted in the dusty corners.

‘Full circle,’ she murmured, though only for Rob to
hear. ‘We’ve come full circle.’

In the days that followed, Ella didn’t think she had ever
worked so hard in her life; not even as a child under her
grandmother’s bidding. And yet, as she worked, it was as
if Esther’s voice followed her everywhere, ‘Scrub it, Missy.
Get some elbow grease into it,’ even though now the
woman herself was a sick, weak old lady confined to her
bed.

Without the willing help of Rob Eland and the rest of
his family, Ella doubted she would have coped.

‘What happened to her cows?’ she asked as she scrubbed, black-leaded and relit the kitchen range, the
warmth filling the cold, dank kitchen, rekindling life.

‘There’s only two left,’ Rob told her. ‘The others died.
We’ve got ’em with our herd and we bring her the milk
across each day.’

Ella glanced up. ‘And a bit more besides, I reckon.’

Rob grinned. ‘Well, it’s the least we can do,’ he said as
he banged at an upholstered chair and raised a cloud of
dust.

‘I don’t know how this place has got like this in such a
short time,’ Ella muttered.

Rob did not answer and when she looked up, she found
him looking at her strangely.

‘What?’ she asked. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s not been a short time, Ella, now has it?’ he said
quietly. ‘Only none of us knew. Me dad reckons they must
have been struggling to cope for months, maybe ever since
you left, if truth be known. But they never said anything. I
should’ve come across more often when I was home at
weekends but, well . . .’ His voice faded away and his
glance avoided her eyes.

Out every night on his motorbike, with the girls, she
thought grimly. But it was only a fleeting pang of jealousy.
He was here with her now, helping her when she most
needed a friend and she was grateful for that.

‘But Grandpa used to write to me,’ Ella countered. ‘He
said they were fine. It . . .’ She hesitated again feeling the
guilt because she had brushed aside Peggy’s intuitive concern.
‘It was only recently his letters were late and – and
different.’

‘Of course he kept writing to you.’ A note of impatience
was creeping into Rob’s tone now. ‘He wouldn’t want you
to feel obliged to come back. He knew you hated it here,
had always hated it; that all you’d ever wanted was to get back to the town. And from your letters he knew you were
happy, specially when you’d found your father and had a
new family.’

‘But Gran? I mean, she didn’t care about me that
much . . .’

Rob stared at her and then said roughly, ‘Well, if that’s
what you think, Ella Hilton, then you ain’t got the sense
you were born with.’ And with that parting shot, he
marched out into the yard carrying an armchair and began
banging it with the cane carpet beater until he had to stop
as clouds of dust set him coughing.

Ella bent over the range once more, pondering on his
words. They certainly didn’t help to ease the weight of
guilt she already felt.

Not one bit.

The following day she found clean sheets in the huge
blanket chest in the bedroom that had once been hers, but
where her grandmother was now in the bed.

‘I thought they might be better sleeping separately for a
bit,’ she had told Rob. ‘One’s disturbing the other at the
moment.’

After warming the bed-linen on the clothes-airer in the
kitchen for a few hours, she changed all three beds. She
was sleeping in the tiny room with the sloping ceiling
leaving the doors open between the rooms so that she
could listen out through the night.

Carrying the bundle of dirty laundry out to the washhouse,
a musty, unclean smell assailed her nostrils as she
opened the door and once again her heart contracted to
think that Esther Godfrey – proud, defiant Esther – had
come to this.

Oh, Gran, her heart moaned again, and guilt swept
through her afresh.

Rob stayed at Brumbys’ Farm sleeping on an old settee in
the best parlour.

‘She’d have a double duck fit, ya gran, if she could see
me sleeping here on her best chaise-longy thing.’ He
laughed as he folded the blankets.

Ella giggled. ‘I don’t think she’ll mind as long as you’re
down here and I’m safely upstairs in the little bedroom
with her between us.’

Playfully, Rob adopted a suggestive leer. ‘Afraid I’ll
have my wicked way with you, is she?’ Then suddenly his
expression sobered and in his dark brown eyes there was
something more, a look that made Ella catch her breath
and her heart start to thump.

But he turned away and bent over the settee, snatching
up the pile of blankets and sheets and placing them in a
neat pile on a nearby chair. When he turned round again,
he avoided looking at her directly. ‘Ya grandpa needs
shaving,’ he said brusquely. ‘That beard of his looks awful.’

‘Oh, er, yes,’ Ella said, swallowing hard. ‘D’you think
you could have a go?’

‘Ooh, I dunno. I’ll ask me dad to come over. He’ll not
mind.’

And when Danny had come and shaved him, although
Jonathan still looked thin and tired, he looked so much
better. Ella kissed his wrinkled cheek. ‘That’s more like my
grandpa.’

His hand reached out and touched hers. ‘I’m glad you
came back, love. Don’t go away, lass, will you? Not till
we’re both well again.’