The Girl with the Creel (35 page)

‘And I thought it was time we … had an evening without them.'

There was a smirk on her painted face that told him she was trying to tempt him into making love to her, so he decided to take the wind out of her sails. ‘I've something to tell you. I'm putting my name down for the Navy tomorrow with Mick.'

The smirk disappeared. ‘You're what?'

‘Joining the Navy with Mick,' he grinned. ‘So I'll be away from you, thank God.'

‘You bugger!' she cried, springing to her feet and searching for a way to take the smile off his face, but not having expected anything like this, her devious mind failed her for once.

*   *   *

Jenny was weeping softly in her husband's arms. ‘Oh, Mick, why are you doing it? You know I don't care about money.'

‘Twenty pounds is a fair bit, though. Think of the things you'll be able to buy for yourself, things I haven't been able to get for you.'

‘I don't care, I love you and I don't want you to go.'

Mick sighed. ‘I have to. Call it patriotism or whatever you like, even a stupid sense of my own importance, but my heart tells me I must answer the call. Anyway, there's going to be a war, that's certain, and it'd just be a matter of time before I'd be forced to go.'

‘If you waited, I could have you for a few more weeks, maybe months.'

‘I don't want to leave you, don't think that, it's going to be an awful wrench, but …' He ended with a shrug.

Recognizing that nothing she said would make him change his mind, Jenny murmured, ‘I'll miss you when you're away.'

‘I'm away for days at a time now,' he pointed out, smiling.

‘That's different. I know you'll be home at the weekends.'

She raised her head, and he saw that her grey eyes were filled with pain at the thought of what he intended to do, but he still had to do it. He was a Jappy, and Jappys had to do their duty no matter how hard it was. His father would have been ashamed of him if he'd let his wife talk him out of it. Yet he would feel their parting as deeply as Jenny did, he told himself, and a lump rose in his throat as he bent his head to kiss away her sadness. The first kiss began a whole series of kisses and caresses that ended with two sated bodies lying back sighing.

Ever resilient, Elsie had bounced back quickly, but did her best to appear subdued in front of Peter when he was home at the weekends. He and Mick had both kept working while they were waiting, but she was glad when he got word to report to Chatham. Nevertheless, she did feel a pang of regret when he left to catch the train.

Looking on the bright side, of course, she told herself, his going meant she was free for Lenny Fyfe for longer than five days at a time. He had shaped up pretty well and did everything he could to please her; she would prefer a more dominant lover, but he would do meantime.

She and Jenny having something in common now, they took to discussing the letters they received – Elsie having to invent the endearments she pretended to read out, because she was green with envy at the things Mick wrote to his wife.

When the two men came home after their initial training, Peter was so full of what they had been doing that he described it in full to Elsie, keeping back for as long as he could the one item of news he knew would annoy her. ‘We're not in the Navy proper, just the R.N.V.R., that's the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, for the duration of the war, if it comes. Mick's been made a petty officer, but I'm just a rating.

‘Why's that?' she asked, frowning.

‘Because he's been at sea a lot longer than me.'

‘That shouldn't make any difference,' she pouted.

‘He's a qualified engineer, but I'm going to be a clerk, I'm not sure yet what grading I'll get.'

Peter was flattered by his sons' pride that he was in uniform, and he had to chuckle to himself at the renewed interest Elsie was showing in him, but he stuck to his own rule and did not sleep with his wife – he knew his own failing. Occasionally, however, when they were sitting having a last cup of tea together in the kitchen, he couldn't keep his eyes from straying to her bosom; she had perfected the art of exposing as much as she could without risking being accused of baring it. And what wasn't actually exposed could be seen through her filmy nightie, so he emptied his cup quickly and left her. Unfortunately, much as he despised her, he returned to his ship with a picture etched on his brain of the two delectable mounds and their dark-ringed nipples which had driven him mad for years.

On his first day home, Mick watched his young wife lovingly as she bustled about, drinking in her shapely legs, her slim figure, her narrow waist. His eyes lingered slightly on her breasts – surely they were fuller than they used to be? – and then moved up her slender neck till they reached the mouth he was longing to kiss but couldn't, for Jenny was shy when his mother was in the kitchen with them. Her cheeks were paler and her lovely chestnut hair wasn't as shiny as he remembered – was all the hard work turning her old before her time? He shouldn't have let her tie herself to marriage and looking after his mother.

When Hannah was settled for the night, he murmured, ‘We could go to our bed as well, couldn't we? It's been a long time, Jen darling.'

Snuggling down under the blankets, he said, ‘You're looking a wee bit under the weather. Are you sure you're not doing too much?'

She looked at him shyly. ‘Can't you guess what it is?'

His brow wrinkled in thought for a moment, then he let out a whoop of joy. ‘You're expecting?'

‘Sshh!' she breathed. ‘You'll waken your mother. I wasn't going to tell you till I was sure, but … well, I'm nearly sure.'

His eyes grew serious, and his voice was a little thick, as he said, ‘Jenny Jappy, did I ever tell you how much I love you?'

Chapter Nineteen

Lizann had never been used to grandeur or ostentation, but this was the bottom of the barrel, she decided, taking stock of her surroundings; yet it was all she needed, and at least the blankets on the rickety bed were clean. It would have been nice to have a more comfortable chair to sit on – her bottom grew numb after five minutes on the unpadded seat of the wooden one, which had one leg shorter than the rest – but there wasn't room for an armchair. The grate was so small it wouldn't send out enough heat in the dead of winter, so it was just as well there was only a wee skylight in the sloping roof. The trouble was, it didn't let in much air even when it was open, and she had been stifling all night. The little primus stove was a blessing though; it would have been unbearable if she'd had to light the fire to boil the kettle.

Sighing in resignation, she went downstairs and out on to the winding road which descended steeply to the village proper and the sea. Even at six o'clock, the July morning gave promise of another scorching day, and she hoped it wouldn't be so oppressive as it had been yesterday – not that she should complain; it would be a lot worse in winter. She could take off her cardigan if she was too hot, but she had no extra clothes to wear if she was cold. The only coat she'd possessed had been …

Manoeuvring her way carefully round the end of a house sitting on a sharp bend, she turned her mind hastily to other garments she'd once had. She had only worn the pink taffeta dress about half a dozen times, and the blue crêpe-de-chine once, on her wedding day. They had hung in her cupboard in the Yardie, protected from moths by balls of camphor, until she transferred them to the closet at Freuchny Road. Later, they'd been packed in a box and sold along with her other belongings. They'd have been cooler for her now, but too fancy to wear to sell fish.

Turning right at the foot of the brae, she walked along the seafront, passing the ancient hotel and the picturesque cottages snuggling under the overhanging cliffs. She'd only seen a couple of people on her way down, but the small harbour at the far end was abustle with men in long seaboots and ganzies, sorting out their catches and haggling with shopkeepers from inland villages and towns, who could charge what they liked but were reluctant to pay the asking price themselves.

As she stood watching, an elderly man approached her. ‘I've a lot o' undersize haddocks the day, Liz,' he said softly, giving her a gaptoothed smile, ‘and some herring and ling.'

His crafty wink told her that they weren't really less than the length stipulated by the authorities, who never came here to check anyway. ‘Thanks, Murdo,' she grinned. He had been the first to give her the chance to buy cheaply, and she would always be grateful to him.

‘I kept them separate,' he whispered, ‘and you can have them for the same price as last time.'

Having already heard the other men charging more that day, she smiled, ‘That's good of you.'

‘How's things going wi' you, Liz?' he asked, presently, dumping a heavy box at her feet and watching her gut its shimmering contents with an expertise that told of experience.

‘Fine. I've built up a good round, though I wouldn't have known where to start if you hadn't told me about the fishwife that died.'

‘Aye, old Betsy. She'd been on the go for as long as I can mind, and poor old soul, she should have retired years ago. But you've thrived on it, Liz. You look a lot better than the first time I saw you.'

Her smile was somewhat self-conscious. ‘I told you, I'd been ill.'

He turned away to attend to another buyer, and she recalled the story she had spun him to explain why she had come to be selling fish from a creel. ‘My man was lost when his boat went down,' she had said, afraid to tell the truth in case he'd heard of the man who went overboard from a Buckie drifter last November. To further distance herself from that tragedy, she had given her name as Liz Benzies and said she came from Lossie-mouth. ‘I didn't want to ask my mother for money, for she never wanted me to marry him, and when I got over the shock, all I wanted was to get away.'

Murdo had looked at her in pity. ‘I'm sure your man's folk wouldna have let you starve, if you'd asked them.'

It had never crossed her mind to go to George's mother, not even when she went through Cullen, not after what the woman had said. In any case, she had been wishing she still had Peter as a friend … but his wife had scuppered that.

Murdo had seen her distress, and after telling her he would sell her the fish she wanted at a fair price each time he took his boat in, he had added, ‘I'll let the rest o' them ken it's old Betsy's round you've taken on, though it's nae a job for a bonnie young thing like you.'

She had found out how right he was, she thought ruefully. The weight of a full creel had been almost too much for her at first, but she had trudged over the countryside doggedly. To begin with, the wives of the farmers and fee'd men hadn't been keen on buying from a stranger, but when she told them old Betsy had died, they realized that if they didn't buy from her they wouldn't get fish at all, and they looked for her every week now. She had worked out Betsy's routes, a different one for each day of the week, and even if she didn't make much profit and had to live very frugally, she was surviving.

As it often did, her mind went back to the day she had left Buckie, weak and sore at heart, and she wondered how she had ever managed to get as far as Pennan. She had walked only a few miles when she'd had to stop and sit down at the side of the road to rest, and, remembering that the money she had left from the sale of her furniture had to last till she earned some more, she had put her arms on the creel and wept bitterly. When she recovered, she had felt as if the tears had cleansed her of her anger at God for depriving her of her husband, her hurt at George's mother's lack of understanding, her resentment at what Elsie and Jenny had said. Determined to overcome what Fate had sent her, she'd carried on past Portknockie, then seeing a baker in Cullen, she had bought a mince pie to eat while she went along. She hadn't been capable of logical thought, but she knew that Cullen was too near Buckie for her to stop there, and she had continued on her way, through Portsoy and Banff to Macduff, where exhaustion had forced her to take a bed for the night in a cheap hotel by the harbour.

Revived, she had gone on again in the morning, past Gardenstown and Crovie, until she came to the next steep road down to the sea, the road to Pennan. She didn't know why she had decided to settle here – maybe because the first little cottages she saw appealed to her, perched as they were on the side of the cliff – but she was glad that she had. She wouldn't have met Murdo otherwise, though the climb up from the village was an awful strain on her every day.

She rented her room, no food provided, from the wife of one of Murdo's friends. She told her landlady nothing of her circumstances, and kept herself to herself as much as she could. There was the occasional night when she thought of all the lonely nights stretching ahead of her, and she had to fight back the fear of growing too old to carry on, telling herself not to be morbid. She would weather the storm, she would find a haven she could call her own some day, when she could afford to buy a small house. The thing was, she couldn't save a ha'penny from what she made, and there wasn't much left of what she had started out with – she'd had to dip into it several times to pay the rent of her room.

Letting out a long, dejected breath, she lifted the old box Murdo had given her to hold the guts and tipped them into the sea, at which the gulls stopped their circling and screeched as they dived in after them. She packed her creel now, shovelling some of Murdo's salt over each layer as a preservative, and slung it over her shoulder.

‘You're off again then, Liz?' Murdo smiled.

‘Aye, once again.' Having paid for her purchases, she started up the steep slope, looking longingly as she passed at the neat cottages standing in tiers on the hillside, but not stopping at any of them. She had no customers in Pennan, for the fishermen took fries of fish home to their own wives and to the widows of friends who had been lost. She had to go well into the hinterland beyond the turnpike.