The Fleethaven Trilogy (33 page)

She tightened her arms about him, as she realized at last how much he did love her. He loved her just as much as she loved him. She knew what it must have cost this man in terms of pride and principle to have overstayed
his term of sick leave and run the risk of being put on a charge.

‘Oh, my love, my darling,’ she murmured.

At that moment over his shoulder, parked a little way along the lane Esther saw a pony and trap. Sitting in the trap were two women, one tall and stout and the other thin and angular.

Esther stiffened and as Jonathan lifted his head to look at her, she gave a low growl of rage and tore herself from his grasp. She was running across the yard, her skirts held up in one hand and shaking her other fist and yelling at the two women in the trap.

‘You bitch! You fat old beezum, Martha Willoughby. And you, Flo Jenkins, you wizened old maid—’

Martha made valiant efforts to turn the trap around in the lane, but Esther was upon them before she could do so. She grasped the side of the trap and shook it, making it rock precariously.

The two women screamed in terror, but Esther’s frenzy had driven all sense and reason from her mind. All the fury she had held against these two women for years was unleashed.

If it had not been for Jonathan reaching her at that moment, she would have tipped the trap over on to its side, throwing the two women into the road and undoubtedly causing them physical harm. He took hold of her, pinning her arms to her sides so that she struggled and kicked against him and continued to mouth insults at the two women, but no longer could she hurt them.

Jonathan raised his normally quiet voice above Esther’s screeching. ‘Go, Mrs Willoughby, just go!’

Martha, red and flustered, scrabbled in the bottom of the trap for the reins and sat up. She cast one anxious look back at Esther and then flicked the reins and the pony moved forward. As the trap moved off down the lane, the two women stared back at Esther, fear in their eyes.

As if to confirm that there was reason for the trepidation on their faces, Esther yelled after them, I’m not finished with you two old biddies yet. You’ll pay for this day, Martha Willoughby!’

He took her back to the farmhouse and into the kitchen. He made her sit down near the range whilst he poured her a strong cup of tea from the pot on the hob.

Esther was still shaking with rage and now with fear, as the realization overwhelmed her. She moaned and closed her eyes and rolled her head from side to side. ‘Don’t go. Please, don’t go!’

He knelt in front of her and took hold of her hands. ‘My darling – I must. But I want you to remember that wherever I am, I shall be loving you still. If we never meet again . . .’

Her cry of anguish broke into his words, but he stroked her hair and held her even closer, comforting her as he might a child. ‘If we never meet again,’ he repeated bravely, ‘our love will last for ever.’

‘I love you, I want us to be together. Don’t go back. I’m begging you!’ Her tears flowed, and she clung to him. ‘Don’t leave me, I can’t bear it.’

He eased himself back from her clinging arms and gently held her tear-streaked face between his hands,
forcing her to look at him. He brushed the strands of hair, wet with her tears, from her eyes.

His own sorrow and his heartache for her misery filled his eyes with compassion. ‘My own dear love, my only love, you don’t mean it . . .’

‘I do, I do!’ she sobbed wildly.

He shook his head. ‘No, you don’t, not really,’ he insisted with a quiet firmness. ‘If I were to stay, I’d be a deserter – a man always running from the authorities. See how easy it is for the local bobby to track me down?’

‘They’ve reported you – know it! Then they couldn’t resist coming to gloat . . .’

‘Hush, my love, hush.’ He put his arms about her once more. ‘I couldn’t run for ever. Eventually, I’d be caught and probably sent to prison—’

‘You’d be alive!’ she cried bitterly.

‘What kind of life would that be? A life of shame. You’d come to despise me . . .’

‘Never! I just want you here with me – alive. I don’t care . . .’

‘But I do, Esther,’ he said, giving her a very gentle yet nonetheless deliberate shake. ‘I’d hate myself. I couldn’t live the rest of my life like that – not even with you, my own darling.’

Hysterical now, she pulled away from him and stood up, moving backwards behind the chair, deliberately putting a barrier between them. ‘You don’t love me. Not as much as I love you – you can’t do, or – or you wouldn’t go.’

In her passion, she didn’t see the hurt in his eyes that her words inflicted. But the pain was in his tone. ‘Oh,
Esther, don’t say such a thing – not to me. Not to me, my love.’

She stood before him, holding on to the back of the chair, her whole body shaking, racked by heaving sobs. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he moved closer. Tenderly he wiped away her tears. Even as he did so, more came to take their place. He could not stem the flow of her misery.

Gently he released her grip on the chair and enfolded her once more in his arms, just holding her close until she was exhausted and her sobs subsided to a forlorn, childish hiccuping. All the while, he murmured soothingly and stroked her hair.

When at last she was calmer, he said again, ‘I could not live a life of dishonour, my dear, not even for you.’ He tensed waiting for her crying to burst forth again, but she was quieter now, drained of the passion and resigned to his going.

‘Esther, you must be strong. We must get through this and then, when it’s all over, well, well see how things stand.’

It was the only hope he could, or would, give her. She would perhaps never quite understand, never quite accept his reasons, but she realized that despite all her courage, her forthright, strong will, this gentle man was made of even stronger mettle than she.

Jonathan’s arms tightened about her and, against her hair, his voice was deep with poignant longing as he whispered, ‘Love me one more time, Esther, before I go.’

*

Later, she watched him walk away from her, down the lane and out of her life.

When he reached the bend in the road that would hide him from her view, she gave a cry of agony and began to run after him. Not yet, she told herself, I must see him still. Reaching the bend road herself, she stopped and stood watching the figure striding away from her, growing smaller and smaller.

Not once did he turn and wave, not once did he look back and In her heart she knew why and If he looked back now, he would not able to go.

‘Jonathan.’. She breathed his name like a prayer. ‘Look at me, Jonathan. Turn around, my darling.’

But the figure grew smaller and smaller until, through the blur of her tears, she could no longer see him.

T
HE
days following his going were long and lonely.
Ironically, when Jonathan left, it was two years almost to the day since Matthew had walked away into the mist down the same road.

‘Danny ses that nice mans gone away. Has he, Mam?’ Kate wanted to know.

Esther swallowed the lump that rose in her throat. She took Kate on to her knee, the child leaning her head against Esther’s shoulder. ‘He had to leave suddenly.’

‘But he didn’t say goodbye to me.’ Kate’s mouth quivered.

‘He asked me . . .’ Esther added, inventing the lie, ‘to give you his love.’

‘Is he coming back? I want him to take us fishing again.’

‘I – don’t know. Maybe some day.’

‘I hope he comes back. I liked him – and so did Danny.’

‘Yes,’ Esther murmured. ‘So did I, Katie. Oh, so did I.’

Mechanically, Esther went through the motions of living. The demands of her daughter and the farm were all that kept her going. There was a numbness in her mind and an ache in her heart that was an actual physical pain in her chest. She worked till she dropped, hoping to find
oblivion in exhausted sleep. The nights were the worst, when she lay alone in the darkness and relived the times she had lain in his arms. Even tears would not come to give vent to her misery.

Her grief was too deep for tears.

In the cooling days of autumn she walked the shore close to the waters edge, hearing the ghostly laughter they had shared. She sat in the sandy hollow, the place where they had made love, her arms wrapped around herself, her body aching for his touch. Now, all she felt was a gnawing emptiness below her ribs. Even her favourite place at the end of the Spit failed to bring her solace. It seemed forsaken and lonely, and the wailing seagulls overhead seemed only to echo her own isolation. It seemed as if all feeling had gone, even her love of the land failed her now.

Without Jonathan, her world, the land she had once loved so fiercely and fought so hard to win, had become a desolate and melancholy place.

Now she watched for the postboy, praying that Jonathan would write to her. Was he missing her as much as she missed him?

No word came. As the days passed she found resentment against him growing. He hadn’t loved her. He couldn’t have done – or else he would have written. He would have found some way to send word to her – to let her know he was safe, to tell her he loved her still.

She heard nothing.

What had happened to him when he reported back to his unit? Maybe he was safe, she tried to tell herself, in prison for his wrongdoing, but safe. But in her heart she
knew that even if he faced charges, eventually they would send him back out to the war front.

Why, oh, why, hadn’t he written to her? He didn’t love her, not really, she tormented herself. Already he had forgotten all about her. Letters and cards came through from the front. Even if he had been sent out to France again, he should still have been able to write to her. Then cold fear would clutch at her heart. He hadn’t written because he couldn’t – because he’d been killed. And here she was hating him for deserting her so coldly, whilst he was lying dead on some battlefield.

Yet she could not, would not, believe that she would never see him again, that he was gone from her for ever. It was the only shred of hope she had and she clung to it with all the tenacity that was in her nature.

One November night about a month after Jonathan had left, a night so calm and still that the sound of the sea drifted in clearly over the land, Esther came wearily down the stairs from seeing Kate into bed when she heard the strangest noise, faint at first, then growing louder. A cacophony of banging and clattering, like copper pans being beaten, rattling pots and whistles and horns. Nearer it came. She stepped outside her back door and saw lights bobbing in the lane outside the gate to her farmyard. Then, distinctly in the black stillness of the night, she heard the sound of chanting voices:

‘Her husband’s gone to war,

‘So she becomes a whore.

‘She leaves her work, she leaves her child

‘Her husband’s name she has defiled.

‘Her sins to the world we’ll tell,

‘Come out, come out, you Jezebel!’

Esther stepped back inside and slammed and bolted the door. She leant against it breathing hard. She closed her eyes and moaned aloud. They were ran-tan-tanning her! Her heart was pounding in her breast. Then a hot anger surged through her. She had not stayed outside long enough to see who was in the group, but now in comparative safety she looked out of the scullery window overlooking the yard. In the fitful light of the swinging lanterns, it was almost impossible to discern the faces, yet there were two figures which were recognizable by their shapes. The tall, looming bulk of Martha Willoughby and the stick-like thinness of her sister, Flo Jenkins, were in the forefront of the mocking group of ran-tan-tanners. Behind them, the other figures, laughing and chanting their crude verses, remained anonymous in the shadows, though she suspected there were one or two from the Point.

As the noise and shouting continued, echoing all around her farmhouse, she heard the frightened wail of her daughter from upstairs. She was about to turn away from the window to go up to Kate, when, for a brief instant as the lanterns swayed, she caught sight of a still, silent figure set apart from the rest, standing on the bank on the opposite side of the lane. Motionless, with her hand clutching a black shawl around her head, taking no part in the proceedings but just standing and watching – was Beth Eland.

For a long moment, Esther stood looking back at the woman, although she knew Beth couldn’t actually see her inside the darkness of her home.

Why was she there? Esther wondered. Had she thought up this escapade? Or had the Willoughby woman and her sister dragged Beth along to see her rival’s humiliation?

At that moment, Esther heard Kate’s sobs closer and turned to see her daughter standing in the doorway.

She went forward now and gently pushed Kate back into the kitchen. Closing the door behind them blotted out some of the noise.

‘What is it, Mamma? What’s that noise?’

‘Just some people had a mite too much to drink, and acting very silly. Tek no notice. Come . . .’ she offered, sitting down in the wooden chair and opening her arms to her daughter. ‘Come sit on me knee near the fire till they’ve gone.’

They sat together, their arms about each other, Esther’s tightly around her daughter’s shaking body, whilst Kate wound her sturdy, childish arms about Esther’s neck and leant her head against her shoulder.

‘I wish that nice man was still here with us,’ she murmured. ‘He’d make them stop. He’d make them go away.’

Esther stiffened and held her breath. ‘Who – who do ya mean, Katie?’

The noise still went on outside, but the child seemed less afraid now. She wrinkled up her smooth brow as if trying to remember. ‘The man who made me a shrimpin’ net – I don’t remember his name.’

Esther said quietly, ‘You mean J—Mr Godfrey.’ To herself, she added, and he’s the reason that mob’s outside yawping their heads off. Thank goodness you can’t understand what they’re calling your mother!

Suddenly the noise ceased. The woman and the child sat up, glanced at each other, then Kate slid to the floor and Esther got up. Hand in hand they tiptoed out to the back door. Making as little noise as possible in the silence that followed the din, Esther slid back the bolts and lifted the latch. They were still there, the lanterns swaying, feet shuffling, but they were quiet. All the banging of pans and whistling and chanting had stopped. In front of them stood the huge, avenging figure of Tom Willoughby.