The River Folk (29 page)

Duggie’s presence still lightened Mary Ann’s days and he was a second father to Lizzie. His good humour never flagged. Rarely was Duggie Ruddick seen without a smile on his face and a quick-witted quip from his tongue. And his teasing was never cruel, never barbed. He was like the brother Mary Ann had never had and she could have wished for none better.

He seemed to have a succession of girlfriends, but no one serious. Whenever they moored to load or unload, or went home to Waterman’s Yard for the weekend, there always seemed to be a girl on the wharf waiting to catch a few moments with Duggie.

‘You’re a right Jack the lad,’ Mary Ann teased him. ‘Aren’t you ever going to settle down?’

Duggie pretended to frown and drew in breath in a whistle. ‘Not me, Mary Ann. I’m not going to stay here all me life, you know. I’ll be away to seek me fortune one of these fine days.’

‘Leaving? You’re going to leave us? Have you got an apprenticeship?’

He pulled a face. ‘I reckon that’s passed me by, Mary Ann. I’m getting a bit too old now.’ Then he laughed. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not leaving yet. Besides, it’s only a pipe dream. I’ll probably end me days on this stretch of river. But sometimes . . .’ His face took on a dreamy expression. ‘Just sometimes, when we’re at Hull, I look out down the Humber and out into the North Sea and wonder what’s out there beyond the horizon. I wonder what I’m missing. I get a bit restless and long to pack a few belongings on me back and head off into the unknown.’ Then he gave a mocking sigh. ‘But, like I say, I’ll probably never do it. I like me mam’s cooking – and yours,’ he added hastily, ‘to go too far away.’

‘You needn’t spare my feelings, Duggie. My cooking isn’t a patch on your mam’s or on yours, if it comes to that. Even I look forward to Sunday dinner in Waterman’s Yard.’

‘Your cooking is a lot better than it used to be, Mary Ann, and it’s amazing how you manage in that little cabin, so don’t belittle yourself.’

Mary Ann coloured at his praise. For all his teasing, Duggie was always truthful.

So the routine of their lives continued. Whenever they were moored in Elsborough, they spent time with Bessie and the family, and Mary Ann always tried to see Edwina. Her visits to the school, she told herself, were to keep up her learning, and to prove this to herself as much as to Edwina – and to Bessie – every time they went there she insisted that Edwina should teach her a new embroidery stitch. But when their heads were bent together over the fine stitches, Mary Ann had to bite upon her lips to stop them from asking, ‘How is Randolph? Where is he and what is he doing? Is he happy?’

Then came the day when Mary Ann stepped into Edwina’s office unannounced to find that Edwina already had visitors.

A smartly dressed woman was sitting on the chaise longue set against one wall of Edwina’s study. She was reclining languidly against the cushions and smoking a cigarette in a long, ebony holder. She was not particularly good looking, Mary Ann thought, her eyes drawn to the stranger as she stood in the doorway, but with the skilful use of cosmetics, her hair trimmed in the short haircut of the day, and her fashionable clothes, the woman oozed sophistication. But her mouth had a petulant twist to it and her eyes, squinting at Mary Ann through the haze of her cigarette smoke, were dull with boredom.

There was a young boy, no more than a year old, sitting on Edwina’s lap. As he turned to see who had come into the room, Mary Ann was startled by the brightness of his blue eyes. For an instant, Mary Ann trembled. The child’s eyes were so like Randolph’s that there could be no mistaking the little boy’s parentage.

Edwina raised her head and smiled. ‘Mary Ann, how nice. Come in, my dear. Come and meet my nephew, Lawrence.’

Edwina made the more formal introductions as Mary Ann moved forward into the room.

‘This is Celia, my sister-in-law.’ Tactfully, Edwina cleverly avoided mentioning Randolph. ‘And this is Lawrence. He’s only a couple of months younger than your little Lizzie.’

Mary Ann drank in the sight of the child. He had Randolph’s fair hair and blue eyes, and as she glanced between them she could see that, although the child had inherited the shape of his mother’s mouth, whilst hers wore a sulky expression, his was upturned in a cherubic greeting.

She moved forward, squatted down in front of the little boy and held out her finger for him to grasp. ‘How do you do, Master Lawrence? What a handsome little man he is.’

‘He’s like his father.’ The woman spoke behind her, her tone bitter. ‘He’ll no doubt break a few hearts when he’s older.’

Mary Ann drew in a breath sharply. Did Celia know who she was? Did she know all about Mary Ann’s affair with Randolph? And if so, who had told her? She was sure he would not have done so, so that left only one person. She glanced resentfully at Edwina, but Edwina gave a little shake of her head. Aloud she said, ‘He has some of your features, Celia, surely, and he’s so placid. Such a good baby.’

‘He doesn’t take after either of us for that, Edwina. I’m sure Randolph was a demon as a child and my mother never tires of telling me that I dispatched twelve nannies single-handedly.’ Celia stubbed out her cigarette in a glass ashtray and stood up. Smoothing down her skirt, she said, ‘I’d better be going. Are you sure you don’t mind looking after him, Edwina? His wretched nanny has a dreadful cold and has taken to her bed.’

‘Much the best thing. You don’t want the little man to catch it.’

‘I suppose not.’ The woman sounded as if she didn’t care one way or the other, only that her own life should not be disrupted. ‘It’s really most inconvenient. I have a luncheon appointment with Mrs Phillips.’

Mrs Phillips was the wife of one of the town’s most influential men. He owned the huge engineering works that was one of Elsborough’s major employers. So, thought Mary Ann, Celia had wasted no time in ingratiating herself with the town’s elite.

Edwina, with no such pretensions, smiled. ‘It’ll be a real pleasure. If it didn’t sound so horrid, I could wish that the nanny might catch a cold more frequently if it means I get the chance to look after him.’

Celia shrugged her slim shoulders. ‘If that’s the case, you can have him on her afternoon off and welcome.’

‘But that’s the only time you get to spend with him,’ Edwina protested.

‘I’m not very good with young children, Edwina. I don’t pretend to be. I’ll get on better with my son when he can hold an intelligent conversation.’

She slipped on her coat and picked up her handbag and gloves. She stood a moment looking down at the sweet picture Edwina and the child made. ‘You’re very maternal, aren’t you, Edwina? You really should get married and have children of your own before it’s too late.’ Then, losing interest, she said, ‘I must go. Deakin can pick Lawrence up at four o’clock in the Bentley.’

‘Very well,’ Edwina murmured, her attention captivated by the child in her lap. ‘I’ll take good care of him.’

Since her brother’s marriage, Edwina had moved out of the family home and now lived in an apartment at the top of the school building. Mr and Mrs Marsh senior, of course, still lived at The Hall.

‘My dear Edwina, of that I can be sure,’ Celia said, as she reached the door. ‘Goodbye and thank you again. You’re such a treasure. Goodbye – er . . .’ She hesitated, trying to recall the name she had just been given. ‘Goodbye – Mary Ann, is it?’

Mary Ann nodded as she said quietly, ‘Goodbye, Mrs Marsh.’

As the door closed behind Celia, Mary Ann said, ‘She didn’t even say goodbye to him.’

Edwina sighed. ‘No. Like she said, she isn’t very good with young children. She never takes a lot of notice of him. It quite upsets me to see how offhand she is with the little chap. I’m just praying that she will change once he gets a little older and, to her mind, more interesting.’

Mary Ann allowed the boy to clasp and unclasp her finger and only resisted when he tried to draw it towards his mouth. ‘No, no, you’re not going to chew my finger,’ she laughed.

‘He’s still teething. See how he dribbles,’ Edwina said adoringly.

Mary Ann’s face sobered. ‘Does she . . . does Mrs Marsh know who I am?’

Edwina shook her head again. ‘If you mean does she know about your . . .’ She paused briefly struggling to find an appropriate word. ‘Association with Randolph. No, she doesn’t.’ Then she added wryly, ‘At least, not unless Randolph has told her himself and I doubt that very much.’

Mary Ann said nothing, her gaze on his child as the boy played with her fingers and smiled playfully up into her eyes.

‘He is a lovely little boy,’ she murmured, but now Edwina was trying to draw the conversation away.

‘Tell me, how is Lizzie, and, of course, Dan and Duggie? And do you see anything of poor Susan?’

Susan Oliver had become known, all along the river-bank, as ‘poor Susan’. Though Dan and Mary Ann had probably been the first to know, it was now common knowledge that her husband Ted was wildly and irrationally jealous of her. She was a virtual prisoner in the cottage near the ferry, which Ted operated between the two villages on either side of the Trent, appropriately named Eastlands and Westlands. The ferryman’s cottage was at Eastlands and so it was always known as Eastlands’ Ferry.

Susan had no friends and saw little of her own family. It was a disastrous marriage, but Susan was trapped. Her father would not countenance the scandal of a divorce.

‘He’s a hard man, that Jack Price. Thank God I don’t work for him any more,’ Dan said often. ‘He seems to blame Susan. Says she must be giving her husband cause for jealousy. What chance has she got, locked away in the middle of nowhere?’

Mary Ann would glance at him and wonder. Whenever they passed by the tiny white cottage on the riverbank, Dan would be on deck, and she knew he stood looking across the expanse of water hoping to catch sight of Susan.

But Susan was never to be seen. Very occasionally, as they had come upriver, they would see her in the distance, pegging out the washing on the line, but by the time the
Maid Mary Ann
drew level, Susan had scuttled indoors.

Did Ted see Dan watching out for his wife, Mary Ann thought, and did he, too, wonder?

In answer to Edwina’s question, Mary Ann shook her head. ‘Not much. I haven’t seen her to speak to since the night Lizzie was born.’

‘She’s got a little boy now, hasn’t she?’

Mary Ann nodded. ‘Yes. Tolly. He was born about ten months after Lizzie. When was Lawrence born?’

‘Two months after Lizzie.’

‘And I never knew,’ Mary Ann murmured.

For a moment, Edwina looked embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. I should have told you. But – it was, well, awkward.’

‘Is that why no one told me? Not even Bessie.’ Mary Ann looked straight into Edwina’s eyes. ‘She knew, I suppose?’

Edwina nodded and said again, ‘I’m sorry, Mary Ann, we should have told you.’

As she walked home, back to the wharf where she knew Dan would be waiting, anxious to catch the tide, Mary Ann pondered on the strange quirk of Fate that had brought three children into the world within the space of a year. Three children, who were linked in a strange way by their parents’ pasts. What did life hold for each of them? Mary Ann wondered. Would their paths cross? Would they even know one another? Perhaps Lizzie and Tolly would, she mused. As long as his father didn’t guard him as jealously as he did his wife. But would Lizzie ever know Lawrence?

A smile played mischievously upon Mary Ann’s mouth. If Edwina was to look after her nephew on the nanny’s day off, she thought, then she must try to bring Lizzie to visit her godmother on one of those days.

Lizzie was almost nine when Mary Ann met Randolph Marsh again.

The intervening years had been kind to Mary Ann and her little family, although there had been no more children. She had found a kind of contentment with Dan and, after the shaky beginning, had grown to love her daughter although her displays of affection towards the child were spasmodic. One moment she would lavish kisses and cuddles upon Lizzie, the next she would be offhand with her and lost in a world of her own memories. To a less confident infant, such erratic behaviour would have been disastrous, but Lizzie, sure in the love of a large, extended family, appeared to take her mother’s mood swings in her stride.

Lizzie was a delight to all who knew her. In looks, she resembled her mother: dark hair, deep brown eyes and dimples in her cheeks, which seemed ever present for the child smiled constantly. She was bright and intelligent and quick to learn. In her character, she took after the Ruddick family. She was forthright, even from an early age, in her opinions like her grandmother, Bessie. Yet any bossiness was quickly dispelled by her lively, teasing manner which echoed her Uncle Duggie’s nature.

Her father, her grandfather and her two uncles, especially Duggie, doted on her and spoiled her. In their eyes she could do no wrong and any necessary correction had to come from Mary Ann or Bessie.

Lizzie learnt to walk on the deck of the
Maid Mary Ann
and to swim under Duggie’s tuition, not in the river for the currents were too strong and treacherous, but in the town’s swimming baths when they moored for a few hours at one of the wharves.

‘She’s not to swim in the river. You must teach her that, Mary Ann,’ Dan commanded. ‘Folks throw all sorts of rubbish and muck into the river.’ Before she reached school age, he had built her a miniature cog boat of her own. He taught her to scull in the shallow waters of the River Trent, paying out the rope from the ship with the little craft attached to it. Then, with a mixture of concern and pride, he and Duggie hung over the side as the tiny hands manoeuvred the oar with a deftness that was in her blood.

When she reached school age, Mary Ann was adamant that Lizzie should attend Edwina’s school.

‘She’s going to be a lady when she grows up,’ Mary Ann declared, and even Bessie, who normally despised anyone trying to ‘rise above their station’, backed the decision. If she had been fully aware, however, of all that lay behind Mary Ann’s scheme, Bessie might not have been so ready to agree. But wanting the very best for her granddaughter, Bessie even persuaded each member of the Ruddick family to contribute to the fees.