The Fleethaven Trilogy (51 page)

With a sob Kate rushed from the kitchen, through the back scullery, wrenched open the back door and ran across the yard.

Ignoring her mother’s voice calling her name, Kate ran on, across the lane and up the slope of the sand-dune. Reaching the top she paused a moment, her glance sweeping the flat marshland in front of her. Beyond the marsh was a second line of sand-dunes and then the beach and the sea.

Maybe Danny was on the beach.

She was running again, down the sandy slope and across the marsh, jumping the creeks, bounding over the tufts of grass until she gained the crest of the eastern dunes. Her gaze scanned the wide stretch of sand.

Then she saw him.

Head down, hands thrust into his pockets, he was following the high-water mark, searching for anything left by the ebbing tide.

‘Danny,’ she yelled. ‘Danny!’

He looked up, waved and began to run towards her.

Breathless, she sank down into the sandy hollow that was their own special place. It had been their den, their boat, their desert island, and always, it was the place they met.

Danny took a flying leap into the hollow, landing with a thud and showering her with sand. He sat down beside her and held out his hand. On the flat of his palm sat a huge whelk shell.

‘Just look at that, Kate.’ Gently he blew the remaining grains of sand from the shell. ‘Did ya ever see such a beauty? It’s the biggest I’ve ever found.’

Kate stared at it, but when she made no response, she felt Danny looking at her more closely. ‘What’s up, Katie? You look funny – ya face is all red. You bin crying?’

‘I’ve had a row with me mam.’

‘Oh, heck! What about?’

‘School.’

Danny looked puzzled.

‘She’s sending me to boarding school in Lincoln come September.’

‘Boarding school!’ He gaped at her. ‘Whatever for? I thought ya’d be leaving school, like me.’

‘I can’t leave till I’ve passed me fourteenth birthday. And
that’s
not till September!’ Kate said moodily.

There was silence between them, then Danny grinned, sudden excitement in his voice. ‘I say, guess what? I saw Squire Marshall yesterday and he’s tekin’ me on from next Monday. What about that then?’

She looked at him, this boy whom she had known all her life. His curly black hair shone in the spring sunlight and although his chin was still boyishly smooth and his voice had not yet broken, he seemed to be changing before her eyes almost. She couldn’t get used to seeing him in long trousers. He wore a pair of proper braces now – men’s braces – but his thin arms stuck out like sticks from the rolled-up sleeves of his open-necked striped shirt. Suddenly, he seemed to be growing up – and growing away from her.

‘That’s nice. I’m glad.’ She tried to sound pleased – for Danny’s sake – but her own misery destroyed her delight in his news. ‘I want to get a job too.’ There was longing in her tone. ‘I don’t want to go to school any more.’

He was avoiding her gaze now. She watched as he picked up handfuls of sand and let it run through his fingers. He seemed so intent on what he was doing that Kate thought he had forgotten she was even there.

She prodded his bony shoulder. ‘Don’t ya care if I go away?’

He looked up quickly then. ‘Of course I care. Ya know I do!’ He leaned forward and bumped his nose against her cheek in a clumsy attempt at a kiss. ‘I’ll always care for you, Katie Hilton.’

Kate wasn’t quite sure why he whispered it when there was only a lone black-headed gull soaring above them to hear. She giggled, embarrassed, but his gesture had banished her tears.

‘Here, ya can have this.’ He held out the whelk.

‘Are ya sure?’ Kate knew the huge shell would have taken pride of place in his collection.

‘Yeah, go on, I want you to have it. Just – just so’s . . .’ A faint redness crept up the boy’s neck. He thrust it into her hand and then stood up suddenly, pushing his hands into the pockets of his trousers. Embarrassed, he scuffed at the sand with the toe of his sturdy boot. ‘So ya dun’t forget me when –
if –
ya go away.’

She held the whelk to her ear and heard the sound of the sea. ‘I’d never forget you anyway,’ she said softly, slipping the shell into her pocket. ‘Not as long as I live, I won’t.’

He sat down again and resumed his sand-sifting. ‘Why does yar mam want to send you to boarding school anyway? T’ain’t for the likes of us.’

Kate sighed. ‘She says she dun’t want me staying on the farm all me life – that she wants something better for me. But I reckon—’ She hesitated and then plunged on. ‘I reckon she – she wants me away from here. Away from Fleethaven Point altogether.’

He looked at her hard now. ‘Why?’ came the blunt question.

She smoothed her white pinafore over her knees drawn up under her chin. ‘Ever since the baby came, she dun’t – want me any more.’ Her mouth trembled dangerously again.

‘Don’t be daft, Katie, ’course she does.’

‘Well, it dun’t feel like it.’ She paused, then with a note of belligerence added, ‘How would you know anyway, Danny Eland?
You’ve
no brothers or sisters.’ She tossed her long auburn hair which fell in shining waves down her back to below her waist.

‘No,’ he mumbled in reply. ‘But I wish I had.’

‘Ya can have our squealing Lilian then – and welcome!’

They sat in silence for several moments while Danny sifted sand into little heaps and then flattened them with the palm of his hand, only to begin the process over again. ‘Does . . .?’ he began and then stopped.

‘What?’

‘Does Mester Godfrey want you to go?’

‘Me dad?’

‘He’s yar
step
dad,’ Danny reminded her pointedly.

‘I know, but he’s like a proper dad.’

Danny looked up. ‘But ya remember yar real dad, dun’t ya?’

Kate wrinkled her smooth forehead. ‘Sort of. In – bits.’

They sat in silence, each trying to remember Kate’s father. But their memories were fragmented, like a jigsaw with pieces missing.

‘I can just remember him coming back from the war,’ Danny said. ‘He was in a terrible state, wasn’t he?’

‘Can’t remember that. But I do remember him tekin’ us to town in his motor car to buy a big Christmas tree off the market.’

Danny was laughing. ‘Oh, yes – we could hardly get it in your back door. I’d forgotten.’

There was another silence before Danny said softly, ‘I remember his funeral though – after he drowned.’

‘You held my hand when we stood at the side of the hole.’ She shuddered. ‘I remember that all right. Wish I could forget it, sometimes.’ She frowned. ‘We threw something on top of the coffin, didn’t we? What was it – flowers?’

Danny shook his head. ‘Just earth.’

Another silence.

Kate hugged her knees. ‘Then Mr Godfrey came and married me mam and we all lived happily ever after.’ She pulled a wry face. ‘At least, till Lilian was born.’

‘Came back, ya mean,’ Danny muttered.

‘Who came back? Me dad?’

‘Mr Godfrey – yeah.’

‘What d’ya mean – came
back
?’

‘It was just – summat I heard me dad say once.’

‘What?’

Danny said nothing.

‘Come on, Danny,
tell
me,’ Kate insisted. She scrambled up and grasped his shoulders, shaking him. ‘Tell me or I’ll . . .’

He caught hold of her arms and they struggled with each other like a pair of playful puppies, just as they always had throughout their childhood. Kate shrieked with laughter, her anguish forgotten for the moment as they rolled over and over, her petticoat flying, her black stockings wrinkling around her ankles. Danny was on top of her, pinning her arms back against the sand. They stared into each other’s eyes, panting hard, their breath mingling.

Faintly, borne on the wind, there came the sound of a whistle. Immediately, Kate began to struggle. ‘Let me up, Danny. That’s me grandad coming. I’ll go and meet him. He’ll not let me mam send me away. He’ll tell her!’

Danny released her and stood up. He held out his hands to pull her up from the sand, but before he had regained his breath, she was up and out of the sheltered sandy hollow racing down the slope of the eastern dunes. Across the flat marsh she ran, jumping the winding creeks, squelching through the mud, her long hair flying free.

‘Katie – Katie, wait for me,’ she heard him calling behind her. But as always she was darting ahead of him. He was still splashing through the streams as she was climbing the line of sand-dunes which ran parallel to the road leading from the town of Lynthorpe to Fleethaven Point. Then she was beneath the elder trees, slithering down into the lane.

‘Grandad – Grandad!’

The rattling wheels of Will Benson’s carrier’s cart came to a halt. ‘Why, Katie, me little lass, what are you doin’ at home? Ah thought you’d be in school.’

He leaned down from his high seat on the front of the cart above the broad backs of his two horses and held out his hand to her. ‘Up you come then, me lass.’

‘It’s still the Easter holidays, Grandad.’ Kate settled herself on the narrow seat at his side and smiled up at him, tossing back the strands of hair which fluttered across her face.

‘O’ course it is. Ah’d forgotten. Why, here’s Danny an’ all,’ Will said, as the boy came crashing down the wooded slope of the dunes and into the lane. ‘Come on, lad, climb up. There’s no room on the seat, but you can stand on the shaft. Hang on, mind.’

Danny grinned up at the carrier, caught hold of the side of the cart and pulled himself up. ‘Thanks, Mester Benson. Just as far as the gate. I’d best be off home mesen.’

’Ow’s it feel to be a working man, then, eh, Danny?’ Will Benson laughed wheezily. There wasn’t much that escaped the carrier. News travelled on his cart alongside the pots, pans and provisions.

‘He dun’t start till Monday, Grandad,’ Kate said.

‘Holiday, is it, lad, ’afore you even start? Eh, but Ah dun’t know what things is coming to. Why, in my day . . .’

‘Oh, Grandad!’ Kate giggled and wriggled her fingers against the old man’s ribs to tickle him, but she could not feel his body beneath the thick coat he wore. Although spring had arrived, it was still cold riding on the front of his cart in all weathers when the wind whipped across the flat Lincolnshire fenland. Kate loved her grandfather. As long as she could remember, he had spoilt her and could be relied upon to take her side, even against her mother. He always looked so smart, Kate thought looking up at him now, with his black trousers and pin-striped jacket and matching waistcoat, a gold watch-chain looped across his narrow chest. She only had to ask for him to pull the watch out of his pocket and hold it to her ear to listen to its tiny tick-tick-tick. And his boots, resting on the foot-board, shone so that she could almost see her face in their hard, rounded toe-caps. She liked it in summer when he wore a rakish boater-shaped hat, but today he still wore his winter cap against the cold. His smooth hair was almost completely white with only a few strands of the ginger colour it had once been still showing. Will Benson’s old eyes twinkled down at her and he wiggled his white moustache. ‘You’ll be losing yar playmate then, eh, Katie?’

Remembering suddenly, the smile fled from her face.

‘Grandad – ya’ve got to speak to me mam. She’s going to send me away. To boarding school. Ya won’t let her, will ya, Grandad?’

Will Benson slapped the two horses with the reins and above the rattle of the cart’s wheels he asked, ‘What? What’s that you say?’

Raising her voice, Kate repeated, ‘Me mam’s sending me to boarding school in Lincoln, come September. I dun’t want to go, Grandad. I’ll hate it!’

‘Huh!’ Will made a disapproving noise and muttered something that sounded like ‘We’ll see about this’. Above the noise of the cart-wheels, however, Kate could not be sure exactly what he had said.

But she was sure the moment he opened the back door of the farmhouse and stepped into the back scullery.

‘Esther,’ he bellowed. ‘You here, Esther?’

‘In here, Dad,’ came her mother’s voice. Kate followed her grandfather into the kitchen.

Esther Godfrey was standing at the large kitchen table. A thick blanket was spread upon it and an old sheet, worn to transparent thinness, on top of that. Two flat irons were heating on the range while she worked with a third ironing the previous morning’s wash. From the wicker cradle in the far corner came the baby’s mewling.

‘Oh, there you are, Missy! And just where did you disappear to?’ her mother began and Kate was sure she added under her breath, ‘As if I need to ask!’

Peeping round the comforting figure of her grandfather and using his presence as a buffer against her mother’s wrath, Kate said, ‘I’ve been on the beach with Danny.’

She saw her mother’s mouth tighten. ‘I thought as much. Into the scullery and wash yar hands. Dinner’s in ten minutes, now yar grandad’s here.’

Kate obeyed, but left the door ajar so that she could peep through the crack and listen to their conversation.

In a tone that Kate could not remember having heard him use before, Will said, ‘What’s this Katie tells me about you sending her away to school?’

She saw her mother glance up in surprise, the iron suspended in mid-air before it thudded down on to one of the baby’s white frocks.

‘Well?’ Will Benson’s tone was sharp.

The iron came up again, the tiny dress was flicked over and the iron thudded down once more. In the grate of the huge black range a log fell, sending a shower of sparks up the flue.

‘I’m thinking about it – that’s all.’ Her mother’s tone was terse. ‘Nothing’s settled – yet.’

‘Ya shouldn’t be even
thinking
about sending the bairn away. A country bairn in a
city!
Lass’ll pine away. Besides, how can you afford the fees them fancy schools charge?’

‘I’ve scrimped and saved – that’s how. I’ve still got me box under the bed and there’s not a week goes by but I don’t add a shillin’ or two. I can afford it, Dad, I’ve minded that.’

Will grunted, casting about for another objection now that one had been foiled. ‘Ya trying to turn her into something she’s not . . .’

‘Dad – I’ve got to get her away from here. Now she’s growing older. You know why. It’s for her own good.’